Leif Babin
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
casualties in Iraq at the time, throughout most of 2005 and 2006, and most of those were coming in and around Ramadi. So it was just a violent terrorist stronghold. And when we arrived there, Right away, I mean, even in Baghdad, you're flying around in a helicopter. If you flew over Ramadi in the daytime, you're getting shot down in the sky. No one was doing that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So it was like vehicle convoys, and it was...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
um every single week there were memorial services going on and at the camp um it was uh there were u.s marines and soldiers getting wounded or killed almost every day damn almost every day and uh and multiple times i remember there would be like a call of the loudspeaker for like like a a mass like blood drive you know come give blood uh you know for a mass cash situation
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, there were people killed on base in the chow hall with mortars in the base, you know, before he even left the base. And when we were driving, so the SEALs were working out of a place they call Shark Base. It was like an old, like, Republican Guard effort. And after Mark Lee was killed, we renamed it Camp Mark Lee. But it was kind of on the edge of Ramadi, like right on the Euphrates River.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And in order to get there, you had to drive off the main camp. And it was still kind of behind the walls of the camp. But there was a – you would drive through what they called the vehicle graveyard. And the vehicle graveyard was, you know, these vehicles that would have IDs, Humvees, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles. They would drag these twisted burnt hulks and just –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
they would just leave them out here in this kind of, you know, it was just kind of a junkyard area. And, man, it was a powerful reminder of what was out there waiting for you every time. Like, you're going to, you know, you're driving past that every single time you're launched on an operation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Driving to that vehicle graveyard and just knowing that those twisted, charred honks of metal that used to be a vehicle, you know, almost all those had, you know, soldiers or Marines that were killed or wounded in them. And... And then, you know, the gates were like a – it was a M88, which is like a – it's basically like a tow truck for tanks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, these things weigh – you know, a tank weighs 70 tons, you know, an M1A Rose tank. And that's what they had blocking the gate because it was such a threat of like a, you know, massive IED threat coming in. And people would be attacking the camp. And I've been on the ground for –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Probably about a week there, we turned over with a crew from SEAL Team 2, an outstanding crew there, and they had built awesome relationships. They'd trained a bunch of the Iraqi units, and they were doing a ton of operations. But it was kind of mostly on the outskirts of the city because there was no U.S. presence inside the city except for the Marine bases that controlled Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the 101st Airborne, 1st to 506th Battalion that controlled Task Force Red Courier, controlled the eastern part of the city. And the Marines from 38th Marines controlled the main route to the city. It was called Route Michigan. And about every kilometer, the Marines had a base there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And even still, even though we controlled that road, that road throughout our six-month deployment there was overwhelmingly the most heavily attacked road in all of Iraq. It had seven to ten IEDs on average in any 24-hour period. This is a road that we controlled. So, like, U.S. forces controlled that road. Every kilometer there's a Marine or Army checkpoint.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so, I mean, it was just nonstop, you know, combat that was going on all the time. Nasty, nasty. When we showed up, I was just in awe of the soldiers and Marines that were there. And the fight, there was a National Guard unit that was on the ground.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And seeing these National Guard, you know the National Guard, man, they don't have, they have a fraction of the training and equipment that we have. This was the 228th, the 2nd Brigade, 28th Infantry Division, the Iron Soldiers, based out of Pennsylvania. Yeah. And they had National Guard from really all over. They had some Utah National Guard, Vermont National Guard, Pennsylvania National Guard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And these guys had, you know, they're part-time soldiers. And they, many of them had been on the ground for over a year at that point. And I mean, these guys were hardened combat warriors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And sometimes they'd, I'd show up and the SEAL Team 2, you know, would introduce us and they'd look at us and our high-speed little 10-inch barrel M4s and our gear and, you know, we had better night vision and lasers and stuff like that. And, They're looking back at us like, oh, man, look at that. Look at the SEALs. They've got, you know, these guys have all this cool gadgetry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I just, you know, for me, Sean, I was like, man, this National Guard soldier, you know, who's probably 19 years old, has fired more rounds through his weapon in his year here than all of us put together are ever going to fire in our entire careers. Damn. And, I mean, they were just in the thick of the fight the entire time. The Marines that were men in the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The checkpoints through that city, in particular the ones at the government center, that was Kilo Company, 3A Marines, awesome unit of Marines. We worked really closely with their Lima Company, Kilo Company, and India Companies, and man, they were freaking awesome. And the government center was taken, and OPVA, which is named after like the Veterans Administration,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
a building that was like an Iraqi Veterans Administration building, I guess, in the Saddam era. But those two, they'd get hit once a week by...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
50, 100 insurgents attacking from three different directions, hitting them with, you know, a dozen belt-fed machine guns at the same time, lobbing mortars in, a super accurate mortar fire, and then somebody trying to drive a 5,000-pound V-bed into their position. I mean, it was every week for them. And so we just, you know, when we showed up there, it was like, man, how can we help these guys?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What can we do to help in any way that we can? And so we just decided to get to work, you know. So what was the work? The work was, what can we do? You know, what is our part of this mission? And for us, it was number one, SEAL snipers, just like the work that you were doing. We can take our guys, we can take a pretty small group.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And right away, we were told there was red areas on the map that were like, don't go there. These are Al-Qaeda. This is Al-Qaeda in Iraq battle space. And if you go there, you're all going to get killed. Nobody can even come recover your body. And so we realized, like, hey, that's the enemy safe haven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, is there a way that we can get into these safe havens and mitigate the risk of being overrun, you know, by 100 enemy fighters? And so what we did was we started kind of on the edges of the city, you know, pushing in with some of the Marine and Army patrols, but setting up sniper overwatch position.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We'd go in an undercover darkness, set up on the rooftops of buildings, in the windows where they wouldn't be expecting us to be. And, you know, if you were in a bad area, They had no U.S. presence before. I mean, all of a sudden when the, you know, first call of the prayer goes down and, you know, the sun rises and the city's moving around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, you got enemy fighters moving around with RPGs and Belfast machine guns and starting to coordinate attacks on, you know, nearby friendly patrols and outposts. And it was just a shooting gallery for the snipers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, we'd be in there. We'd sneak in at nighttime and try to be hidden as best we could in a position. And what we did, though, was we adjusted the— My idea before of a sniper mission was like a little small, like two-man, four-man element, six-man element.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, these elements, when you're going in there, we had to have, you know, we would go in with a 30-man element and lock down like a four-story apartment building. Particularly, it didn't start, you know, initially we started working on the outside edges of the city. And then once the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
forces started establishing these combat outposts, they'd build a forward operating base right in the enemy-held neighborhood of permanent outposts that they could work at up, bring Iraqi soldiers with them. Oftentimes what we do is be the first U.S. troops on the ground for that. So we sneak in under cover of darkness. And the ID threat was the biggest threat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So how do we mitigate the risk of that? Well, we would foot patrol. So I mean, it was throw everything on your back. We're carrying Carl Gustav, you know, shoulder fired rockets. We're carrying 40 millimeter grenades. We're carrying multiple belt fed machine guns. Every squad, multiple belt fed machine guns. Because we had to be ready. You know, we would take the minimum force that we would take.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We usually was at least a squad of SEALs. Because that way I at least had two fireteam elements that could bound. And if we're going into a super hot area, it would be double that. It would be like a full potato riser or even more.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So maybe 18 or 20 of those guys would be SEALs plus EOD. Our EOD bomb technicians were phenomenal. And were absolutely a critical part of our team, just like the ones you worked with. And we had some awesome shooters too, man, that could do both.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They're – so we also had – we'd also – sometimes we would plus up with squads from conventional Army units or Marine units as well just because we wanted to have some more Americans out there with us. And we'd always have Iraqi soldiers. So we might have 12, 15, 20 Iraqis with us. I did not – those guys were out there risking their lives. I did not count on them in the gunfight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, you know, when it was, we saw that too many times that when, you know, if you got a hundred enemy fighters trying to overrun your position, like you are, the only thing that's going to save you is Americans. And, and the things that saved us was Americans with Belfast machine guns. Those,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Machine gunners carrying the, you know, the Mark 48, you know, 716 belt-fed machine gun and the Mark 46, you know, 5.56 belt-fed machine gun, those guys saved our lives over and over and over again. Just V-back attacks, preventing us from being overrun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If we were on a patrol with our Iraqis, you know, if we're getting attacked, like, enabling us to be able to keep the enemy's head down so we could get off the street, laying down cover fire for us. I mean, I just...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I talked to those Vietnam SEALs about how much they love their machine gunners, you know, that were carrying the stone or machine gunners in the M60s, you know, back in Vietnam and how that would enable them to push deep into Viet Cong territory where nobody could come get them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the only QRF, you know, a lot of those Vietnam guys had working in like the rungsat and places like that in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam was like another seven-man SEAL squad. And they had some, you know, maybe some... They had Seawolf, you know, the helicopters that were supporting overhead and some aircraft. But those machine gunners kept them alive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was the exact same thing for us in tasking a bruiser. Those machine gunners like Mark Lee and Ryan Jobe and all those guys carrying the heavy belt, Jake, our mutual, you know, Bud's classmate, man, he was, those guys were awesome. Because you're full patrolling in every time, and so they're carrying massive heavyweight.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so the guys in Ramadi figured out what that mission should be. They were close to the problem. And the brigade colonel that was in charge, you know, the colonel and his staff that were in charge of that National Guard unit, they got relieved by about a month into our deployment by the ready first brigade combat team of the 1st Armored Division.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And those guys brought in tanks and firepower, but they brought in a perspective on that as well, about what that mission should be. Colonel Sean McFarland was the guy in charge, and his staff were just, they were phenomenal, man. We loved that National Guard unit, too. Those guys were outstanding.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But the ready 1st Brigade Combat Team is who I spent the bulk of that deployment with, you know, helping them. Many of the Marine units and that Task Force Red Curry, the 1st Airborne Unit, those guys stuck around as well for much of our deployment. But what they realized was the mission of Ramadi was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace, and ultimately lower the level of violence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That was the goal. Okay. That was the goal. And I think if you, you know, I think for so long, if you'd asked the SEAL, if you'd asked me, you know, my first appointment, like, what's the SEAL mission in Iraq? What are you trying to do? I said, kill bad guys. And I think something that Jocko really recognizes, like, look, either U.S. forces win in Ramadi and we all win, or U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
forces lose and we all lose. And it doesn't matter how many bad guys we kill or capture. It doesn't matter how many operations we conducted. If U.S. forces lose here, we all lose. So what we have to do is help U.S. forces win. And we understood that that was the mission. was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace, lower the level of violence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we realized our part of that was to take a small element that was very heavily armed. I say small, right? It might've been as many as 30 guys if you're locking down a four-story apartment building. And many times we tried to put two elements in that were mutually supporting one another.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Because there's nothing stronger than mutually supporting overwatch positions with interlocking fields of fire. I mean, that's how you're going to defeat an enemy that way outnumbers you when they're trying to come and attack your position. When that other position could cover a move, you know, cover for you, and you can cover for them, you know, as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But that's how we mitigated the risk of going into some of those areas. And we knew that we could take a fairly small group of guys with a lot of firepower, carrying the shoulder-fired rockets, carrying the belt-fed machine guns, carrying the 40-mic grenades, JTACs with aircraft support overhead. We had artillery battery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The artillery battery in Ramadi fired, I think they fired over 5,000 rounds from their 155 batteries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Sometimes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Sometimes. What we typically would do, I like to be in multiple locations so we can mutually support one another. We also found, though, that when we teamed up, a lot of these operations, we were the very first U.S. troops on the ground. We would even go in and do some reconnaissance in the area. And as frogmen, right, the river, the Euphrates River runs right through Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And there's a Habaniya Canal kind of breaks off from there as well. So we had access to much of the city. And there was a badass marine boat unit there called the Dam Support Unit. They had these circ boats, these small unit riverine craft that they could stand for. but it kind of like a rib, kind of like a combination between like a rib and a soccer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so we teamed up with those guys, man, they would, they would, we'd sneak in there at nighttime, totally blacked out. And you know, night vision and they just drop us off at the bank. No one have any idea we were in there. No ships.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Find out where they would be, do a reconnaissance of the area, engage IED layers, which we often did. And then we'd use that as an insertion platform, go in there at nighttime, jump off on the beach, full patrol in. So we could set up our sniper hides. And so we would oftentimes take down the buildings or buildings near those buildings, That would eventually be the common outpost.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Sometimes we did reconnaissance missions where we'd go in and kind of just probe and do a little recon, and they'd come back and kind of use that as part of planning. Obviously, you have to hit multiple buildings. They don't know exactly where you're going. Try to go into different areas and do some misdirection stuff. But usually what we would do is an insertion method
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
we would go in there and set up in the sniper hide and try to get in position before the first call to prayer. So we could get in position by daylight. Then we would start to like, we would want to try to get some long axis looks down some of the main avenues of approach. And then usually we would be, so we would wait until oftentimes the,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, some of those larger operations, you're talking over 1,000 soldiers and Marines on the ground, 50 tanks, dozens and dozens of heavy, you know, engineering vehicles. I mean, they're trucking in, you know, 70,000 sandbags to, you know, multiple semi-truckloads of equipment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, Jersey barriers and Texas T barriers, you know, those giant concrete barriers to try to, you know, concertina wire rolls to, like, reinforce these positions. Because you know you're going to get attacked. I mean, they're coming. And that's usually where we could really help those guys is so we would set up and cover for them as they infiltrated. And there were multiple times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I was thinking about all the history that we had through our time together, buds. And what a great time that was. Like, what an incredible time. And our class and what people went on to do and the combat that you saw and so many others saw and were a part of. But just... Can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, sometimes we would conduct a reconnaissance provided to the conventional units to maybe make a recommendation on where they could set up, you know. or take them with us, you know, on those reconnaissance missions. And then we would plan that thing out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we became like their go-to as far as like, you know, they realized the effectiveness of SEAL snipers and what we could do for them, you know, to disrupt attacks because, you know, they're super vulnerable, right? When they're trying, before there's any, they're just out there in these neighborhoods, they're getting shot at.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You've got, you know, hundreds of enemy fighters that can muster and start attacking their positions. And so our snipers were able to disrupt those attacks over and over again. But a lot of times we'd be sitting in a position, you'd see like the mine clearance element in their big like MRAP, you know, those V-Hull vehicles. They were the only guys that had them at that time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We would ask for them and nobody else had them. But you'd see them slowly like on white lights, like digging IDs out of the road. And there was, to one of the first major operations we put in, I mean, they cleared dozens of IEDs out on that road.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, just to tell you how bad things were, there was a route that was coming down off Route Michigan, that main road that I said was statistically the most heavily IED road. A couple months before we moved into that area, right before we deployed, the Marines had tried to push down a road into where we ended up putting a combat outpost.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was called Route Sunset, and it hit something like 13 IEDs in less than 500 meters. So, I mean, it was just, it was constant. You couldn't even get into these areas. And so we're just, we would watch those guys clear. And so it took like four or five, six hours for them to clear all the way down. And we wanted to make sure that IEDs weren't being in place, you know, on top of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so then all of a sudden tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, you know, those troops are coming in. you know, in Humvees. And man, I remember this one time we were sitting in this sniper hide in what was gonna be the buildings that would become the combat outposts. And we're on the third story and I'm looking over the side and I got that mine clearance element.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, they got this, it was called the dagger was the call sign for the vehicle. And they got this huge like arm that's like, I think they call it the Buffalo was the vehicle. And they're like digging. It's this big robotic arm that's like digging in the dirt. And this robotic arm got like blown off like every night. You know, they'd like replace it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm looking down there and I could see these like projos. And I mean, I'm looking over the rooftop. I'm like... I was like, this is, all of a sudden it occurs to me that like, if that thing goes off, I mean, this is like, this is like one in five, five rounds, you know? Like that thing's going to take my head off. You know, my face is going to be gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was like, if I can see the, you know, explosive, it can see me, I need to get back behind the rooftop. I mean, it's like right there at the base of the building that we're in. And we found a bunch of them too, like on the, along like the creek we were patrolling across as the army went and burned, burned out the vegetation later. And they dug like, I mean, they found eight or 10 IDs in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We were like patrolling all around. These things are just everywhere. And then from the combat outposts, once we had that established, so then we could push out it deeper into enemy territory. And so initially the army would say like, hey, we want you here. in this building so that you could cover our guys. And, you know, you're looking 360 for 100 yards in all directions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, for blocks, all you can see is U.S. soldiers and Marines. I can't even gauge anybody. So we talked them into it, and luckily Jocko would kind of explain why we needed to do it. And we pushed about 300 meters outside the perimeter And they were worried about us getting attacked. Well, we pushed 300 meters outside the perimeter, set up in a big four-story apartment building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I wanted to go in a different direction. Chris Kyle was like, we need to go there. That's the apartment building. And luckily, I was at least humble enough as a leader. I made all kinds of terrible mistakes, but at least humble enough to listen to the guy that knows what he was talking about, to say, okay, cool, let's do what Chris wants to do. Thank God we did that because, I mean, we had –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Over the next 48 hours, we disrupted like all kinds of attacks on that combat outpost. And that was just kind of the model for what we did over and over and over again. You'd see like a dozen enemy fighters that are trying to like rally And they know they're going to attack the combat outpost, which you can't see.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Or you get, right as the sun comes up, mortars are landing dead center of the combat outpost, kills a soldier, wounds three others. And the soldiers can't even shoot back, right? Indirect fire is coming from kilometers away over blocks of the city. And you can't even see the launch point. And so our cybers are able to engage guys loading mortar tubes into the back of a vehicle from 600 yards away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Damn. it was that kind of element where like those soldiers when they started hearing like the 300 win mag you know it was like three enemy fighters engaged with 300 women i mean you would just hear like they were they were so stoked about it they knew that like we were up there on the high ground you know to protect them and help them out and as a result i mean every single time we called them
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Because when we're deep in enemy territory, like, we got vicious. They always figured out where we were. Sometimes it was, like, sending, like, unarmed kids through the neighborhood, knocking on gates. I mean, you know, all the standard stuff. And they knew we weren't going to engage that guy. But they wanted to figure out where we were at.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So it would—we just adopted the Marine tactic from 3-8 Marines of, like— it became an overt fighting position. So if you didn't have an urgent surgical casualty, like you weren't calling EVAC because that's what they wanted you to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You were going to be in the streets getting ambushed, have an IED clacked off on you, you know, or having, you know, multiple machine guns engaging you while you're patrolling out. So we try to wait until under cover of darkness if possible. Sometimes we didn't do that because if I felt like I was in a position that was not very defensible if they attacked us, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like if they could get, if we were on, we had rooftops, but all the rooftops were kind of equally, you know, high or even higher around us and they might have the advantage over us. So there were a couple of times that we had to make the tough call. We just, you know, it's kind of like the, you make the least bad decision you can, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Or you're like, hey man, I know we're going to get attacked, but we can move fast on foot. We can do some misdirection and we can get back to the base. It's going to be better than allowing them to set up a massive attack, you know, on our position where they have all the advantage, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, man, even before that, when the guys hit the ground, the very first—like, I've been—advanced, I've been on the ground for, like, a week. Everyone arrives, and so they're just offloading in the camp, and we got in—there's, like, a massive multiple— like multiple unit, like well-coordinated enemy attack on the camp.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We're talking like, so every single SEAL was on the rooftop of the camp, just dumping fire across the river. And that was like the first, the very first, one of my guys who was our, probably our most senior machine gunner, he'd been, it was his third deployment to Iraq. He'd been a machine gunner, you know, every time. He'd done a bunch of assaults, done a bunch of capture kill raids,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, those direct action raids. And he was like, this is the first time I've ever fired my machine gun. I mean, he'd been on the ground for like three hours, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah. Three hours? I mean, they shot like 500 rounds off the rooftop, you know. So we knew like, this is going to be different, you know? And then that first particular, the first major operation, first of all, I was so pissed at Jocko for this because he wasn't, I had to be acting task unit commander for that because, and it was the right call, man. It was the right call.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I like, I obviously wanted to be out there with my guys on the battlefield and And a bunch of guys, the Army, this was the 101st Brigade, or the 101st Airborne Division. This was the first of 506, Task Force Red Curry. And this, I mean, they lived that, the celebrated Band of Brothers tradition, you know, from the book that Stephen Ambrose wrote in the HBO miniseries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This was the first of 506, Parachute Infantry Regiment. Awesome, awesome unit. And... Man, they just had phenomenal soldiers, incredible leader, their battalion commander. They were asking for help. They were out there doing some operations, pushing in what was called the Malab District. It was a really, really bad area. And so our guys went out there and set up a position.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had, you know, our job, tasking from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, you know, that was the Green Beret colonel in charge of all the special operations at Dieter at the time. Everything was going to be by, with, and through Iraqi soldiers. So we were tasked to train and fight company and battalion size elements of Iraqi soldiers. Like that was literally our task.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So that's what we were there to do. And obviously that was an ODA mission. It was a little bit different for SEALs to kind of adopt that. But we took Iraqi soldiers with us on every mission. And the SEAL Team 2 guys before us had done a great job of training those guys up and trying to mitigate some of the risk of their training. But that's what our guys were doing on that very first mission.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They sent, we had an element of SEALs that was going out as combat advisors to the Iraqi soldiers. And we're talking like 100 Iraqi soldiers on the battlefield, you know, with like a dozen of our guys and some of the Army, the military transition team, and some Marines that were with them. And then we had two different SEAL sniper teams that were going out there along with some Army sniper teams.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so they went out onto the battlefield. They briefed where everybody was going to be. The plan made a lot of sense. I'm kind of tracking this mission. I'm watching their con ops, and I'm listening to it on the radio. And it was pretty clear that all hell kind of broke loose on the operation. And we expected it to, because in the Malab district, this was like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And this is our very first major operation is tasking a bruiser. So Jocko felt like he needed to be over there, located with the battalion leadership so he could kind of be the liaison officer to manage that as the command and control with all those different elements out there. 100% the right call to be able to do that. So Jocko's out on the battlefield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But instead of being, you know, there's all these different multiple SEAL units out there, he's co-located with the battalion staff from Task Force Red Curry. He, you know, tried to manage that. And we have this report of, like, a massive enemy attack that goes on. So our SEAL sniper element is reporting the attack.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then all of a sudden we also get a report that, you know, there's a report that the insurgents are attacking the Iraqi unit that's out there. And there was some... There were some issues I won't get into on the communication side, you know, as well, that kind of broke down passing communications. But Jaco's out there on the battlefield. He shows up there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He knows that his guys were in trouble. They're calling for heavy QRF, right? They want tanks. That means they're in a dire situation. They feel like they're about to be overrun. Jocko shows up there, the command and control element. He moves up, sees the Anglico officer, the air naval gunfire liaison officer that's there to coordinate an airstrike on a building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There's red smoke marking where the enemy is. He knows that the sniper team is in there somewhere or should be close by. And so he just, he's kind of trying to de-conflict what's going on. And he went up and kicked the gate open. And it was Tony, my platoon chief on the other side was like, and realized like, this is a blue and blue situation. And no one understood what was going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This was... Meanwhile, I'm monitoring the radio on the other side of the city. I'm getting traffic passed back to me. There's a huge spin-up on this, but all of my guys that were in that cyber position, that was a squad of my guys that were there. And...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
uh it was um they were all convinced i think that they were about to die i mean they they they had moved they they moved out to a sniper position under cover of darkness they realized that where they were was not a good and defendable position they didn't have visibility on where they needed to to see uh to cover the road that they were supposed to cover for the soldiers and the iraqi uh the u.s army soldiers iraqis that were moving down that road so they moved position across the road
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And they weren't able to pass that information for a series of reasons, a breakdown in communication. Then the Iraqi soldiers were out of sector. So it was supposed to be like hours before they were clearing. Well, some of the Iraqi soldiers, I think, decided like, hey, we're going to get killed if we're out here. Let's get this thing over with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They rushed to the furthest point away from the friendly – you know, uh, outpost Camp Corregidor and then tried to rush back. And so they were out of sector. So all of a sudden, you know, as, as our sniper team is setting up, they zip tied the, the, the gate to the, um, um, and they're setting up and, you know, it's, it's just starting to get light. So like first call, the prayer goes down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's awesome. I've been looking forward to sampling this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So night vision doesn't work, you know, but you can't really see. Um, and, uh, and all of a sudden they've got somebody, you know, creeping by the window with an AK-47. Like they see the unmistakable sign of AK-47. Like they engage that guy. Um, And they didn't realize it was an Iraqi soldier that was out of session. So the Iraqi soldier, you know, that guy gets killed. Several others get wounded.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The Iraqis engage back. The Iraqi gets dragged back. They call in for fire support because they're thinking, oh, man, there's al-Qaeda insurgents that are holed up in this building. And, man, we got this on video. There was an embedded reporter, I think from Stars and Stripes, with the unit, the ANCO unit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They pulled up a Humvee, and they probably dumped 300 rounds of .50-gallon into the building. And our mutual friend, Matt, that we were in buzz with, is on the rooftop. And, I mean, all he can do is just take cover. Rounds are coming to the rooftop. Like, one round, luckily, it went through the concrete wall enough to slow down. Like, hit him in the face and, like, embed it up under his cheekbone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Outstanding, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, brother.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He said he was burning it, but he, like, grabbed it and pulled it out of his face and, like, threw it down on the roof. Yeah. And so these guys were like, man, we're about to be overrun, right? They're calling for that QRF. And they're thinking, man, these guys, this is, they're bringing it. This is our first major operation. So they're calling in for tanks and fire support.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Outside, they're calling in for tanks and fire support. So a tank pulls up. When Jocko gets up there, before we kick the gate open, there's a tank with their gun trained directly on the building where my guys are holed up. And they're just all kind of hunkered down trying to just take cover and not get their head shot off. I mean, you can imagine, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There's 50 Cal rounds coming, you know, and no fed, you know, 762 coming right over your head. All you can do is just bury your face and try to take cover and return fire as best you can. And they think they're about to get overrun. And then... On top of that, not only were they going to engage with tanks, they were coordinating an airstrike.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So the Anglico, you know, the JTAC, right, the air controller, he's coordinating an airstrike that's about to just demolish this entire building. So I'm going to be able to wipe out my entire squad. And so this was the lesson from that of like just how easily, like we thought we had taken every step possible to mitigate the risk of that happening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and so meanwhile, I'm back at the tactical operations center, you know, we're monitoring radio reports. We're hearing that, you know, we've got wounded seals. Uh, and I know it's, I know it's one of my guys, or I know it's, it's Matt at this point. Um, but, uh, we're, then we're hearing that it's friendly fire, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So like, okay, what's going on, man, all of a sudden word spreads like wildfire, right? The, the, the webby like instant, you know, chats are going on across the, the, uh, You know, every talk of like friendly fire, friendly fire, like what's going on, what's going on? And so, I mean, there's like massive scrutiny on this operation, you know, right away. And I remember I jumped in the truck.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
All I know is that Matt, you know, my brother, our brother, we went through buds with, that I've done, you know, this workup cycle with, it's in my, his particular, I know he's been shot in the face. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means his head's gone, you know? I don't know if it means if he's going to die. So I jumped in a truck, drove across the base,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
to Charlie Med, that was a medical facility. And I went to pick him up. And man, they put him on a morphine drip and patched him up and gave him some antibiotics for infection. And when I was talking to him, you know, obviously he's kind of out of it, right? It's a morphine. But he's like, man, they brought it. Those guys brought it. It's like, they were going to overrun our position.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He's like, I thought we were all going to die. And he kept saying it over and over again. And I was like, Matt, I was like, Matt, it was friendly fire, man. It was friendly fire. It was friendly fire. And I probably said it was friendly fire probably six times before it like sunk in. And he was like, what? And it was like, he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it when I said it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think that right there as like, you know, our commanding officer flew out, we had an investigating officer that flew out. It was, we were so fortunate to not lose any of our guys on that. And, you know, it was horrible that we lost an Iraqi soldier on that. We took up a big collection for his family and tried to do everything we could, you know, for him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There were a couple other Iraqi soldiers wounded. Luckily they recovered, you know, from that. But it was so close to being, just absolutely catastrophic. We're talking, you know, wiping half my platoon out. And then, you know, when people were looking, like, what heads are going to roll over this? What heads are going to roll? Who screwed this up? This is friendly fire. This is the worst.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This is the cardinal sin, the cardinal sin that you commit. X-ray platoon in Vietnam, right, that had a friendly fire incident, and this is the worst case scenario that can happen. And so we had a big debrief, and our commanding officer, our commanding master chief was sitting in there. The investigating officer, who was our JAG, was in there. People were wondering, like, who's responsible?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, how did this happen? Who's responsible for this thing? And we knew it was probably some heads who were going to roll over. And Jocko stood up in front of the task unit. We're all in there. And... And he said, whose fault is this? And, man, you know, the radio man stood up and was like, man, I didn't pass the traffic on where we move location. I should have made sure that got passed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I grew up in a small town in Southeast Texas in the Piney Woods called Woodville, Texas. And it was an awesome community to grow up. And it was a small town, about 3,000 people. We had two stoplights. We had two Dairy Queens, which made us, I guess, big time at the time. But it was just a great place to grow up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's my fault. You know, the SEAL that engaged Iraqi soldiers said, I didn't get proper PID. I thought that was, you know, an enemy insurgent. And, yeah. And I engaged him before I had proper PID. That's my fault. I should have made that happen before. I mean, over and over. The guy with the Iraqi soldiers, you know, who had been combat advising them said, this is my fault.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Those Iraqis were out of sector. And we just went around the room, around the room. And Jocko was like, no, it's not your fault. Like, no, it's not your fault. No, it's not your fault. He's like, this is my fault. Like, I'm the task unit commander. Everything that happens to this task unit is my fault. I'm responsible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we're going to do everything in our power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. And just to watch that happen, like the power of extreme ownership in front of everybody in the task unit. You know, our respect for him was already high, man. And it went through the roof after that, right? Realizing like, and our commanding officer, instead of, he actually left there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He had greater trust in Jocko and in Task Unit Bruiser because he knew that we were going to take steps to make sure that it didn't happen again. And we did prevent it from happening again. Friendly fire happened probably, Friendly fire would erupt, but it never became catastrophic. We were always able to manage it. We could stop it before anybody was killed or wounded.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was always a constant threat, but we took massive steps to mitigate the risk. And in fact, even some of the guys... uh, some of your, your, your, uh, uh, still teammate brethren that plugged in our team, they were awesome crew that came out and, and joined us. And they were kind of jokingly calling me the rocket man there for a little bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Cause I had these two, um, I had these two flares on my back. We had a white flare and a red flare, you know, a white flare was, uh, our red flare was send QRF. A white flare was like ceasefire. Um, And so those were signaling devices. I was like, man, I want that with me all the time just in case that we have that happen. I'm going to carry those things around on me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's ultimately my job is to prevent this from happening. So we implemented lessons learned at every level of the team. We took massive steps to mitigate it from happening and
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And when it did happen, you know, like, oh, we get some rounds over our head, we instantly had the radio comms and we had a good comms check with that, you know, the tank that was shooting at us, we could get them to cease fire. You know, we're marking our positions, cease fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Sometimes we'd throw a freaking giant, you know, VS-17 Dayglo orange signal panel, you know, half the size of this room over the side of the building and let every...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
insurgent know where we were at just because uh that was better than taking you know 120 millimeter main gun rounds you know into your position uh because the threat of that was significant every time damn wow wow you know i heard you talking um i heard you talking once i think it was with jaco about getting shot in the chest and the plates can you run through that
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, man, that was the darkest day of my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was August 2nd, 2006, man, we lost Mark Lee. And Ryan Jobe had been wounded right before that. Yeah, I took a round. I think it was a ricochet, you know. Otherwise, it probably would have killed me, split my spine in half, you know. What were you guys doing? We were, it started as a big, basically just a coordinate search operation into what was called the J-Block sector of Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so after we'd established those combat outposts, we'd push sniper overwatches out. And then we would push patrols with the Iraqi forces out, you know, to try to patrol into the city. engaged with the local populace, showed them that we were there to actually support them, talked to them about where the insurgents were.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If you wanted to go to a fancy restaurant or a movie theater, you had to drive more than an hour away. But I loved it. I mean, I spent all my childhood playing in the woods, playing some kind of combat in the woods, throwing spears at each other and building forts. People sometimes ask me if we played cowboys and Indians. We actually were all Indians all the time. No one wanted to be a cowboy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, these were, the Marine Corps calls them census operations of kind of just showing the local populace that, like, we were here to support them. You know, that was that stabilize the city, secure the local populace, you know, part, which paid huge dividends down the road, you know, to ultimately lower the level of violence and, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, you know, the Anmar awakening, you know, uh, came out once, but all that started with breaking the back of the insurgency, like really lowering their, their, their military capability. Um, but what we would do is, is push our, uh, push patrols out with the Iraqi soldiers, um, and the, the military, uh, transition teams that they were assigned to them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Uh, and we put cyber overwatches out there and we had a bounding overwatch that was in a cyber, you know, cyber position covering. Um, and we were out with, um, We were out with an awesome unit from the – this was from the Task Force Bandit Team Bulldog. So this was Bravo platoon first –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
it was bravo between first battalion 37 armored regiment of the first armor division i mean this is the this is a unit that had been in the ardennes you know forest about battle the bulge and world war ii like historic unit incredible group um that we built some awesome relationships with and and um By the way, we couldn't have done any of these operations without these soldiers and Marines.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, we push into these areas. The only reason that we could do that, the only reason that we could push so deep in enemy territory is because we knew that the soldiers and Marines were going to mount up in their tanks, mount up in their Humvees, and come to our rescue and aid. And they did it over and over and over and over again all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we had just an incredible working relationship with those guys. And I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for them. And so we supported them as well. When they asked us to do things, we helped them. We put in cyber-overwatch positions. And so we were pushing our Iraqis deeper into enemy-held areas. And as we were clearing through an element of the J Block, we'd done probably...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't know, six or eight operations, like in this area, kind of pushing deeper and deeper in. And Ryan Jobe was one of our machine gunners, amazing guy, incredible guy. And, well, the kind of guy that, I don't know how long it took him to get through buds, but it was a long time. He was one of those guys that was never going to be the best athlete, was just absolutely tough as nails.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And was just a stud, you know, awesome machine gunner, super strong man of faith as well, you know, and hilarious. But he was the machine gunner basically holding the security for Chris and the sniper team that was on the rooftop as we had this kind of bounding overwatch. And I was with the Iraqi element that was moving forward to the streets.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we were about an hour and a half or two hours into that operation. Again, one that we conducted many, many like that before. And all of a sudden, I mean, we hear a, we hear a, a, a shot ring out. I mean, you can hear the impact of it, you know. And, uh, And I hear, you know, our most experienced, our most combat experienced guy was Chris Kyle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Awesome, awesome teammate and a tremendous sniper. Saved lots of lives on the battlefield. And, man, I could just hear in Chris' voice, man, he's like, we call Ryan's nickname was Biggles. And he was like, Biggles has been hit. I need a corpsman to the rooftop now. And, man, I could just hear in his voice, you know, how horrific that was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I literally been talking to him, you know, both those guys, like 30 seconds before that ratchet, just walked down the stairs, you know, to try to, you know, we're going to organize our team and kind of push out to the next building before we take the rooftop there. And man, we get, you know, so we go rushing back up to the rooftop and yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Everyone was an Indian. And so we were the Native American warriors out there patrolling the woods, setting booby traps for my mom to like fall in in our backyard. And we lived in a great neighborhood with just kind of woods behind the neighborhood. And we were just constantly in the woods playing and out from like sunup to sundown.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Mark Lee, who rolls right back up there, another awesome machine gunner, just an incredible, incredible guy, steps right into the very position that Ryan got shot, like right in the position with his belt-fed Mark 48 machine gun and just starts laying down suppressive fire, knowing that, like, we're going to get shot back, you know, at any moment. And we got up to Ryan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, Ryan had been hit in a— hit in the face, and just a single shot hit him in the face. You could call an enemy sniper around. You could call just a, you know, obviously it was not your average like spray and pray, you know, insurgent. It was somebody that had some good side picture trigger squeeze, engaged him, hit him in the head. And man, it just looked horrific.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, he's, you know, his eyes gone, like his half of his face looked like it's missing. You know how blood looks, man. It's just, so I just, I ran up to him. I just grabbed his hand. I was like, Was he conscious? When I rolled up to him, he's just laying there. And I grabbed his hand. I was like, hang in there, brother. We're going to get you out of here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I didn't believe that for a second, man. It just looked like there was no chance. And... You know, meanwhile, Mark is standing there laying down suppressive fire right over the rooftop wall where he just, Ryan just got hit. Other guys stepped up there, too, and laid down suppressive fire. You know, we're calling in the CASAVAC vehicle. The corpsman rolls up there and is working on him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That corpsman was Johnny Kim, you know, just a phenomenal guy. And they're, you know, going to work, you know, on Ryan. And miraculously, Ryan, like, sits up. He like sits up and says, I'm okay. And, you know, he was, the blood was kind of going down his throat, right? So he has to kind of sit up to kind of clear that. And we get under his armpits. We're getting him down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So the CASAVAC vehicle, you know, we had a M113 armed personnel carrier down there, you know, for CASAVAC. And so we get Johnny, our corpsman, and we got, you know, guys under each shoulder of Ryan. We're getting him escorted off the roof. And he walks off the roof really by his own power, like down the stairs. And just incredibly, incredibly tough, you know, human being.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we found out later that Ryan got hit in the... When he was in the hospital, you know, he had all this shrapnel on his face. And they were trying to figure out, like, what exactly happened. Because I thought the round just impacted him, you know. But he...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We realized that there was a round impact on the receiver, right at the base of the receiver where it meets the buttstock for his Mark 48 machine gun. And we were an hour and a half into this operation. He was, you know, it's 117 degrees. You know, it's miserably hot, repairing all our gear and water. I mean, Ryan must have been sweating profusely.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, man, just like the awesome teammate that he was, the awesome machine gunner he was, Ryan was on that machine gun. He was on that machine gun looking down the sides of his weapon. ready to provide cover fire. And if he hadn't done that, he would have just taken his hat off, you know, that round would have just taken his hat off. So, um, like that saved his life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
My mom had a whistle that she would blow and we had to be within hearing distance of the whistle, which was, I pushed that pretty regularly, but you could hear that whistle would come back. Um, and, uh, and I grew up in a great household. My mom and dad were loving, wonderful parents. Um, they really took their, their job seriously as, as, uh, my dad was the, was the town dentist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and, uh, we, unfortunately we didn't figure out till later. It was, it was two weeks later that we realized that, uh, that, uh, the shrapnel had severed his optic nerve to his good eye, and he was going to be blind as a result of that. And so I didn't know how it was going to go. At the time, we evac'd Ryan. We sent our corpsman with him. We pulled back to the base. And August 2nd,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We've done multiple operations in this area. We've gotten tons of gunfights in this area. There were definitely a lot of insurgents. But there was something different about August 2nd. Like this was probably, I think it was the largest single like engagement of any of the engagements that made up this like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
know eight or nine months like battle of ramadi um and the insurgents were just coming out of the woodwork attacking the soldiers that were out there click so we had one sector they were clearing another sector after ryan got hit we pulled back um and and uh went back to the uh we put patrol back about a kilometer to the to the base kind of refitted um and the soldiers were like under attack man they they you know and they asked us if we could we could help them um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, you know, they were getting attacked from these different positions. So we loaded up in Bradley fighting vehicles and we rolled back out, you know, into the city. And it was... Man, there was so much going on that day. Like, for guys like Mark Lee, for all the guys that were in Charlie Platoon, like, they knew they were going back out on the teeth of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, we'd just seen what happened to Ryan. And, you know, our brothers in the Army needed our help from Team Bulldog there. And... And nobody hesitated for a second, man. Jocked up in their gear, reloaded mags, refitted with grenades, loaded up into those brads, and we rolled out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
To get those target buildings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
No hesitation, man. Those guys did everything I asked of them, man. Unbelievable courage. We had...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the the firefight was so bad that day man we had like i think for uh the company commander's name is is uh mike by him as a close friend of mine he's retired now main gun mike we called him he fired over 50 main guns from from the his tank throughout his his uh time there and um i don't know how many people have done that since like the world war ii era man 50 main guns but uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He was a phenomenal guy. I think just about every tank and Bradley fighting vehicle out there was, you know, we would use the term Winchester. They're out of ammo. They go black when the tank's out of ammo. They shot every single main gun round that they had. in that engagement. That is some serious shit. It was right in the teeth of it, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think for me, I talked quickly over with Tony, my platoon chief. I was like, look, if we're going to hit a target where we got bad guys that are shooting at us,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know the best thing we do is soften it up you know first so um we had the uh we wanted to go in and try to stay off the street we knew we had at least one sniper out there so we want to try to use armor you know to get into to to these areas um and so we had those the bradley fighting vehicles and the tanks just blast these buildings man before we went into them
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and then smash through the walls and lower their ramps before we engage. And we hit one building. The insurgents had already pushed out of it. The Army told us, hey, we're getting engaged from this building. There's insurgents in that building. So we loaded back up. We hit another building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and, uh, he had a busy job and my mom was a stay at home mom and then a part-time school teacher and a school librarian. But they, they really just poured into me and my, my brother and three sisters. Um, we had a big family and they just, they took that as their primary job is raising us right, upright. Um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And in the second engagement, as we went into that building, man, the building was on fire as we went in there. Like a main gun round had already hit the building and just blasted it open. They were, as we started moving into the building and clearing through the building, we took fire from the opposite end of the hallway. And Mark was killed. And somewhere I was hitting that gauge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I heard the gunfire ring out. I stepped out into the hallway, got hit. And I just grabbed one of our guys who was in the hallway. It was clearly a hot hallway with bullets and ricochets flying around and pushed him across the hallway.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the um the uh the hallway you know just to try to get him out of the line of fire and uh and and you know i heard the man down call mark was 20 feet away from me you know when that happened and and um you know guys came came uh uh as more assaulters poured in the building like they cleared the rooftop and and um it was uh it was It was the absolute worst day of my life, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think the fact that I got hit, you know, just in between the plates and I knew I'd been hit, you know, but then the guy that I pushed into that room was like, Hey, Leif, you're bleeding. You know, just blood always looks like more than it is, right? It was my whole inside of my, you know, inside of my vest was soaked, and it was just, like, trickling down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, you could just hear, like, the tap, tap, tap, tap, like, blood on the floor. But there just wasn't time to even think about that, man. You know, it was—Mark was down. We moved up to him, got the corpsman on him, got him casavacked, and— for whatever reason, like, I thought there might be some hope. You know, Mark was unconscious when we got to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I thought there might be some hope to him, man. But he'd been hit in the head. He was killed instantly. And Mark was just such an incredible, incredible warrior, man. And he was doing exactly what I asked him to do, you know, which was engage enemy insurgents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He was moving down a hallway, stepped up right into the doorway to, you know, to engage enemy insurgents that were shooting at us from the building next door, man. And... and sacrificed himself for me and the rest of the guys that were coming in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he was, I mean, just like Ryan, just the most incredible teammate, just absolutely hilarious, strong as a, just strong as an awesome, incredible athlete, but just the kind of, just representing the absolute best of the SEAL teams, you know? And I would do anything, Sean, I'd do anything to trade places with that man. I got lucky, you know, for whatever reason.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I got lucky and some ricochet hit me and, you know, they patched me up. And, you know, there'll never be a time when I go up to Fort Rosecrans Cemetery and see Mark's grave there. I don't wish that was me lying on the ground there, man, and not him. And I think that's one of the hardest things that I could have never prepared for, right? When these guys that you love and would do anything for,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's the ultimate dichotomy as a leader. It's the ultimate dichotomy, which is to love your guys and want to do anything for them and be willing to trade your life for them if you could, and yet sending them out on missions where you know that they might get injured or killed. And I think it was...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, the Proverbs, train up a child in the way he will go when he's older and not depart from that. I think they took that very seriously and really set an amazing example for me, you know, as a mother and dad and just were constantly there to support me. I was my – always my dad's, like, fishing and hunting buddy. Really?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm proud of you and all that you're doing and honored to call you a friend.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
it was something that I tried to pass on to the next generation of SEAL leaders that I, you know, just the reminder of like what's at stake. And we would do a memorial run every junior officer training course that I put through. Like we'd park our, our vehicles down at Dog Beach and Ocean Beach. And we would ride five miles uphill all the way to Fort Roseland Cemetery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we'd go pay our respects to where Mark Lee's buried and Mikey Monsoor, our teammate in Delta Platoon, who was killed about a month later, and pay our respects there and just remind these young leaders about what's at stake, man, and then the burden of leadership. And I think for me... They'll never be, like, it's a burden that never goes away. You know, it's a burden that never goes away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think what's, as a man of faith, Mark was a tremendous man of faith and he had wanted to be a pastor and he had gone to the master's college to study to be a pastor before he decided that he wanted to, he wanted to join the SEAL teams. And I remember quoting scripture and talking about, there was a,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There was a time when we were out when, you know, there was, we were engaging targets and we were talking about like the worst case scenarios, you know, these mangy Iraqi dogs that are like, you know, these kind of junkyard dogs that are running around. Like the worst case scenario is that these mangy dogs are like chewing on you on the street, right? And we talked about how this was,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know uh that uh in the bible there's there's numerous examples of that where like the prophet elijah uh you know in jezebel who's trying to kill him the prophets of israel that the dogs are going to chew on jezebel um when david and goliath goliath says that he's going to give david's body after he kills him to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and and we're talking about this with mark right this idea of like uh of being a warrior on the battlefield um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I remember sharing those scriptures with Mark and talking about his faith and how powerful that was for him. And I know I'm going to see him again one day. And I look forward to that day, man. He was an incredible man. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And Ryan Joke, you know, three years after the surgery, I think it was the 22nd surgery to repair those wounds that, you know, when he was wounded, we lost him, you know, from complications of that surgery as well. And like him, just like Mark, Ryan was an awesome man of faith. You know, he came back from that deployment and being blind to him was like an inconvenience, you know. It was...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He had friends that he'd hunt with, but we spent so much time together on the lake, on the ocean, you know, fishing and hunting out in the woods. And it was an amazing place to grow up. And I didn't fully appreciate the town of Woodville and the community until after I left school or I went off to the Naval Academy and when I was really deployed overseas because –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He climbed 14,000 foot Mount Rainier totally blind to this awesome organization called Camp Patriot. I know a number of SEALs that attempted it and were unsuccessful in their summit attempt, you know, with their sight, you know, and all their limbs. And we... He asked me to go, and I was the spotter for him. He shot this world-class bull elk using this little camera system.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, Ryan was just a phenomenal guy. He married his longtime girlfriend. They were expecting their first child. And, you know, when that happened, it was just a tremendous, tremendous loss. But I know that Mark would have wanted us to keep going, right, to keep operating, to keep doing what we were doing, to try to make a difference there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I would talk to Ryan on the phone, and Ryan would tell us to keep going, you know, in those operations. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep going out there. Keep getting after it. Do everything you can, you know, to try to bring more soldiers and Marines home, to try to win this thing in whatever capacity we can. And, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I'm just so thankful and fortunate and honored to have been able to serve with guys like that, you know, who were willing to lay down their lives. And Ryan one time told me, he's like, it doesn't make me a hero, just because I got shot in the face, I'm not a hero. That doesn't make me a hero because I got shot. And I told Ryan that what, What made him a hero is not that he got shot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was the fact that he knew that he could get shot at any time, that he could get gravely wounded or killed, and yet he jogged up in his gear and he rolled out on those operations over and over and over again. He did it for me. He did it for his teammates. He did it for the teams. He did it for the soldiers and Marines that we were trying to protect.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He did it for the innocent Iraqi people that were out there living under this brutal reign of terror and fear, you know, that Zarqawi's henchmen in al-Qaeda in Iraq, later ISIS, you know, ruled over them with. And I know Mark was a hero for the same reason, man. Mark was a hero for the exact same reason. He was willing to do that over and over and over again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I just think it's the honor of my lifetime to be able to have served alongside heroes like that and be able to tell their story and share their legacy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I didn't realize that you guys – I guess I should have known that because, you know, I didn't put it together for several months into Charlie Petunia as he started to come – he joined our platoon and started working with us. And that wasn't in our initial workup. That was several months before we deployed. But somehow we put it together like he knew Brian Bill.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I realized that he had been to Bud's previously. Yeah. And – And those guys, you know, Brian was one of the guys that had trained with him. They'd lived together in Virginia Beach. And, you know, Brian was one of the guys that encouraged him. And I'll tell you what, man, as destroyed as I was, Brian Bill was... as close to Mark as you could be. And Brian wasn't close to a lot of people, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
amount of care packages that would come in from not only my family but friends and just members of the community i mean it was stuff that we would share uh with the rest of the task in it because there was so much stuff that was coming in and it just you know there were some great communities across the united states but it was it was it was just a quantitative measure uh of just how awesome that community was to grow up in and just how supportive and
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He was, but he was very close friends with Mark Lee. And we talked a lot about Brian and, you know, obviously I was close to Brian and Buds and was, was, was a friend of his through that time. And when we came back, man, I was, I just was just, my soul was crushed. My soul was crushed, man, from losing Mark and Ryan being blind. And, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And particularly knowing that I had some minor wound, man, it was like, it patched me up and I'm going back to work, you know? Like it was like, why couldn't that have been me? Why couldn't I have been killed and not Mark? Why couldn't I have been blind and not Ryan?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And luckily I had a great commander in Jocko who pulled me aside and said, hey man, we don't have a crystal ball and we don't know when that stuff's gonna happen. And if we did, we wouldn't go on that operation. But we can either choose to do nothing, you know, and take no risk, or we can do everything we can to try to make a difference here, to try to save American lives here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that's what Mark would want us to do. That's what Ryan is telling us to do, you know, and encourage me to keep going. And that support from Jocko was immense. But I remember sitting in the mission planning space as we're just kind of all reeling, you know, from Mark's loss. And And at this point, we didn't know Ryan was going to be blind. I knew it was grave. I knew he was wounded badly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I didn't even know if he was going to be out of the woods as far as making it at that point. And I got a call from Brian Bill, who was in Baghdad, was SEAL teammate. And he said, hey, man, I heard about what happened. And I just want you to know, like, I'm going to go home. I'm going to take care of the family. I'm going to take care of my, Mark's wife.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, I'm going to be there for Mark's mom, Debbie, and his family. Like, don't worry about it. You guys are going to continue to operate. Like, I got this. And, man, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me. He never questioned a thing. He never, like, said, what happened? What are you guys doing? Like, all the emotions that you might, you know, expect.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He just said, hey, man, I'm here. I'm here to help. And gave up what was an awesome deployment, you know, for those guys. You know, he bagged that doing a bunch of great operations to go and support Mark, man. And it was, that was the kind of guy that Brian was. And, yeah. It was, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Just getting that call in like the darkest hour in real life and like a teammate just putting his arm around you and saying, you know, cause that was one of the hardest parts is like, hey, we're here. Like the deployments continue and operations are going on. I want to go back. You know, I want to be able to talk to Mark's family and support them and be there for them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I want to be with Ryan's family. And yet you can't do that, right? There's still operations going on. So just knowing that, Teammates like that were doing that. I'll never forget that man for Brian. That was just, I think, a real testament to the man that he was.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had a stand down. Because we needed it, man. We'd been going hard. We'd been going hard. And Delta Platoon, working across the city out of Camp Corregidor, was going to be on... They were going to launch an operation like the next day. And Setstone called Jocko and said, hey, we're going to roll this 24 hours. And so Jaco said, hey, man, you can still go on the op.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And Seth was like, look, I think we need to roll this 24 hours, right? Everybody needs to decompress. Everybody's emotional. And so that was an important thing for us, I think, just to realize we need to allow our guys to decompress. But we had a memorial service for Mark. Man, it was so, guys drove down the most dangerous roads in Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and patriotic and amazing. The church was a big part of our life growing up. We started going to First Baptist Church of Woodville when I was in third grade. My dad became a deacon there, and church was mandatory every Sunday. When I started being a little wild man in my high school days and partying a little too hard, my dad would come in and drag me out of beds. You going to church, boy?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, our teammates came from Fallujah and Haditha and from across the, you know, the Ramadi down that, you know, Route Michigan, that deadly road, you know, to come pay their respects. And we had an awesome memorial service where we set you by the mark. And then 40 hours later, we jacked up in our gear and we rolled back out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think we all just said our goodbyes, man. You know, we all just did our best to honor him. And, you know, four guys had gone back with Mark to escort his, you know, earthly remains home and be there with his family and be there for the memorial service, you know, for that. And I think it was an amazing turnout, man. Soldiers, Marines there, Iraqi soldiers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was just the kind of person he was, man. He was just the best, man. He was... I've never seen anybody who could use humor in the darkest situation, like to just drop a joke or, or, or like a movie quote, you know, and get people laughing and like get them, get them just to kind of shake things off. Like he was, he just was, yeah, man, he was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, I mean, our losses, you know, every time I think I've seen some combat, Sean, I read about... I read about Marines at Iwo Jima. You know, I got a chance to visit Normandy this summer, right? And I'm standing on the beaches of Okinawa and, I'm sorry, the beaches of Utah. I've been on the beaches in Okinawa as well, you know, when I was deployed there back in the day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But just being there at Normandy kind of opened up my eyes to some stuff, like some of the inland fighting campaigns and things that were happening. And you realize the kind of losses that, you know, that military units have sustained over the years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, you go to the battlefield like Gettysburg, you know, or so many of the battles around here, you know, in Tennessee that are not far from where we are now. I mean, just massive, massive loss of life that did eclipse anything that I've experienced. And I think what I can just, you know, what I could say is like, what's helped me is number one, faith, man. Knowing that like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
God has a plan for you, you know, and the survivor's guilt that's so easy for any of us to carry with us is like, God has a plan. And so I think you've got to lean on God for his plan. We don't know what that plan is. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We don't know what he has in store for us. But just trusting in him for that plan, leaning on faith, and knowing too that like, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
taking extreme ownership of situations, debriefing, learning lessons, even if it's things that, you know, on August 2nd, the enemy fought in a way that we hadn't really expected them to do. Like they brought it, they attacked in huge numbers. And that was a different tactic, right? The enemy is going to adjust tactics. So you got to debrief.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You got to learn lessons to apply that stuff going forward to make sure that you try to prevent those things from happening again. And I think more than anything else, I think it's about taking care of your people, man. Like your responsibility as a leader goes way beyond, way beyond just looking out for them in the time that you serve with them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It is about looking out for them and their families, like for the duration of your life. And I will feel that way about the guys that I serve with as long as I'm breathing, man. There's nothing I wouldn't do for them. There's nothing I wouldn't help them out with. And sometimes you lose touch with people and you haven't talked to them in a while, and maybe people forget that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think it's important to reach out to people and remind them of that. It's important to check in with people. It's important just to be thinking about how you can continue to support them because it goes way beyond just in the immediate aftermath of some horrible situation like that. And it's not just about showing up and paying your respects at their graveside.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Here we go. So then we get home from church, and it was put on your working gloves and working clothes. And I remember trying to push back and saying, hey, Dad, aren't we supposed to not work on the Sabbath? And he said, this isn't work, son. This is fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's about checking in with their family, checking in on their kids, you know, reaching out to your teammates, asking them how they're doing, letting them know that you're there for them. And that is, you're all in this thing together and no matter what. And I think that's, You know, when you go to a battlefield like Gettysburg, there's memorials all over that battlefield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that's what it's for, man. People put their hands up. Just like in Normandy, there's memorials all over there. The veterans that survived those battles go there and they put their hands on those memorials and they remember their lost teammates and they support each other and they help each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that's something that goes way beyond just the time and service that you have with people. It's lifelong and even beyond that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I appreciate it, man. I'm honored to share it. And anytime I get a chance to talk about, you know, the teammates that I lost and honor the legacy of Mark Lee and Ryan Jobe, I think it's – I'm happy to do it, Sean, and I appreciate you. I appreciate you passing it on. I think there's so many lessons, you know, that we learn from that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think for me, I think some Americans, though, need to understand, like –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So we'd be out chainsawing brush and clearing land. We grew up on them. When I was about 12, we moved to some acreage kind of out in the woods. We lived in a neighborhood before that with woods behind it, like I mentioned. But then it was constantly just working to clear that place and, you know, keep it nice, build fence and repair fence and clear brush. And it was just an awesome way to grow up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
sometimes people come up after I speak about leadership and I talk about reminding, I talk about Mark and Ryan and, and Mikey Montsour, you know, and you gave his life and our sister platoon, another phenomenal team guy and awesome machine gunner, you know, just like Mark and Ryan and people come up and be like, I'm sorry, man. Like, I'm sorry you went through that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think it's important to say that, that We had some dark days in Ramadi, man. I think the, you know, it's kind of cliche, right? The Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, right? The best of times. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. But I think it's important to say that, man. Like, I would trade those dark days for anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I would trade the days when we lost Mark and Ryan and when Cowie was wounded and when we lost Mikey Montsour. I'd trade those days for anything. But most of those days were some of the absolute best days of my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And knowing that we were working with an awesome crew of warriors, that we were out there fighting against an evil enemy, making a difference and have an impact and making sure more soldiers and Marines came home to their families as a result. And I think that's something that I think a lot of Americans have a hard time. You know, we kind of live in a day sometimes where it's like, well,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, is there really good and evil? I'm like, yeah, there is. There absolutely is. And I think when you see the kind of savagery that the precursor to ISIS, the Al-Qaeda in Iraq, what they're doing to innocent people, just the butchery and torture and rape and murder and just horrific, horrific stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think when you know that you can make a difference in the world and rid the world of some of that evil, then... It's a great thing, man, to do everything you can in that regard. And I think America needs to remember that. And so most of the days that I served there were some of the best days of my life. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
No, I mean, I think just knowing that we – There were so many lessons learned, so many things that I thought I was ready. I thought combat was so much more difficult than we thought it was going to be. And we were just humbled on every single operation. Something didn't go right. The enemy does something you hadn't planned.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You thought you de-conflicted that so that all the friendlies knew where you were. And next thing you know, you're taking 50-cal rounds right over the top of your head. And you thought everyone knew, you know, what the position was because they could see your marking device and come to find out that they can't see that, you know, when they're looking through their tank sites.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, just so many things like that. It was just over and over again, those lessons that we learned. And I think probably the biggest lesson that I learned is that it's, It's not about you, man. It's not about me. You know, it's not about Charlie Platoon or our SEAL unit. And that's one of the lessons I try to pass on as I went to take over that leadership training course.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, you know, one example of that is like, you know, when we first joined the SEAL teams, right, it's you're training to operate in a SEAL squad or a SEAL platoon. And it's just you, right? And you have assets that are supporting you. And obviously, if you're JSOC, there are times when you've got a whole bunch of assets that are supporting just a special operations unit like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But on the battlefield for us, we would have... there might be two aircraft all of Anbar province-wide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So if you're going to declare troops in contact so that the aircraft would be over your head and you could utilize them just in case you might need them, or you're pulling them off of a Marine squad that's pinned down and maybe these guys are going to bleed out and die, or maybe they get overrun, or maybe these soldiers that are in this horrific situation, you're pulling assets away from them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was an amazing community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I think that really was, That really, for me, was an eye-opener. It's not about me or my platoon. We're part of the overall team, the overall mission. We've got to share assets. We've got to share resources. We've got to actually contribute to the overall success of the mission. I think sometimes... teams get focused on like what they're doing, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Five kids in my family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I think Jocko really kind of pulled me aside and helping me understand that like, this is not about us and how many operations we do or how many bad guys we kill or capture. This is about, you know, are U.S. forces winning or losing? Like, are we going to be successful as a nation here? Our coalition partners are not. I think that was one of the biggest lessons to bring back for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was a second. My sister and I are very close. We're 16 months apart. So she'll never let me live down that she was in those 16 months. I guess she lived a lifetime of experience that she's over. Then I have a twin brother and sister. My parents wanted to have three. They had me and my sister. Then the third child was twins. My brother and sister are fraternal twins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, everybody, I mean, look, you should be trying to get as many assets as you can, right? Like, if you've got an AC-130 gunship, use that thing, right? If you've got helicopters, use that thing. If you've got tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, whatever assets you can have, that's great. But I think when you start to, one of the things, this is my favorite thing to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
When I came back from that deployment from Ramadi, They sent me to the center, and someone decided to put me in charge of the junior officer training course. And so I was happy to pass on whatever lessons I had there. But we spent four weeks in the classroom and a week-long field training exercise. And the thing that I loved to do was I would play the part of like an Army company commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I used like main gun Mike, the guy I talked about earlier, as like, this is, you know, he's got tanks, he's got assets. So these SEAL, you know, these junior officers, they're leading a squad, you know, onto this training battlefield. They got to come up with a plan. They got to come brief me on what they're doing and what support they need from me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so they'd come up to talk to me about their mission. And I would just be like, hold on, what you got, man? I got some guys, we're actually activating QRF right now. So standby. And I would just have them like stand there. And just to realize that, like, hey, these army units that you're working alongside, like, that company commander's in charge of 200 soldiers and a dozen tanks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, he's got a lot of stuff going on. You're not the only thing that's going on. So if you're showing up there thinking it's all about you and, hey, my big office that's happening. And I got to witness that with a special operations unit. I was standing right there next to a company commander when a special operations unit rolled in the theater.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
rolled up there, handed them the GRG and said, hey, here's what's going on. And they actually were blocking the exits to the combat outposts. And the company commander's like, hey, man, I got troops out of the field right now. You got to get your vehicles out of here. I got to be able to use these tanks. And it was kind of a rude awakening for that special operations unit to be like, oh.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There's other stuff going on around here that's just my big mish. So I think that was what I tried to train those junior officers is just to pass it on to them. It's not that as a leader you don't try to get every asset that you can for your team, but it's that you realize that it's about the overall team and the overall mission.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so if you are hoarding assets or you are focused on yourself, there may be things that you're doing that could negatively impact others who are also trying to carry out their mission, and we're all in this thing together. So I think looking up and out for a leader and thinking about others and those other units that you've got to operate in the same battle space with is crucial.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I received the Silver Star for that horrible situation on August 2nd, 2006. And I don't know if I've ever publicly said that before, but I asked Jaco not to write me up for that, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was like, I don't want to work for that. This is the worst day of my life, man. I'd trade it for anything. Mark got killed. Ryan's wounded. I don't want to work for that, man. We did the best that we could in a horrible situation. I'm proud of my platoon and how they responded in the worst situation imaginable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, to get the building clear, to call in air support, you know, to get cash the evacuation, all the things that they did under the worst situation, you know, imaginable. But, Les, like, I don't want to work for them. And for whatever reason, he decided to. that it was deserving of an award, and he wrote me up for him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then they had a surprise about eight years after that, my baby sister. Nice, nice. I was the only one that served in the military. I always wanted to do that. My dad had been in the Army and then in the Air Force. And so I spent my first couple years at Ramstein Air Base. He was stationed there as an Air Force dentist. And I was the only one that went in the military with my five siblings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I accepted that award as a recognition for my team, Charlie Platoon, and what they were able to accomplish.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think that When you lose guys on the battlefield like that, I will rethink that for every moment of my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, I think that there is... You're constantly... thinking, man, what if I'd have done this, or what if I'd have done that, or what if I'd have done this? And that's where I think Jocko's guidance, you know, is my task as a commander and saying, like, man, we don't have a crystal ball. Like, if you'd have known that stuff was going to happen, you wouldn't have gone to that op.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You wouldn't have launched that operation. You know, and I think the tough thing for me is, like, you know, is realizing, like, I can't, you know, we've got the army out there that needs our help. And they're in the worst situation of in, they're in the worst single engagement of like the entire battle of Vermont.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It lasted for nine months, you know, that killed 94 guys, you know, in, I think 94 guys killed in action in the 228, the National Guard unit. And I think 98 total guys killed in the ready first brigade combat team. And so, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
of all the combat those guys saw like this was like the worst um you know or this was the single like hottest day of you know gunfire and and uh mayhem and enemy attacks and and so i think for me it's the recognition like i you know when somebody needs your help you know, I think you do everything you can to help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I try to mitigate the risk that we can control, you know, by riding in Bradley fighting vehicles so that we were behind armor and not out in the street getting shot at by snipers, by smashing through the walls, by softening up targets with 25 millimeter chain gun rounds from the Bradley fighting vehicles and main guns from the tanks, you know, before we actually enter those buildings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But there's just never, it's just a burden that never goes away. You know, and I think,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
i think you you just you have to do the best you can in the with the information that you have you know and i think there's i would trade the trade that day for anything to do something different to bring mark back or ryan back um and it's something that will always be with me you know um i think sometimes too when you're on the on the battlefield that the
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
if you're conducting operations, like there's no, the expectation that you are going to be able to be in significant combat, sustained combat over time without taking casualties, It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. And, you know, I remember a question our commanding officer asked us, like, you know, with any operation that you go on, you know, you should ask yourself, like, is it worth it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, is it worth the loss of one of your guys? And, you know, as we thought about that question, like, I can answer that question right now. No, it's not. I wouldn't trade my guys for Osama bin Laden, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
um i wouldn't trade my guys for zarkawi i wouldn't i would trade any single one of my my guys for for any of these you know insurgent terrorist savages that were fighting um but that's not the right question to ask and i don't think it's any different than i don't think it's any different than a if you to ask a company commander at omaha beach like would he trade one of his soldiers for adolf hitler
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But for me, that's all I ever wanted to do was be in the military. What did your dad do in the military? He was in the National Guard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think he just said no. I think he just said no. Of course not. Like, this is my soldier I care about. I'm not going to trade that guy's life. But they were willing to make the sacrifice because they realized that establishing a foothold in fortress Europe was the key to being able to defeat Nazism so that we could live in freedom around, you know, across the globe and maintain our way of life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think it's the same thing, right? If you're looking at... If you're looking at a mission like that, it's never going to be worth, like you're never going to make that trade. But the trade is that you do the best you can to try to have the most impact that you can. And in the time that you have, and you got to mitigate the risk and control. And I think that's all you can do as a leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think sometime the lesson learned is that combat is dangerous, man. It's dangerous business. And if we don't have the will to kill, if we don't have the will to kill the enemy, and if we don't have the will to sacrifice American lives, then we shouldn't be in combat in the first place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and uh in the army and then uh and then he was they paid for his dental school and he served as his uh i think four years uh after uh dental school so he was stationed at ramstein for um i think for three of that right my first kind of six months to we came back when i was three years old wow i lived there too when i was a kid okay dad was in the army too as a pharmacist well our upbringing is uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I'm happy to share that, man. I think for every leader, we've got to take risks. There's no combat operation without risk. You can't do anything in life without taking a risk. But you've got to mitigate the risks that you can control. You don't want to run to your death with your hair on fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think trying to balance that dichotomy of being aggressive but not being reckless is crucial for every leader out there. And it definitely made me think, you know, deeply about that. In fact, there was a follow-on time where we had some aircraft overhead that saw, like, some armed insurgents, like, run into a building. And so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
after losing Mark and losing Ryan, we were going to look at alternatives to try to hit them in a different way. Even if we smashed that building with tanks and blasted it, we weren't going to run into that building. We were going to make some adjustments. So I think every leader has to learn the lessons that they can, lessons that they learned.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I did a poor job, I think, of even letting my guys know of even some of the – Some of the ops that we turned down. I've talked to some of the guys I served with in Charlie Platoon that were like blown away that we turned down operations. Because we looked at it, the risk versus reward wasn't there. You know, we're like, no, we're going to focus elsewhere here. There's too risky.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think the, you know, the chance of mission success are limited. So we're not going to take the risk there. And some of them never even knew that, you know, that we were there. That we were doing all we could to try to mitigate those risks, you know? Yeah, yeah. But you're not going into combat without taking risks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And if we're not willing to take risks, man, we ought to not even be there in the first place. And I think that's the kind of thing, like the idea that we can go to war without taking casualties. You know, it's just not true, man. It's not true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that's more than anything, I wish that we had leaders who have been to war who understand that so that they can think very deeply about whether or not those risks are worth it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, there was all kinds of criticism, you know, like that. I've certainly been the victim of the armchair quarterback stuff. I mean, that's going to happen, right, when things go wrong and things go bad. And I understand that. I think that's a function of people just, I think, not understanding what we were doing and why we were doing it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think I could have done a lot better job of instead of getting angry or frustrated with people, just kind of explaining that, you know, and talking about why we did what we did and the impact that it actually had. And yeah, I think... You know, Cascading Bruiser killed a lot of bad guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And a lot of those, Chris Kyle, our lead cyber point man at Charter Platoon, was, you know, was the ringleader of that, like, who did a tremendous amount of damage to the insurgent fighters there, disrupted dozens and dozens of attacks on soldiers and Marines and our own guys, Iraqi troops. It saved a lot of lives, man. It had some huge impact. And when we were in the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the squadron after action brief, you know, and everyone's standing in there, all the senior officers and non-commissioned officers are in there kind of talking about the lessons learned. Someone stood up and asked Jocko, hey, you guys were out in the daytime for a lot of this stuff. You know, do you think that's a special operations mission? And Jocko explained that, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, 99% of the, of the enemy fighters that we killed were during the daytime, you know? And he said, killing bad guys is a special operations mission. Next question. And I think this is exactly right. Like it's, this is, you know, I think sometimes, As special operations units, we need to be innovative. I think you can be conventionally unconventional sometimes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I never knew that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're like, oh, we can only go out when it's nighttime. We can only go out when we have the, well, what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace in the middle of the daytime? We have to be able to ask for those targets. We have to be able to figure out ways to do things where people aren't expecting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If they're expecting us to come at nighttime under a cover of darkness every time. I think our best special operations units are all constantly innovating and adapting ways to do things like that. But I looked at what we were doing in... In Ramadi, we were going out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
A lot of what we were doing was under cover of darkness in that it was going in at nighttime, setting up, remaining over day when the enemy was actually out, when they had freedom of movement, when they were actually running around the streets because they knew we were dominated at nighttime and aircraft could take them out and they knew we owned the night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I am. They're a great family and we all keep each other in check. But yeah, they're a wonderful family. Everybody's got kids. We have a huge, I think my parents have 17 grandkids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then trying to patrol out, you know, under cover of darkness at nighttime. But there was, I think that, you know, taking a fairly small group of guys, a lot of firepower, going in deep into enemy territory in a place where people couldn't get, supporting the conventional units that were then coming in, you know, behind us en masse.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think is very closely equivalent to our forefathers from the underwater demolition teams, the naval combat demolition units, right? These were the first guys on the beach taking the risk, you know, that were hitting the beaches in landing craft like Higgins boats and naval combat demolition units or scouts and raiders. And then in the Pacific theater,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the frogmen, the underwater demolition teams, they were out there doing the reconnaissance, opening up the way, blasting holes in the coral reefs and obstacles so that the Marines and soldiers could land. And I think that's a lot of what we're doing. And there was a shift in World War II where those underwater demolition teams, the UDT, went from nighttime to daytime operations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They were trying to do nighttime, they thought it was safer, and they shifted to daytime because they thought, okay, well, initially they thought it was too dangerous. But they realized that when they got these little frogmen swimming around, even with the Japanese pillboxes blasting at them with mortars and artillery and machine guns, most of the time these guys wouldn't be hit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think there was only a handful of UDT men that were wounded or killed throughout the entirety of daytime beach reconnaissance operations. So they were able to do it to mitigate the risk, and they also were far more effective in the daytime. And so I think that was what we were doing in the daytime was, I think, very similar, right, to just making that shift.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then it was the opposite of Vietnam. You know, in the Vietnam War, when... SEALs, you know, were going out in the daytime initially, right? You're chaining the Vietnamese frogmen, and that's kind of how the mission started, and now all of a sudden we're going to start into some kinetic operations. Well, nobody went out at nighttime because Charlie owned the night.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You knew the Viet Cong were out there patrolling, setting booby traps, setting up ambushes. And I've talked to some of those Vietnam SEALs who made that transition and realized, like, okay, the enemy's out at nighttime. We've got to shift to being out at night. And the conventional units thought that was crazy. They thought you're going to get a bunch of people killed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But the SEAL teams were able to have massive impact, you know, for such a small unit on the battlefields because they went out at nighttime. They went into areas that nobody else could get into. And they did a lot of damage to the bad guys. So...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I felt like what we were doing in Ramadi was very much in the spirit of that, you know, the SEALs of Vietnam and those same underwater demolition teams in World War II.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
From like 18 to two or three, I think.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I reported in, I think it was like... February, 07. And so we got back end of October, 2006. And we, I mean, I basically spent a couple months at SEAL Team 3, turned over and then went to the center. And we, and so I just, I took over the course. Did you want to go over there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So it's a pile of cousins. Every time my kids go, it's magical and they scream, why can't we live in Woodville? Every time we go there, they just run around the woods.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was ready for a break. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to get out. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. That was a heavy deployment, man. I wasn't seeking that role. Somebody decided that that was a good place to put me. What was cool about that is... is I loved it, man. I loved every second of it. It was awesome. And the best job in the world has been a SEAL platoon commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There's no better job in the world than that. The next best job, I think, was teaching that junior officer training course. It was, you know, I had some, you know, the... I got to see, it was an amazing leadership laboratory. I got to see different officers that were coming through that training. We had prior enlisted SEALs coming through the training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had, you know, we had guys coming out of OCS that had been in the civilian world. And now all of a sudden in the Navy, we had people coming out of ROTC programs. We had people coming from the Naval Academy. We had people doing inter-service transfers from the Marines or Air Force or Army that would come to that program.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Also put some special operations or some Air Force special operations officers through there and some Norwegian Marine Yeagers that came to that program as well. So I just got to see a bunch of different people, a bunch of different styles of leadership. And it really solidified for me like what works and what doesn't work.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Because I'm putting them all in these challenging situations and seeing how they react to things. And so it really solidified, like, this is what works and this doesn't work. And so it was awesome to see. It was a phenomenal learning experience for me. I think if you really want to know something well, you need to teach it. I'm sure just like when you started teaching tactics,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
All of a sudden, people are going to ask you questions. You have to be able to know things from different angles. You have to be able to think deeply about things and how you might react to certain situations and with different variables. And so that, I think, really solidified my thought process and thinking about leadership.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And of course, the first thing I did was bring Jocko over to give what we call the Jocko brief. You know, kind of his lessons learned and seeing that over and over again. And I got a chance to bring in Vietnam SEALs. And one of my most favorite things was bringing in the most outstanding senior and junior enlisted SEALs that I worked with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and having them talk about the officers that they respected and liked and admired and the ones that they didn't and what the difference was and give their perspective. And so I think that's something as an officer, you don't often get to see that or hear that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Many of the ones I talked about, humility, people that were humble, willing to listen. You know, I think there were, I think the people that wanted to try to act like they have it all figured out or have to show people that, you know, I've got something to prove. I think that number one is that that's what pisses everybody off.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, you got somebody that's not humble and thinks they know everything. Nobody likes that. No one likes to know it all. It doesn't matter what you, what experience you have. We used to joke around. We had an acronym for WeWeb, which was when I was in Baghdad, and then it became WeWear when I was in Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So when people are dropping these, like, when I was there, when I was here, when I was this unit or that unit, they're like, look, man, that's not the way to lead, right? I think asking people questions, helping people understand the truth for themselves, like I mentioned before, is...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I played probably like a lot of people. I played soccer and baseball and basketball. I was horrible at basketball. I realized that wasn't my sport when I... I got a rebound. I think that was in fourth grade or fifth grade. And I immediately shot, I shot the basket, scored a goal for the other team. I was like, basketball is not for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
is uh is the way to lead um and so i think i think that's what really rose above is people that were humble people that were willing to listen learn i think and then the fact that people were gonna like look out for the team and the mission first it's it's amazing to me i remember the first time i heard the the term uh servant leadership and i was like what does that mean and the idea that like a servant leadership means that you you know
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
yeah, I'm going to look, like I'm here to serve the team. I'm here to, they don't work for me. I actually work for them. I'm here to help them. I'm here to put the team and the mission first before myself. And I thought that was kind of a crazy turn the first time I heard it. I mean, obviously that's what good leaders do. That's great. If you're a servant leader, that's awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I just thought that was weird that there was even a term for that because It's like the worst leadership ever, right? If you're gonna look out for yourself, if you're gonna be one of these ticket punchers that's gonna be like, hey, I'm all about me. I'm gonna put my needs and my wants, you know, before the team or the mission. And I think that's just, that's terrible leadership.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
No one wants to work for someone like that. So those are things that kind of, and then obviously somebody that just puts out, somebody that's gonna try hard, somebody that's gonna have a sense of humor, you know, somebody that's gonna hold the line on things when it actually matters. and let something slide when it doesn't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's extremely tricky, and that's a fantastic question, Sean. I think this is the million-dollar question as a leader. You have to be close with your troops, but you can't be so close to them that one becomes more important than the other, or more important than the overall team or the overall mission, or that they forget who's in charge.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think there's, that's a real fine line because it's different for different people, right? I mean, there's the SEAL teams, you know, I came from the fleet where it was, I was gonna, you know, I was Ensign Babin or Lieutenant Gigi Babin. You know, it wasn't this like first name base. We worked with a lot of the soldiers and Marines that they were like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Whereas we're on a first name basis, I'm a Charlie Lieutenant, I was Leif Tenet. I'm a Lieutenant, but I'm Leif. Everyone's on a first name basis. I'm sure your platoon was like that. Your platoons were like that as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So when I started playing football in seventh grade and tackle football was like everything. And in small town, Texas, it's, you know, we'd have 3000 people in the town and we'd have like, you know, probably nearly that many people at the game, you know, on Friday nights. It was just a, it was an awesome thing. I loved it, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So the line's a little more blurry, but I think it's different for different people when you realize like, hey guys, we got to knock this off and get focused on what we need to do so we can get this done. And if people aren't paying attention, then you know like, okay, I'm a little too close. okay, I'm gonna have to maybe create some degree of separation here in some way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So you gotta be close with the team, right? I think that you gotta know your people, you gotta understand what motivates them, you gotta understand who they are and what they do and what their skills are and what their strengths and weaknesses are and how you can help them, like where they wanna go in life, what you can do to set them up for success.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that's crucial, you know, for any leader to know. But you do have to, like, find that balance. And I think for me, as the AOIC, right, the assistant platoon commander, you're, like, one of the boys, and you're not quite the OIC. You're not the platoon commander in charge. That was—it's a big step up, I think, to go from AOIC to OIC. And all of a sudden, like, you're in charge. And—
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I realized I probably crossed that line, you know, particularly with guys that I'd gone to buds with and I was, you know, or I'd been in SQT with and I had very close relationships with. And, you know, we'd go out drinking and partying and hanging out. And you realize, like, oh, okay, I have to – Like, I'm going to have to create some theory of separation here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Maybe I go out and, you know, spend some time with them. Like, all right, guys, stay out of trouble. I'm heading back. But I think it's just trying to create that so that you're close with your troops. You're close with the team. You understand them. You know them. They know you. They know you care about them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, but you're not so close that one becomes, you know, more important than the other or the good of the team or that they forget who's in charge. I think that's a, it's a tough balance, but it's different for different people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So you have to just, I think if you're aware of it, you know, one thing that Jocko and I say with dichotomy leadership is even just the awareness that there's this dichotomy that exists and you have to find the balance is one of the most powerful tools you have as a leader. Because then you can start to monitor it. Hey, am I too close? Am I not close enough?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then you can start to find balance, and you're never going to be perfectly in equilibrium. It's always kind of constantly trying to make adjustments all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was the closest thing to suiting up, you know, and gearing up for combat, you know, that you could do, I think, in the civilian world. And it was a super, it was a fun time. We had, in our high school, The head coach, our head football coach, Coach Melvin Houston, he'd been there for years, awesome guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was probably the chief haterade drinker and tasking the bruiser for a little while. Just, if you remember the old Dave Chappelle, the Chappelle show, The Player Hater's Ball was one of my favorite episodes. And remember, they just held up pictures of people and they would just like, they'd sit around and go, hate, hate, and just like make fun of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I would just throw shade at my chain of command, you know, talk about, I had a great relationship with Jocko. Like, we all love Jocko. But, you know, the next level up in the chain of command, our commanding officer and staff, they were always asking for paperwork and, you know, look, they were good people. I liked them, but they... they would pile a bunch of paperwork requirements on them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, I don't have time for this stuff. We're out here trying to fight the war. I don't need to be doing that stuff. You know, and then, you know, you get questions from, you know, the siege of Sotaf in, you know, 80 miles away. And, you know, the JAG officers asking, you know, about, you know, the rules of engagement and just making sure that everything was followed, you know, precisely.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you start to... it's really easy to get frustrated and get emotional and push back on that. And I'm lucky that I had, you know, Jocko to, to, to ask me, it's like, Hey, does it help you to not have a good relationship with your chain command? And I was like, No, it actually doesn't. And worse than that, it actually hurts my team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Because if I don't have a good relationship with my chain of command and they don't trust me, well, they're not going to approve our operations, right? They're not going to give me the resource I need. They're certainly not going to be, we're not going to be the go-to unit that they choose to go action of, you know, a target if they're going to pick one platoon out of the entire team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's not going to be us, you know? And so... You know, when I would vent sometimes, Jocko would kind of just allow that and then just ask some questions to kind of turn it back around to kind of think about, like, what could we do to actually lead up the chain command? Like, our commanding officer and staff, what do they want? Do they want us not to be successful? They want us to win.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They want us to win. So if they've got questions about what we're doing, about how we're mitigating risk, I haven't pushed out enough information up there. They don't understand why this mission's important, and they're questioning that mission. I need to actually push some information to them and talk to them about why we're doing this. Pick up the phone and call them and talk them through it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then the JAG at CJ SOTIF, we were writing these really basic engaged military-age mail with an AK-47. And the JAG is like, well, every senior male in the household is allowed to have one AK within their home. If you remember, they were allowed to have one firearm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was like their Second Amendment because a lot of people didn't have access to banks, and so they had their valuables in their home, and that was how they defended their valuables. So the JAG is like, hey, is it illegal for them to have an AK? Meanwhile, I'm like... are you kidding me? This guy's shooting at us, you know, and you're questioning my decision, but I didn't write that in the report.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So that's why he had some questions. And the moment that I put the haterade down, stopped like, you know, hating on the chain of command and telling them they just need to back off and let us do our job and realize like, oh, I need to push more information to the chain. We started to think, okay, what does a JAG... He's never sat behind a sniper rifle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He's never looked through a 22-power night force scope. You know, he's... These snipers were operating with incredible discipline, man. Incredible discipline. I'm talking, you know, watching hundreds of people walk in front of their sniper scope, and they're engaging enemy fighters. And we're talking about, like... with minimizing collateral damage in a way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he was a real mentor to so many people on the team, particularly for some of the star athletes who were raised in homes that maybe didn't have a father there. He was an incredible guy. And his wife was also the choir director. So all of us, like the entire starting lineup in football was like in choir as well as main employee. He was in track, so we all ran track also to keep in shape.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Sometimes these savages would use like human shields, like children, like hold them in front of them and try to run across the street with their RPG. You know, and snipers like Chris and Tony and others were able to drop those guys and not injure the children. I mean, amazing. In a way that nobody with a machine gun is going to be able to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Nobody with a Bradley fighting vehicle 20 millimeter chain gun is going to be able to do that. And so... I was very proud of our snipers and the discipline that they were using. And I realized that the problem was we weren't describing it in a way that articulated to someone who had never been there what we were actually seeing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the moment that we started doing that and putting that into our shooter statements, man, they were like, awesome, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. What support do you need from us?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, you know, I think so often we feel like we're in a hopeless situation, you know, if we're getting scrutiny from our chain of command and if we take ownership and actually just lead up the chain, it makes all the difference.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I realized, you know, when I was venting to my guys and kind of throwing hate, you know, at the Siege of Soda or at our task group that was, you know, 30 miles down the road in Fallujah, all that does is just undermine my authority, you know, as well. Like that never helps you, right? If you're going to, if you're going to just throw your chain of command under the bus.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That just undercuts everybody in the chain of command if you do that. It's not good leadership. And the best thing you can do is to say, hey, listen, understand this is frustrating. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to put this paperwork together. We're going to get this done. We're going to send it to our chain of command because they need this information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we're going to do this so we can build a relationship with our chain of command so that they're going to support us where we need it. And so when you can talk to your chain of command about the realities of it, you don't have to just – You don't have to like just sugarcoat something that doesn't make sense. You know, like, hey, they're telling us to do this stuff. It's not fun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's a bunch of extraneous work that we have to do. We're gonna have to put in a bunch of extra hours. Maybe you have to stay long, you know, stay late or stay over the weekend or whatever. You don't lie to the team. You don't say like, oh, this is great. We're going to do it. They're going to see right through that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What you have to do is tell them the truth, tell them why you're going to do that, and then help them see that you're building a relationship with the chain of command. You're putting some leadership capital in the bank so that you're not pushing back on everything so that when it comes time to really push back on the things that matter, you're able to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This idea of 100% transparency, not everybody needs to know everything that you know. You would spend all your time trying to communicate things to people all the time. That's not a good use of your time as the owner of a company. But if... That's one of the biggest lessons and the most humbling lessons that I brought back with me. I wrote an entire chapter about that in Extreme Ownership.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's chapter 10, leading up and down the chain. So I talked about leading up the chain, but this is leading down the chain, which is I don't think you can do it enough to explain why we're doing what we're doing. Because I think when you kind of think people get it, You know, leaders will think, well, maybe they get it like seven out of 10.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, no, they get it like three out of 10, maybe one out of 10, maybe zero out of 10. And your job as a leader is to connect the dots between the hard work that people are doing and the overall success of the mission. And it's because they don't see it, right? They don't see it when they're out there in the grind, you know, every day.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You've got to constantly help them see how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission and how it's going to ultimately benefit them as well. So I don't think as a leader you can remind people that enough. And I mean, I planned so many major operations to go and take areas of that city back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But, you know, we had some of the star football players that are like marching in the band at halftime. Everyone kind of did everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we were the lead element on the ground with 1,000 soldiers and Marines and all the tanks, everything we talked about. And when we got back, Jocko put this slide together. He was tasked with going and giving a brief to, I think it was the chief of naval operations, the senior admiral in the Navy. And he put this slide together, and it showed the map of Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It showed the red areas that were al-Qaeda battle space, where when we'd arrived, we'd been told, don't go, they're all going to get killed. And then it showed these blue circles going in with these combat outposts, the US outposts that went in. And then it showed like, and each one had like what our SEAL involvement was and how we supported them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then it would have like yellow and green kind of expanding out. And he put this, it was like a building slide, you know, on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide. And so the map overlay with this building slide, and before he went to brief, just because Jaco was a great leader, he always was like, hey, man, take a look at this. Tell me what you think.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was just a fantastic place to grow up. Awesome community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he played that slide for me, and I was like, damn, dude. Like, that's what we freaking did. Like, I'd never put it together like that before. Wow. Never. And it was... I planned and led every single, almost every single one of those operations that are the blue circles that are going in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like we were the first boots on the ground for these, you know, I was intimately involved in the planning for these things. Some of them were weeks in planning, you know? And when he saw my reaction to that, he was like, I had never put it all together. Because, man, I'm coming back from my event. We lost Mark. We lost Ryan. Like, I'm like, man, I know we made it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, we certainly had some impact there. But did we have any lasting impact? Like, should we have done what we did? Like, all these questions, right? That I'm constantly running in my head all the time. And when he put that together, I was like, that's what we did. That's what we contributed. We contributed to take that city back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you could see it in the combat outpost, knowing that hundreds or maybe a thousand soldiers and Marines for each one of those blue circles are going in. that these are people that dozens of them might have not come home to their families otherwise. And so when you start putting that together, what's cool about that, Sean, is we can all split up and kind of win our separate rays.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I have had the chance over the years to pull some of my guys together and show them that slide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I mean, from the time that I can remember wanting to do anything, I wanted to be in the military. I was painting my face and crawling through the backyard jungle. And it was, I just, I wanted to be some kind of combat leader. I had a little stint where we had these F-4 Phantoms that would come fly over from some of the bases in Louisiana.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I do have that slide.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was when I showed them that slide, they said the exact same thing. Damn, dude, I had no idea that's what we did. That's cool, man. And so I think it's a reminder that you can't do that enough as a leader. And it's one of the most humbling lessons I learned of like, if I had just taken the time to take a step back, remind people about what they're doing,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
how the impact, you know, our mutual friend, Jake, you know, that we went through buds with was a machine gunner for us. I remember him telling me, You know, he's like, man, I'm just carrying this machine. And he's carrying this 600-round loadout and this machine gun. And we put optics on those machine guns because they needed PID. They weren't using, like, the ACOG to shoot the gun with it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We needed a PID, a target. So, I mean, it's getting heavier, right, with all this gear you're putting on. It probably weighs 20 pounds, you know, and you're carrying... you know, 600 rounds, each of those hundred round boxes is what, seven and a half pounds. They're carrying, plus you've got helmet, body armor, water, you know, all this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And they're patrolling multiple kilometers to get in, you know, some of these areas, particularly in the rural areas outside of the city when we were doing some of that work. And I remember Jake coming to me and being like, dude, I'm just security detail for Chris and the snipers, man. And I was like, man, I have just failed him as a leader. I was like, I was like, Jake,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
when we get attacked, which is pretty much every operation, and we have three dozen enemy fighters trying to overrun our position, we're not beating back that attack with a bolt action rifle, bro. We're beating back that attack because of you and your machine gun. And that machine gun has saved our lives over and over and over again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We could do none of this without you carrying that heavy firepower. And then we talked a little bit about, I was like, how many times have you shot your loadout, your entire loadout? And he was like, I don't even know. I was like, I don't even know. Like, he didn't even know. And it was interesting because I talked to some of the Vietnam SEALs. And...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Some guys that were machine gunners, including Moki Martin, who's a phenomenal CEO. If you remember Moki, was just a legendary West Coast SEAL, six deployments to Vietnam. Amazing guy. And he was telling me, like, we were just talking about, like, how many times they actually, like, changed the belts on their machine gun, their Stoner, you know, their M60. And it was, like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
In his six deployments, he told me it was just a handful of times. Like, you know, they would break contact and they would break off. And I was like, well, how many times did you guys shoot your, you know, like your entire loadout of Belfed rounds you're carrying? He's like, I don't ever remember a time doing that. And so, you know, Jake and our machine gunners did that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, like almost every single operation we went on. So I think I had, I did not help him understand just how important he was for the mission and how he was contributing to the mission. We couldn't do any of this without him. All the work the snipers were doing and making precision shots is not possible without those belt-fed machine gunners.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, guys like Jake, guys like Mark, guys like Ryan and Mikey Monsoor that were out there, you know, carrying that heavy equipment. So every leader, I think, has to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I think the lesson is that I wasn't doing a good enough job of, I did not do a good enough job of taking a step back and realizing like, hey, they don't know that. And they don't know that because I'm not telling them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's the lesson I brought back is like, I got to do a better job of telling them, of letting them know what they're doing, why they're doing it, the impact they're actually having. What's the strategic impact that they're actually having? So I think when you've got people on your team that are in the grind,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, they're head down, they're doing a thankless, you know, what seems that kind of thankless work, you know, whether it's editing videos or posting social media clips or, you know, scheduling travel for podcasts, whatever it may be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It is absolutely imperative that you constantly remind them about how important their job is and how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission and how that ultimately is going to benefit them, you know, down the road as your team continues to grow and expand. And I think it's every leader's job to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I remember a couple of like B-52, like treetop level flights that were pretty awesome. So there was like a small step where I was like, oh man, maybe being a pilot would be cool. But then I quickly went back to like, no, I want to be some kind of a ground combat leader in some capacity. And then when I was like in probably
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I went back. I taught that junior officer course for two years and tried to teach those junior officers everything I wish someone had taught me before I went into a tough combat situation. And then I went to the... The director of training was an awesome leader who came to me and said, hey, why don't you come be my operations officer?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that was Keith Davids, who just stepped down as our Naval Special Warfare Admiral. He was a phenomenal leader and was an awesome guy to work for. So I got a chance to... Got a chance to go and serve with him as operations officer at SEAL Team 1. Did another deployment to Iraq. Supported some guys in Afghanistan. You know, we sent guys to multiple locations around the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I was pretty frustrated on that deployment, man. Like sitting in, you know, we did a... I, the theme was to like, I had said for all our guys in Iraq, we were trying to embrace mediocrity and like not operate a bunch so that we could try to pull our guys and move them to Afghanistan where the fight was going pretty hot and heavy. That was 2009 and 10.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and so things were kind of just ramping up for like the, uh, you know, the Marine push down into Marja and Helmand province and some of these big operations that were going on and, and kind of the Taliban strongholds, um, in, in Helmand and Condor province. And, um, And we didn't do a good job of embracing mediocrity because we did a ton of operations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I don't think I had a single SEAL on that operation. In Iraq, we captured a bunch of bad guys and, you know, disrupted some terror cells. And the guys did great work, man. We had an awesome team. But we didn't have a single SEAL fire his weapon in anger in Iraq on that deployment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And meanwhile, you know, it just was Marines were getting blown up all the time, you know, soldiers getting killed in Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
in Afghanistan, and it was very frustrating to me, you know, that every time we tried to say, like, hey, we can send more guys to Afghanistan, we can support, you know, the conventional units, and they're moving into these villages and Taliban stronghold areas, we can do what Tashkent Abuser did for the, you know, for the Army and Marines in the urban environment, just from the high ground, you know, on the ridge lines with SEAL snipers, and we would constantly get told, like, no demand signal for more SEALs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What changed? I think it was the force cap. You know, President Obama approved like the surge numbers there. And I think there was just a – I think there was a force cap limitations. Hey, well, surge force is there, but we're only going to serve X number of forces, so people are tracking everybody that's there. And frankly, I don't know that there was a lot of appetite in our senior –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was probably in junior high school when I started hearing about the SEAL teams and the Marcinko books came out. I read Rogue Warrior. You probably read it probably about the same time I did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And our senior leaders, I think there was more of a, there was kind of an argument going on that we should be more on the kind of the find fix and let the kind of host nation forces do the finish piece.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that was one that really, I started reading about the SEALs in Vietnam and learning about the Rungsat Special Zone and Cam Ranh Bay and Nha Bay and all these places that our SEAL forefathers were operating out of. And I was just smitten with that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I can only imagine, Sean. There's no way you can win, right? It's what I talked about before, right? If you're going to go to war, man, you got to have the will to kill the enemy and you got to have the will to die. And, I mean, this is what it takes to win. And I think the... You know, my frustration was that we couldn't get hardly anybody involved in it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, you know, we had one troop that was working out of Kandahar at the time, and they kind of got split up and tasked to some different provinces. And we had some guys that did some great work there, man, and made a difference, you know, and made an impact for sure. They did awesome, awesome work.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Did a bunch of combat operations that killed a bunch of bad guys and opened up some areas that the Taliban had kind of controlled before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know enable freedom of movement for us forces and kind of push the white space back around some of those bases where they kind of You know, uh kept people, you know in where they're attacked the moment they get off the base But we couldn't get more people there and you know, we only had a handful of guys that supported You know some of the marines pushing into those areas um and the whole time like, you know, the there was just a pushback with the naval special warfare and and um, I just felt like
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
uh to me that was probably the number one driver you know our friend elliot that um a month after we left ramadi got blown up um coming out of a sniper overwatch position he'd been wounded the uh and one of the insurgents had crept up near his position and literally, like, rolled a grenade through a loophole.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So he's sitting there on a sniper weapon, and they pushed a grenade through the loophole. They, like, snuck up, like, somehow jumped from rooftop to rooftop, pushed the grenade. Grenade goes off, wounds him in the arm. So as he's getting cazevacked, you know, they called in the Bradley fighting vehicles, and as they're getting cazevacked, they clacked off a big IED on him. And...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think he, like, ripped an Iraqi soldier in half in front of him and blew him up, you know, really bad. He lost a leg. I think they were white phosphorus shells, Willie Pete shells. Oh, man. So, like, horrible burns on his body. And... And, yeah, man, he just was like, man, you remember, L.A. 's just as good a dude as there is, you know, just an awesome, awesome team guy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we'd serve together, seal team five, and bend the buds together, serve together, seal team five. Then I turned over with him. I remember that. seeing him and my close friends that were now relieving me, you know, as we went home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I remember seeing him in the turret of a 50 gal, a man in the 50 gal in a turret of a Humvee about to make the push across down that horribly dangerous road, Route Michigan, that was the most heavily ID'd road in all of Iraq. And he was like all smiles, like fired up, you know. And I was just, man, just said prayers to, you know, protect these guys and look out for them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I knew what they were up against, you know. And I think it was November 19th, like he, And then one of the other SEALs got injured, like, thought he lost both his legs, like, just, you know, was, like, blasted on his back. And then he lifted his legs up in the air, but his, like, his tib-fib is, like, he's got double compound fractures.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
then the movie navy seals with charlie sheen came out oh yeah uh and while i was in high school and it just uh that kind of cemented it for me uh that i wanted to be in in the seal teams and uh so i i i wanted to go to the naval academy to pursue that that dream
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, like, all he sees is, like, his stumps, and he lifts his legs up. They're, like, hanging down. So thought he lost his legs. And that guy, thank God, ended up recovering and had, you know, these titanium inserts in the legs. Like, amazing, amazing guy. But Elliot was in real bad shape, man. And so I spent a bunch of time with him when he came back to the States.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he went to Burke Army Medical Center, which is the primary burn care center for the— for the military. And, you know, just seeing some of the guys who were in the ICU there coming out of Iraq at the time was a horrific, horrific thing, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Just knowing, like, you know, you see these soldiers, Marines, with, like, their faces burned off and no fingers and, like, no ears and noses and lips and stuff gone. And just... And many of them still are, like, you know, they're making the best of it, man, you know? They're happy to be alive and they're continuing on their lives. And it was... It was, man, those guys were just heroes, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Just heroes, just awesome. Their attitude on life. But it made me wish that we'd put a lot more of those insurgents in the dirt than we did. And we did everything we could. But then when I, you know, as I was serving, I would go over and Elliot then went to, He then went to Balboa Naval Hospital. And so I was going up there and visiting with him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'd see a bunch of those Marines that were coming in, coming in from Helmand Province and Kandahar Province and a place like Sangin and, you know, Marja and, you know, legs gone, arms gone, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
yeah um and and to me it was i think that was kind of the final straw for me of like man this is we can help these guys and and you know we're not being allowed to do it for political reasons whatever those are whoever's responsible you know and and you know i felt like it was uh that was that was probably the final straw for me of like you know i think it's time for me to probably
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
get out, do something different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
A lot of people struggle with that. Hard. I never wanted to do anything else. Had you met your wife yet? I did. I met her. She put up with a final deployment for me. We were dating.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, we didn't get married until right as I left.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So we got engaged right as I got back from my last deployment. So I was like, you know, we're going to put her to the test, see how she does in the deployment. But we had met at the SEAL Warrior Fund event, you know, which is the – the big fundraiser for the SEAL teams in New York City in October 2008.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
um and so i i put in a package for the naval academy i put in a package for west point as well and we had a super strong uh west point uh alumni association in southeast texas and uh one of the head guys he was a silver star recipient um from uh the korean war uh amazing guy he was really close friends with my grandfather um and he was a big advocate of west point his west point grad and
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So the financial world had just melted down, and yet we still had some very patriotic Americans that are giving money to support SEALs and their families. And it was... Elliot was there for that. Ryan Jobe was a speaker for that. In fact, I don't think I would even have spoken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't think I would have attended if Ryan Jobe called me and said, dude, if you're not going to this, we're never talking again. So he was a speaker. He gave an amazing speech. And they handed him the speech like the night before. And he's like, hey, knuckleheads, I can't read. I'm blind. Someone's going to have to read this to me. So you're going to have to give me the speech.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But yeah, he gave a fantastic speech, man. And we were all there because – because the Montsour family had wanted Mikey's teammates to be there. You know, Mike had received the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save his two teammates on either side of him, and our teammate, and, you know, dealt platoon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so the Montsour family had asked that Mikey's teammates be there, so they flew a bunch of us out there, and... It was amazing. I sat right next to Mike's mom, Sally, as I met Jennifer the first time. I met this pretty red-haired girl. I was like, what's her deal? I want to get to know her better. And I told her that we had, you know, she worked at Fox News.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I told her that Fox was in our tactical operations center. She's like, well, if you guys want, come by. I'll give you a tour. So I brought me, Seth Stone, and another one of his guys by who were like the biggest wannabe lady killers ever. They were just spitting game at everybody from the interns to the anchors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And Jenna, who just put everybody in her place, didn't take any of that stuff from anybody. And then I took her out that night. Like, I talked her into coming and meeting us for a drink, and I took her to meet Elliot. She met Elliot and, you know, was instantly, like, loved Elliot and, you know, was fast friends with him. And so... The rest was kind of history there, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But that was another contributing factor for me certainly to get out. I mean, I had, you know, we had been dating two and a half years on the opposite sides of the country. I was stationed in San Diego. She was in New York City. Closest the Navy was going to get me was the Pentagon. I had zero interest in being a staff officer at the Pentagon. And so I was like, it's time for me to move on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, she's beautiful, she's smart, and she's got an amazing heart. And she asked me within like two minutes, three minutes, like she probably learned more about the SEAL teams anybody, like, you know, people might like, oh, you're a SEAL. Like, oh, that's, that's cool. Like, oh, that's really neat. Or, oh, I'm so annoyed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, like people, you know, that, that, uh, might say something like that, but she was asked, she was like, well, how do you guys train exactly? You know, how often do you employ? And, and where, you know, what is, what's, what's the training like? And, you know, how are you organized? Like she asked all these just like interesting questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and, uh, and I was like, I definitely want to get to know, know her better. And, um, it was, uh, Yeah, man. I just, I knew right away. I texted somebody when I was leaving New York City of like, I just met the future Mrs. Babin.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Girls in the phone book, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
man a secret successful marriage is extreme ownership it's extreme ownership man if um because it's also it's the most important place that you can apply these leadership concepts we've been talking about it's also the hardest because you're so emotionally tied to someone you know and your ego's involved and like and uh i could tell you that when i start pointing fingers and cast a blame and making excuses
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and he was pretty heartbroken when I chose Navy, but I chose that because I wanted to be in the SEAL teams, and my dad and I did a lot of fishing growing up on the Texas coast. There's fantastic inshore fishing, offshore fishing on the Texas coast, and we were going out on the Galveston jetties, and I remember just watching all these.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
My wife reminds me that I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, and I should start taking some. So she definitely puts me in my place. And I'm like, Jack, but all the things that, like, any team needs to be successful, right? Cover and move, we talked about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, this is, we got to cover and move for each other in the home front, with the kids, with work, like, around the house, you know, whatever it is. We got to be able to cover and move for each other. We got to communicate in a simple, clear, concise way. It's not that, hey, she asked me to do something. I need to use a readback to make sure that I understand what it is that I need to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I need to ask for some clarification. I need to make sure that just because I asked her to do something, she'll put something out in the morning like, okay, the kids need to be here, here, and here. You know, and then she thinks that like, that doesn't all process in my brain, right? I got to write it down. I have to reference it. So prioritize and execute.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There's going to be a billion things going on at the same time. You know, for the family, we got to be able to pivot and be flexible and shift to emerging priorities and stay detached, particularly from our emotions when somebody's like, you know, had enough, like the kids who were kind of, you know, they got you at wit's end and you're frustrated, be like, hey, babe, I got the kids. I got this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I'm going to take them out for a little bit. You know, just, I don't need to ask what she needs me to do. I don't need to ask her where she needs me to help. I can just step in, you know? And then decentralized command, I think if we all kind of understand, we understand like, what's the goal? What's the goal we're trying to do? And I think when we do that,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That enables us to... We can all work together toward that goal. She may do something that's slightly different than I might have wanted it done or I might have not thought about doing it in that way. But if it gets us toward the goal that we're trying to accomplish, if it helps us to raise...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, some patriotic, God-fearing, competent, kind-hearted children, you know, that are going to be good members of, contributing members to their society and community. That's what we want, man. That's what we're trying to do. So I think letting some things go. Sometimes you're like, you do these little pet peeves, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think that's the most important thing of like, okay, if she's doing something that's annoying me, it's not her fault, it's actually my fault. It's my fault. And I need to figure out a way to take ownership of that and fix that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think that's the key.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I'd accepted my appointment to West Point because I got picked up in like, it was like January of my senior year, and so I'd accepted my appointment, and I still hadn't heard back from Navy. It was like, And finally, in late April, when I was graduating in May, I finally got accepted to West Point. I'm sorry, I got accepted to Navy. So I'd already accepted my appointment to West Point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Certainly, I think I experienced some depression, anxiety. I think when all of a sudden, the thing that I had always wanted to do with my life is now behind me. Now what? I think that's a freaking hard thing, man. It's hard for anybody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't know if I wrapped my identity into being a SEAL. I loved it. I mean, I just thought it was the best job in the world, you know? And even though, look, it's not without frustrations, right? It's not that it's, as I got further up the chain of command in the SEAL teams, you get further away from the guys you like to be around and the job that you like to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, I mean, just an example of that, I was at the Special Operations Task Force, like a headquarters, and we were in Ramadi, just down the street from Camp Markley. We'd named the shark base Camp Markley. And so what had been a former kind of intel base was named after Mike Monsoor. So I was at Camp Mike Monsoor working out of there, and, man, there was –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, I think we had 180 people at the Special Operations Task Force headquarters, and I think there were like six SEALs there. You know, so it was, we were great people there, all performing an important function. But it was, you're just getting further away from the guys you like to be around and the things you actually like to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I think, you know, you're completely removed from that, right, when you get out. And so then it's like, okay, now what? And I was going to do like a lot of people do, just go back to school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
because it's kind of a transition, and, you know, there was, you can get paid, you get a, you get money through the post-911 GI Bill, and so I was going to kind of follow that path, and for whatever crazy reason, I decided I was going to go to law school, and I had some people help me out, because my grades were atrocious in college, but hold some strings, and, like, get me into law school, and, like, you know, I was accepted to Fordham Law School in New York City, and, yeah,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so it was just right down the road from where my wife was living at the time. And so we just got married. And, man, I started this like two-week kind of academic enrichment program, they called it, which was like for the people that had been out of school like me or didn't make good grades like me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so as I started it, I just realized, like, man, I had zero in common with the other students in the class. And as we started to study law cases and things like that, I'm like – I don't think this is what I want to do. Um, you know, and this is a three-year program. I have to spend three years doing this. Um, and, uh, and then, uh, extortion 17 happened, you know, and, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, the largest loss of life in the single incident in the history of the SEAL teams. Helicopter shot down. Brian Bill, you know, Derek Benson, both in our BUDS class, awesome dudes. You know, both lost on that. I knew another handful of guys who were on that, too, as I'm sure you did. And Brian Bill had just been at my wedding a month before that. It was just crushing. It was crushing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I finally got an appointment to the Naval Academy. And so then I was like, man, what do I do now? I don't know what I want to do. the alumni network told me, they said, they said, the West Point alumni network said, they said, all right, you got a decision to make here. Dwight D. Eisenhower went to West Point. Jimmy Carter went to Navy. I was like, man, that's a tough one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was... I mean, he actually like finagled the deal. He stayed to like go to like a jump master school so that he could like stay late, go to the wedding. And then he like flew, you know, flew overseas to, you know, to meet his unit. And, you know, it was just horrible, man. And it was just a reminder of something that you and I both know, right? Which is life is too short, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You can't waste a day of it, man. Can't waste a day of it. So I immediately deferred law school. I was like, I'm not going to spend three years going to school. Um, and so then it was like, well, now what, now what I do? So I go into deferred law school. I'm like, I don't have a job. I'm not employed. I don't know what I want to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, I'd had people offer me some positions in like the finance sector. And I went in and like saw what they were doing, you know, the traders. And, and I was like, I don't care how much money they make. Like I, I would rather, I would rather shear my testicles off with a rusty pair of scissors than sit here in front of this, like, you know, training.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, it just wasn't what I wanted to do, you know? And it was, and so we went out to this little place down the way, had some good margaritas, and I was sitting there with my wife, Jenna, and She says, well, what are you going to do now? You know, I was like, I have no idea. She said, well, what is it you love to do? Like, what are you passionate about?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I said, SEAL platoon commander is the best job in the world. Like that was a favorite job in the entire world. I'd do that over again in a second if I could, but I can't. And even if I could do it, I wouldn't be deployed to Ramadi. You know, like there's no, there's no, I can't go back and relive that again. But as she kind of asked me that question, I thought about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was like, the next best thing, was teaching leadership to those junior officers. that two years that I spent training those junior officers, putting 130-something SEAL officers through training and trying to pass on all the lessons I wish someone had taught me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, it was incredibly rewarding to see those guys grow as leaders, take on that, you know, the lessons that we learned, apply it, get better. And then I'd see them go forward, go, you know, places that I didn't deploy or didn't have any combat experience with, like Afghanistan, they would come home and say this, this, was game changer. Thank you for teaching us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Hey, you taught me this leadership concept. I applied that. It made a huge difference. You know, we focus on building these relationships. You know, it opened up all kinds of opportunities for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
A bunch of them did. A bunch of them did. Yeah. You know, I've lost touch with some of them, but they, it was awesome, man. It was so rewarding to see that. And, um, And to know the lesson that we learned and that we paid such a heavy price for, you know, attasking a bruiser or being passed on. And so when I said that, my wife said, call Jaco, start a company.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I did, and we launched a company that became Echelon Front.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Let's start a company. He just said, let's start a leadership company. He said, roger that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He was working for a mortgage company and teaching leadership for that mortgage company and kind of helping them kind of in their process. And they kind of, they basically like carved out like a, you know, I think they made it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
he learned a ton about leadership right and how it applied to the business world and saw all the problems that they were having you know from the inside and so from that he taught me a ton about what he learned you know from there i thought echelon front was my idea sean for uh about a year and a half and then i realized that just like this is jaco's way like about about jaco retired in uh october 2010 so about a year before uh i left active duty and um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he was, I went over and was like cleaning out his cage. And I did, I was like, I was like, man, it's a, you know, it's a sad, it's going to be a sad day in the jock of the SEAL teams here, you know, when you get out. And he said, I forgot about this conversation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had a conversation and we were standing in his office at training detachment, you know, and he said, he said, what would it take to bring you on board to start like a leadership consulting business? and I threw out some number that I thought was like gargantuan, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was like barely, you know, barely six figures, you know, it just seemed like, like, uh, um, it seemed like the most gargantuan number in the world compared to my like Navy paycheck. And, um, And so he had planted that seed, like probably a year and a half before we had that conversation. And I'd forgotten about it for a long time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that's kind of Jaco's way, right, that indirect approach of like planting the seed. He wasn't like, hey, remember when I said that? He doesn't care who gets the credit. Like this is what good leadership looks like.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're putting it on me here. That was a strong statement. But I was out fishing. My dad had a little center console fishing boat. We were out trying to catch some speckled trout and redfish on the Galveston jetties. And I remember looking at these oil tankers. You know, the Houston Ship Channel comes into the Galveston there. It's one of the busiest ports in North America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It developed the very first year I made less than half my Navy paycheck. And I was like, this thing is never going to pay the bills. And thank God my wife had a great job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The plan was to teach leadership. The plan was to teach leadership the same leadership concepts that I taught in that junior officer training course, the same leadership concepts that he taught when he was running training detachment.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
To anybody that wanted to talk about leadership. Just to back up a little bit, the first epiphany that I recognized that leadership applies everywhere there was a company that did an offsite to San Diego, big corporation, kind of in rapid growth mode. And they had had like a, so they had a leadership offsite in San Diego.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And somehow they got connected to someone at the SEAL team, like one of the junior officers that I put through training. And he was one of my, he was one of my, he'd been an assistant platoon commander, then was a platoon commander. And he said, hey, this company is going to come by. There was a retired, I think it'd been his former like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the CEO, because he was allowed to transfer from the service fleet like me. So he'd been on a Navy ship and the commanding officer of that ship had retired and was running this leadership consulting business. And so he was bringing this team of, I don't know, 10 or 12 executives by.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so he's like, hey, will you come and talk to him about the stuff that you taught us in, you know, the junior officer training course? And I was like, well, how long is that going to be? He's like, I don't know, man, 20 minutes, whatever, you know, something like that. Just short. Just, you know, put out some share of thought, answer a question or two, you know, that's about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so we went in there and I talked a little bit about leadership and like what we were trying to teach these students. You know, I mean, even just like putting the team and the mission first, right? It's not about you sharing resources across the entire organization. They just started firing questions. And we were in there for an hour and a half of just nonstop, like, questions being fired.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I didn't know anything but the military. I mean, like you, I went to the Naval Academy out of high school. And so I was 18 years old. I never knew anything about the civilian world other than part-time jobs, you know, that I worked in high school. But, yeah. It was the first epiphany for me of like, hey, everything that we learned here applies and the world needs this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The world needs leadership. Leadership is the solution to people's problems. They don't know it. And what we understood is that leadership is a skill. It's a skill that we're not born with. It's a skill that we have to learn. You're not – just like you don't know how to play the piano when you're born or drive a car or, you know, shoot a basketball or wrestle or whatever it is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, you have to learn that stuff. You might have some innate abilities that give you an advantage over others, you know, that maybe give you a leg up on others. But if you're not willing to learn the skill, you're not going to improve. You're not going to get better. And I think leadership is exactly the same way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And just watching these different tankers come in and all the different flags, you know, sailing from around the world and everything. I just remember turning to my dad and saying, I'm going to go to Naval Academy. I wanted to be in the Navy, and I wanted to be in the SEAL team. So that was the purpose. And after four long years at Navy, I did not get selected for the SEAL program.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I witnessed that over and over again when I was teaching that course because I saw – leaders who might have what you might think are a lot of innate leadership qualities that would be important, right? Like they were charismatic. They weren't nervous to stand up in front of a room and present an idea or talk to their team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then you had other leaders that were super introverted, like didn't want to You know, like we're terrified to stand up in front of a group and present an idea. And, of course, I made them do that all the time, you know, to try to get them used to that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But what I realized is that even people that you might have all this advantage with these inequalities of charisma or, you know, they're kind of a, you know, loud, you know, person that kind of people gravitate toward or they can engage with people and –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If that person wasn't willing to learn, if that person wasn't willing to humble themselves and get better and apply and take ownership of mistakes they made and apply the skill of leadership going forward to improve, they didn't get better. They struggled. And some of them actually got fired. And maybe even had their birds pulled and left the teams as a result.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And yet I watched leaders who were terrified to stand up in front of a group, like super introverted, like the quiet-spoken, kind of soft-spoken types, maybe didn't have any of what you might define as an innate quality that might give people an advantage in leadership, and they did awesome. I mean, they were phenomenal. As long as they were willing to learn, they were willing to improve,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And they were willing to get better all the time. And I'd see those guys go, some guys who struggled in the field training exercise portion of that course that I ran. And I would see them get better and watch them go out on the battlefield and do amazing things, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And have their guys talk about what an extraordinary leader they were and how they made, you know, just how they've saved lives or, you know, were able to build relationships or vector resource. I mean, just incredible stuff. And yeah. And so that to me, it was the recognition of like everything that we learned applies to people in the corporate world, in the business world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We work with people in the nonprofit sector, in the education space, first responders. We do a ton of work with first responders and anywhere that people wanna talk about leadership. I think we take the lessons that we learn and we talk about how it can apply. And I think we totaled it up last year, at the end of last year, we've worked with something like 1600 companies and organizations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Over the last, uh, 1600.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We definitely do. And it's super rewarding, man. It's our why, right? Sometimes when you're in the grind and you're traveling and you're gone from home a lot, and I'm always thankful for the opportunities that we have. You know, it's amazing to see. I mean, even after, you know, we're pushing... This month marks the ninth anniversary of the publication of Extreme Ownership.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the follow-on book, Dicamba Leadership, that was published in 2018 has now been re-released. But there's still people driving the sales of that book through word of mouth. People are...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
reading it buying five copies for their team buying it for their you know their kids buying it for their family members um and that kind of word of mouth like hey this has been impactful it's been amazing to see that that and when people come come back to us and tell us that you know extreme ownership saved their marriage you know they were blaming their wife for all their problems and you know or the wife blaming their husband for all their problems or you know having issues with their kids and and um or their
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
were frustrated at work, that they were in a hopeless situation and didn't feel like they had any influence on the organization, didn't think that their leaders cared about them, and they were able to start to take ownership of those problems and lead up the chain of command. It's amazing to see. It's amazing to see the impact that has.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it's, it's just humbling and mystifying to me, man, to see how, you know, how those lessons continue to be applied. And I just, it's, it's, I'm blown away by it over and over and over again. And about how, how people are taking and utilizing this. And it's, it's not me that's doing it. It's not Jocko that's doing it. We just shared some lessons learned that they actually have to apply.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's the hard part. You know, I could share some concept with you that can, that can help you. But it's, it's up to you to actually put your own ego in check and,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
have an honest assessment with yourself and actually you know implement a solution to get problem solved going forward and i think you know for us probably the best thing that we do is just help people realize what winning looks like what does winning look like you know is is it what does winning look like for you um and when you start to think about that from a detached perspective
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's not about how much money you make, right? It's not about, you know, proving that you're right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, if you're in a conflict with someone, it's actually about, it's about building the strongest relationships that you can, you know, with people and having the most impact in the world that you can and spending time with the people that you love and care about most, you know, that's most important.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think when we can get people attached to their emotions, kind of put their ego in check. And like, if you and I have a conflict at a company and let's say we're fighting over resources, right? and we're two department heads. I want those resources. You want the resources. I'm in there lobbying to have the resources taken away from you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
In some cases, we'll see conflicts that get created so bad that we can only communicate through mediated email by HR. This is what happens. Wow. Human conflicts, and you're like, Wow. Crazy. When you can help someone say like, hey, is it important? Is that other department important for like what you're trying to do in your department? Like, yeah, it is. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Do you think it's important that you have a good relationship with the leader of that department? Yeah, it probably is. And so when you can't communicate with someone except through immediate email by HR, do you think that makes you look... What does that look like to everybody else as a leader? When you can help them start to reveal the truth, what's the chairman of the board thinking about?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, that's a great question, Sean. There were many times as an officer when I was sitting in a tactical operations center and when I was, you know, when we were passing out the PowerPoint Ranger patch, you know, 3,000 hours, where I was like, maybe I should have enlisted in the SEAL teams. I definitely questioned it when I graduated from Navy, because when I didn't get service-elected,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What's the CEO? What's the senior executive team thinking about you? How's that... do you think you're ever going to get a chance to be promoted up the chain? You know, if you can't actually get along with people and work alongside and build a friendly coalition so you guys can actually cover and move for each other, you should support one another so that the team can win.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And when you get people who start to think about leadership like that and they realize like, oh, you know, they're looking at this little tactical victory of like, I'm trying to get the best of this person, you know, that I'm going to demand that I get the resources from them. And that's what winning looks like. And it's really the opposite, right? If I care about the team, like, well,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I should be in there lobbying for you to get the resources. Like, hey, you know what? Sean, we got some limited resources here. Your team needs these resources more than mine. I think my team could probably do without until we can get more resources available. I'm going to give these resources to you. We're going to build an awesome relationship, man. I'm going to help the team win.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I'm showing everybody that I put the team and the mission before myself or my team and our own interests. And this is what it takes, right? If I want to be a member of a high-performance winning team, that's the attitude I got to have. And when you start to just get people to see what winning actually looks like, it's often very different than...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But, you know, if you can put your emotions in check, put your ego in check, it just – you free your mind.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
every aspect of life and uh that's really cool that you guys put that together i appreciate man it's uh i wanted to be able to share that and uh it's uh it's it's like i said it's humbling it's humbling to see how many people have taken and and utilize that you know but if i can help even one person out there in some way to not make the mistakes that i've made as a knucklehead leader to not lead with ego or try to prove that i know you know all the answers um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think that, to me, makes all the difference, right, of the – in life, right, it's be humble or get humble. That's the way it is. So happy to pass those lessons on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I wish I was better, Sean. I wish I was better, man. And I think I'm... I'm just on the path, you know, trying to learn from my mistakes like everybody else. And I hope that people can take those mistakes and learn from it and apply it going forward. It's an honor to be here with you, brother. I can't, I'm so proud of all that you're doing in the world, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You got such an important voice on so many topics that, you know, other people aren't willing to tackle or take on. And I couldn't, I couldn't be more, you know, we were joking on it before we started this. I've never guessed when we were working together in Bud's with 18-year-old Sean that you would have the wardrobe with so many sport coats out there to put on. But it's awesome, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so proud of you. Love what you're doing. Keep doing it, man. You're making a huge difference to the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, and, man, they made the right call, to be honest. Like, they only took 16 guys out of the Naval Academy. And there was a prior enlisted SEAL in my class. So they took 15 guys. And, you know, there was 200 people that went out for the screener. It was probably 80 guys that graduated from the screener. And probably 40 or 50 of those guys could have gone and done really well, any of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so they only took 15. And I was not one of those 15. And that was based on my— grade point average, which was atrocious. I was part of that half of the class that made the top half possible. And I had a terrible conduct record because when you get a midshipman that was two years older than me, who was kind of barking orders at me and telling me what to do,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I let them know that I was not too pleased about that. I was pretty strong-willed and hard-headed, as you know me to be. And I think that that didn't serve me well there. So I had a conduct record. I got in much trouble. And so I wasn't selected. But actually, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because my time in the service fleet was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was instantly thrown into a position of responsibility and leadership. and I served three different deployments on two different ships, got to sail all over the world and see some amazing things, work with some incredible people. So what was... Well, to answer your question... Sorry, go ahead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
No, that's it, man. I think being a husband, father, and a Christian, I think are the most important aspects of that entire bio there. I think those are the most important jobs I've had. And I was lucky enough to serve with some incredible people, you know, like yourself, going through training and then on the battlefield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I was just going to say, to answer your question, I think what my parents were pushing me to, like, go to college first, and that was probably a bigger factor, but it was a... I don't know. When I got service elected for the service fleet out of the academy, I was like, man, I probably should have listed in the Navy. I think my parents just kind of encouraged me to go to college.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was interested in the Naval Academy. I was interested in having a degree under my belt. If I hadn't gotten one of the academies, I would have gone to Texas A&M and been on the Corps of Cadets there and the ROTC program. I think that was probably more their encouragement than anything else. Right on. But there's certainly times that I regretted that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And what I loved about the SEAL teams was, you know, man, while the college degree might have separated officers from enlisted at some point, I mean, the post 9-11 world, that wasn't even the case, you know, for a lot of guys. Brian Bill in our BUDS class with an electrical engineering degree, probably a way better GPA than I ever had.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so many guys that I served with, like you, were just super smart guys and were way smarter than I would ever be. So there wasn't a lot of differentiation. It was just simply like a different role.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They announce, it's like service selection night. And so they announce you. And so I had put my first choice was Naval Special Warfare. My second choice was Marine ground. I was like, if I can't be in, you know, a SEAL, I'll go be a Marine infantry officer. Maybe I can try to go, you know, force recon and, you know, that route. And then my third choice was service warfare, the ship drivers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, yeah. So when they, they, they basically like just, you know, you, you distribute a piece of paper that gives you the service selection with all the, you know, the seniors, the firsties there. And you're sitting there in like the wardroom on, on, you know, and it's, it's I, I saw my best friend and roommate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
just his head just you know he was he was really disappointed to not get served we were both going out for the you know the SEAL program that's what we wanted um and so when he didn't get it I didn't get it and we were right there in the room together sitting next to each other you know it was an encouragement you know to keep going and and and um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm just honored to be able to share some of those lessons learned with others around the world and to see people that can take and apply some of the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield and their lives. It's... I'm humbling and mystified about how far and wide that has spread and the impact it's had. And it's incredible to me to see that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved my time in the surface fleet. And I wanted to be a SEAL the whole time. But I instantly, I flew out to, I went to about six months of school in Rhode Island. And then I flew out and met a ship. And we were enforcing sanctions against Iraq before the war kicked off.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So these were the UN sanctions that had been in place since the Persian Gulf War. And so I got to work alongside. SEALs would go take down these ships. Our boarding team would go alongside and take over the ship and then just vector them over to a holding area. It was super cool, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If I remember right. Yeah, we did dozens of boardings, yeah. How did you get involved in that? The ship just selected me to be a part of it. I was lucky enough to be a part of that. And it was a neat thing to be able to see and do. And I think just being able to navigate a ship across the world was... it required a lot of responsibility.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, when you're the officer of the deck, you're in charge of the ship. When the captain's asleep in his stateroom at nighttime or, you know, if he's elsewhere, you're responsible for the entire well-being of that ship. I mean, there's massive responsibility on your shoulders. What kind of ship were you on? I was on a destroyer, DD-972, USS Oldendorf. I did two years on that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had an awesome, you know, wardrobe of great officers, and the enlisted sailors were outstanding that were on that thing. And it was just a great leadership opportunity for me. I learned a ton of lessons there, did a ton of things wrong, you know, came in kind of this strong-willed instant and got shut down, you know, realized, like, look, I need to rely on my experience, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
uh chiefs and and uh sailors to actually lead this team and learn from them um and so i got to see like what good leadership looks like it's not the person that's barking orders of people it's actually being the silent leader that listens to the team and and lets them run run with things and then i went to a different ship um ffg 38 uss kurtz i did about a year on on that uh there as a training officer uh so i did the first ship i did two deployments to uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
uh, the Persian Gulf, um, and kind of transit that, you know, uh, Indian Ocean, you know, Pacific transits. And then, uh, and then I did a Western Pacific, uh, uh, deployment with, uh, with the Kurds, the frigate. Um, both of those were great experiences and, uh, awesome group. And, and I got selected, um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Probably halfway through my time at being on that second ship, the USS Kurtz, I got selected. This was September 2001. And I got selected finally on my second package that I put in for the SEAL program. And... So right as September 11th happened. Wow. And so we knew this was real. We knew we were going to war. I knew after BUDS we were going straight to a SEAL platoon and to point overseas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so probably about the time that you were – You know, going through your boot camp and just starting your Navy journey. I was, for me, it was interesting because some of the sailors, you know, there's so many sailors in the fleet with a 70 to 80 percent attrition rate that didn't make it through BUDS.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I remember one of the sailors is a great, great guy asking me, like, you know, you got selected, you know, for BUDS. How far do you think you'll make it through the program? You know, and I thought, I thought that was a crazy question. I was like, all the way through the program. Like, why would I be even going if I didn't think I could, I was going to make it all the way through, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think, you know, in his mind, having gone there and not made it through, it just was like impossible. Interesting. To make it through the program. And I think I was so appreciative of the experience. You know, when I got to Buzz and you and I going through Buzz together, It enabled me to think about what it took to actually get there, all the effort that it took.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that's kind of what keeps us going. That's our mission of Y. And I get to honor the teammates that I lost and talk about their legacies and all that they did and how they lived.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I had some amazing people that pulled so many strings for me, you know, to write letters of recommendation, to train me and prepare me and get me ready, you know, physically and stuck their neck out to get me selected out of, you know, dozens of people that applied. And so I was never going to, you know, let them down in any way. And it gave me some great perspective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was on duty, the pier side in San Diego at 32nd Street Naval Station. aboard the USS Kurt. So I was the duty officer and we were just, you know, I was just waking up in the morning and, you know, obviously that's, you know, six in the morning, you know, on the West Coast when nine o'clock, you know, when it went down and on the East Coast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I got a call from the incoming duty officer who was listening to the news on his way into work. And he said, hey, a plane's just hit the World Trade Center. And I thought, I'm thinking it's like a little Cessna sightseeing plane or something, you know, that got too close. I'm like, what are you talking about? So I went in and we turned on the news in the wardroom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I turned on the news and I'm sitting there watching like, man, just smoke going out. And we just watched on live TV as the second plane hit. And we knew instantly this is an attack. Like this is real. We're at war. And it just changed everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't remember the exact date that I found out. It was right around then. And I can't remember if it was just before or just after. But I know I got the news like in September 2001. And so it was... I knew this was real, and I was lucky enough. I had a great commanding officer on board the USS Kurtz, and he was kind enough to send me TAD over to SEAL Team 5. And so I was TAD to SEAL Team 5.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I went over there. I helped out wherever I could on the administrator side, but they assigned us to a senior chief
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
um and uh he was all he did with me he just trained us all the time and so we were like six straight months before i went to buds uh i was i was spent most of my time over at silty five just training and preparing uh and some of my friends were there who had helped pull some some strings you know for me to be there in fact that very same seal who'd got service selected um and uh no kidding yeah he got uh uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He had got picked up just the year before. So they went through the year before that you and I went through butts together. And he was just there as a new guy, assistant platoon commander. And so, man, he'd take me out for runs. The runs that he took me on were harder than anything we did in butts. I would puke my guts out. And as a result of that, I was a horrible runner.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That was the thing I probably struggled with most. And I didn't fall back in any of the runs in Bud's just because, you know, thankfully I had that opportunity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We classed up, 241 classed up in April of 2002. So that was, yeah, it was pushing six months of kind of prep and training. And I knew that when I got picked up, like that was the last time. I was already a Lieutenant JG, and I knew I was going to make, you know, Lieutenant at the four-year mark, which if you remember, I put that on at first phase. I got quite the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The promotion party, if you remember. The beat down. But yeah, it was, I knew that was like the last shot. So I was already training for it. I was already preparing for it. But I had about six months of people that really, and it's so hard to train when you're underway on a ship, you know, as far as running and swimming and doing the thing. You just can't do it so well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So it was just awesome to have, you know, my commanding officer and the senior leadership on that ship support me and, and be excited for me. And on my previous ship, I mean, they wrote super powerful letters of recommendation as well, you know, that enabled that to happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And if I didn't have the SEALs that were pulling for me, um, that, uh, that, that wrote me a letter of recommendation, you know, and, and more than anything probably was, was Admiral Smith, who was a retired SEAL Admiral. Um, his son Adam and I are friends and, and, um, he, he had, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Our close friend who's still serving, I won't name him, you know, was probably my biggest advocate, an amazing guy. And pulled so many strings for me, trained with me, got me ready, you know, connected me with Adam and then Admiral Smith.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And Admiral Smith wrote me an incredibly powerful letter of recommendation that if people hadn't pulled those strings for me, man, I would have never, never even had the opportunity to serve.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think there's 24 billets at the academy today, and I think there's something like that for all of ROTC. So they take 48 a year? something like that i i don't know what the numbers are um i have to double check that i think it was i think that was it for a while but it's highly competitive right interesting so they only take 48
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's something like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, don't call me on the numbers of that. Maybe half of that. But it's very highly competitive. And then there's a handful of officers that come in, like our mutual friend Travis, that will come in with an officer candidate school billet who went through Buzz with us. And they'll... There's just... It's very competitive as an officer. So you're training with people like...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, I was competing at the Naval Academy with, you know, the captain of the water polo team. Like, I was never a competitive swimmer. That guy's going to destroy me. Like, somebody who's on the cross-country team, somebody who's on the triathlon team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I definitely was not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That was a part of it. I think it was a major factor. I think they're also looking for grade point average. They're looking for student leadership opportunities. I was never a student leadership because I was always in trouble for some of them. So I think, you know, there's just – I mean, I wouldn't trade – my time at the Naval Academy was awesome. I really enjoyed my experience there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There were some – there was some negative examples, right, that showed me, like, the leader that I didn't want to be as well. I think that's always the case, right? I think good leadership is rare no matter where you are. But there also were some amazing leaders there who poured into me and set a great example. And, frankly, Sean, I am –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
i wouldn't trade that for anything i mean the fact that i didn't get service elected for the seal program i had to work as i had to work my ass off i had to i had to train i had to go out and build relationships i had to stop feeling sorry for myself and making excuses because that would have been easy to do right well this person knew that person or this person got picked up or that person happened to you know make better grades than me or this person's a better athlete you know and that shouldn't be what it's based on you i can make all those excuses
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What I had to do was, before I even understood this concept, we now call it stream ownership. I actually, I didn't take it stream ownership to say, if this is what I want to do with my life, I'm going to have to actually do the work to make this possible, you know, to open the door.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And when I put in my very first lateral transfer package, so I had to get fully qualified as a service worker officer. And so that took me about a year and a half on my first ship. You know, man, that's a huge qualification to get, right? You have to study, you have to prepare. It takes a long time and effort.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And when I finally got that qualification, I put together, I met every requirement possible. And I put in a package that I thought was a strong package, didn't get service elected. Wow. I got turned down again. And that was crushing to me. Damn.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the senior officer, he was a captain at the time, and he was the chief of staff over at WARCOM, the Naval Special Warfare Command, so very senior officer. And I reached out, just tracked down his content info, scheduled a meeting with him, and went over and sat down to talk to him. And I said, hey, sir, I'm... you know, Lieutenant J.G. Babin, I want to be in the SEAL teams.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This is what I want to do. I think I can contribute to this community. What do I need to do to make this happen? And he told me, he was like, he said, he was like, no one has ever scheduled a meeting like this with me. I think that shows a lot of initiative on your part.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, keep trying, you know, get your scores better, get some better, you know, go get some strong letters of recommendation, put in a package again, and I think you'll do better next time. So I think just... We call this concept default aggressive, that problems aren't going to solve themselves. You actually got to go solve problems. You actually have to make things happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Things aren't going to just fall into your lap. You got to go make it happen. And that applies on the battlefield. It also applies anywhere in life. And the opportunities, I think it's real easy for us to look at people and be like, well, That person got lucky, or this person just stumbled upon that, or this person had that door open for them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And more often than not, man, people make their luck through hard work, discipline, preparation, effort, all the years and years of effort behind the scenes that people don't see. And so I think that to me was a tremendous life lesson of like, hey, this isn't going to happen unless you go and do the work to make it happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's the highest compliment you could ever pay me, man. And I love those guys. I'd do anything for them. And it's just the honor of my lifetime was to serve with some awesome, awesome teammates.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that required training, you know, being the best service warfare officer I could be. I knew that instead of complaining about not being in the SEAL teams, if I wanted to be in the SEAL teams, the best path for that for me was to be the best service warfare officer I could be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And there was, I mean, people would say things like, well, you don't want to be, they won't want to let you go, you know, if you're, you know, if you're too critical for a member of the team, that's total bullshit, right? You gotta, the better that you are on your team, the more, the higher you perform, the more that your leadership's gonna wanna write you a strong letter of recommendation, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The more that people are actually gonna wanna take care of you and help you out. So the more I could contribute to my team, you know, that happened to be a ship that I was assigned to, the better it would be for me. You know, going and building relationships with people, reaching out to folks that could write powerful letters of recommendation, you know, and it was,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think for anything in life, the opportunities are not going to come your way. You've got to go make things happen. You've got to be default aggressive. Again, if you wait for problems to go away on their own, they just get worse. I'm thankful that happened. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I can tell you, Sean,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Years later, after I was serving as a senior executive in the business world, we'll call it, right, at the operations officer and executive officer position, and I was frustrated with the employment of SEALs or lack of employment with SEALs in combat at the time, and I would get super frustrated about things that were way above me in the chain of command. I can remember at least
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Three different occasions where I jumped in my truck. I drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge. I went over to 32nd Naval Street. I went over to 32nd Street Naval Station, which is where all the ships in San Diego are. And I walked out on one of those piers I lived across at Coronado at Naval Amphibious Base where the SEAL teams are. And I remembered what it was like.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it just put that all in perspective for me. Wow. You know, this is, I can't ever forget what it was like to be over here, wanting to be there and wanting to do anything I could to get over there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So no matter how frustrated I am, I'm in the SEAL teams and I'm going to do the best I can and impact the people around me, you know, and try to make whatever unit I happen to be assigned, try to make life as good as I can for those people that I'm with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Just to give me perspective on what it was like, like to remember what it was like to want to be in the SEAL teams and not be there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
When I got back from my second combat deployment to Ramadi, I took over the junior officer training course. And so for two years, I ran that training program for every single civil officer that graduated from BUDS. So before they go to BUDS, before they go on to the advanced training, the SEAL qualification training, they would go through a four-week classroom, week-long field training exercise.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I'd been through that program. That's where you and I broke off together, right after we graduated BUDS. And then you went on to SEAL qualification training. And so the officers from our class went to SEER school and some other schools. And then we went to the junior officer training course together. And so I got a chance to run that four years later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was a great program, and I went through it. But I think it was focused on trying to help you understand how it was organized. And what I got to do was really, I think, try to revamp it to just try to set those leaders up for success, you know, and to help those leaders be ready for the most difficult combat situations that they might come up against.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Humility is the most important quality in a leader. And the reason I say that is because, look, if you don't have an ego, you don't care about winning, right? You just mail it in. You don't care about outperforming the other people or doing well. Ego drives us to be successful. So you got to have an ego. But so often, ego is the... It just... It just absolutely destroys people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It destroys careers. It destroys teams. It destroys relationships. It destroys lives. And when people can't put their ego in check, you just, you can never get better. You can never improve. And I think, you know, the biggest lesson that I've learned in life through some extremely humbling combat operations and then beyond is that it's be humble or get humbled.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And anytime that I'm feeling like, oh, I got things figured out, oh, I've got to, you know, oh, I'm ready for, you know, for the worst case scenario, life might throw me, man, you get humbled and you get put in check. So I think that humility is number one, the most important quality, because without humility, you can't learn from anybody else. You can't. You can't get better, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You can't evolve. You can't adapt or innovate. You can't listen to other people's ideas or learn from them in any capacity. And worst of all, you can't look yourself in the mirror and conduct an honest self-assessment, a brutally honest self-assessment, because that's what's key. If you can't do that, there's no way you're ever going to improve.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
what's required is an honest self-assessment of like, okay, I need to do these things to improve. I need to do these things to actually fix myself going forward. Okay, these might be my strengths, but these are my weaknesses. I need to work on those, you know, to get better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Hey, we might've gotten lucky on that combat operation, but if, you know, we better be prepared for that worst case scenario next time in case we don't get so lucky. And so I think number one, humility. Number two, ownership. and that goes right along with each other, right? If you're going to point fingers and cast blame and make excuses, it's right there with humility. The driver of that is ego.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But oftentimes, the reason I say ownership is because if I'm going to wait for you to solve my problem, that problem's not going to get solved. So let's say you and I have a conflict and we don't see eye to eye on something. You know, I can say, well, Sean, just, you know, I don't like the way Sean talked to me. You know, or Sean needs to come apologize to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Or, you know, Sean, that's Sean's fault for not seeing the world from my perspective. Or I can actually take ownership of saying, you know what, Sean, there's some reason that Sean disagrees with me on this. Let me actually learn from his perspective. Let me actually take ownership of fixing this problem by taking some action.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
to actually get his perspective and see his perspective on things and see what I could have done better to better communicate what my perspective was and ask more questions so I could see the world through his eyes. And so I think those things are super critical. Teamwork is a great example of that, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If you're just about yourself and you can't actually put the team, the overall team, the mission first, I think that's not someone that's gonna do well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And particularly in high performing organizations, whether you're talking to like a SEAL unit or a special operations unit or a SWAT team, or frankly, like a super high performing sales team, you know, in the corporate world, a lot of times you'll talk to them about the concept of cover move and teamwork, and they'll say, oh, we're doing awesome. We're doing awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, but our admin department sucks and supply sucks. And they're not getting us what we need. You know, the senior leaders up in their corporate, they don't know what's going on down here. And what you realize is they think about teamwork within just their immediate team, not about the other teams that they actually depend on to be successful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So when you start realizing like, hey, I need a better relationship with the admin department so that we can get paid, so that we can actually get the paperwork taken care of, so that we can actually do what we need to do and focus on our job. I need a better relationship with supply so they can give me the tools that I need to be successful. I need a good relationship with my chain of command.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
one of the biggest lessons i learned from jocko um is not having a good relationship with your chain of command doesn't help you and it certainly doesn't help your team so you got to build a good relationship with your chain of command just to to make sure you're aligned with them make sure they understand um you know what what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it and why you you and and they have the information they need you know to better support you and make better decisions so i think when you're looking at humility ownership teamwork i think those are
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
crucial things. Discipline, I think, is something else. You know, if you have people that are not disciplined, I mean, I think about somebody in our BUDS class, like Brian Bill, you know, for instance, who probably wasn't born great at everything, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That guy was so, he was the only guy in our entire BUDS class that was first time every time in die face, you know, through the pole competency test, which is, If you don't know what pool cop is, it is miserable, right? Where they're tying your hoses and knots. And that's a terrifying test, right? For so many people that, even people that are comfortable in the water.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we had so many rollbacks from the previous class, as you know. I was one of them. Yeah, you were one of those. And the stories you guys told us, it was like terrifying.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
know and so um i think that uh brian was the only dude on that wall this first time every time why is that well he was he just he was methodical in his preparation and and it was he was disciplined and that enabled him to to be successful in everything he's trying to do so i think somebody you know it's great to have some innate qualities and natural abilities and those things are great when you can combine natural ability and discipline that's unstoppable
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But, you know, hard work is going to beat natural ability over time if you've got somebody whose discipline is going to put in the work. So, you know, I think those are the qualities that I think apply not just to a SEAL leader, but I think to any leader in any situation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, somebody who's humble, somebody who'll take ownership, somebody who's a team player and puts the team first, and somebody who's disciplined.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Three words that encapsulate a powerful leader and why. I think the three words, the three most powerful words are, it's my fault. It's my fault. And I think as a leader, recognizing that you are responsible for everything that your team does or doesn't do, just as a dad or a spouse, you're responsible for everything that your family does.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I might've been different from a lot of us. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I mean, to me, just having the, not that you weren't, certainly we were walking on eggshells all the time, right? And I remember afterward, particularly as the class officer in charge, right, as the senior person in the class, It didn't matter what happened, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't think I failed a single room inspection the entire time. Actually, we had one spot inspection in dive phase that I failed. And me and my roommate failed. It was like one is, but every other inspection I passed. Every other personnel inspection I passed. which was unheard of. And yet I got beaten. I was the first guy to get beaten every time, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Because you're just, anybody in the class feels you as the leader are responsible. And so you're going to pay the man for it. That was just part of the game. You know, I embraced that with a sense of humor, you know? So there was, you know, there was, it took a couple of years to be able to walk on the grinder before you were kind of like, who's looking at me, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You feel like you need to be running and calling cadence. Yeah. But by the way, they don't call Cadence across the Grindr anymore, man. I miss that. That was so freaking cool. Like just to my left, to my, you know, just yelling at our class as we came across the Grindr. For me, just knowing the history of that place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, knowing not only through the SEAL teams, but for our, the underwater demolition teams, our frogman forefathers before, before them. And, and knowing all of that took place right there, right? I mean, it's Coronado, Naval Amphibious Base.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, this is, this is where the, you know, the guys that were going out and swimming up on, on, you know, beaches like Iwo Jima, you know, and, and, and Guam and Saipan. I mean, just, just amazing, amazing history. And I just, I thought it was awesome. And, Check it in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, for guys like you that were a class ahead of me, initially it was like, you might as well have been there for 30 years of experience, right? Because I'm just showing up and you don't know what to do. I quickly just try to just have a sense of humor. I remember I walked into the in-doc office, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Those first few weeks that they used to call the indoctrination before you started first phase. And one of the instructors was like, I just walked up and it was like, hey, they had like their coffee mess there and they had like this fancy coffee and I came from the fleet. There's no fancy coffee.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
These chiefs, you know, the fleet are drinking like black tar coffee that was, you know, reheated coffee from like five days ago. So they had this like fancy coffee mess in there and they had a pile of like sugar cubes. I mean, and it was probably like, I don't know, 50 of them. He's like, how many of those sugar cubes, you know, can you eat it once, Babin? I'm like, all of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I just like shoved them all in my mouth, you know? And yeah, I think from that on, I just tried to, you know, just have a good sense of humor about it. And it was, yeah, to me, I thought it was, I mean, it was the quality of people that we got to serve with there was, you know, I think in that post 9-11 era of people that,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, like you that are like enlisted in the Navy, this is what they want to do. I'm going to go serve my country in a time of war. You know, it was, it was, it was just incredible, man. And, and I, I just, I wouldn't trade that for anything. It was awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Totally, man. Of course. You know, I mean, you're kind of like, do I make eye contact with people? Do you not? You know, you're trying to just figure that out. You know, and yeah, We talk a lot, you know, the dichotomy of leadership, right? You've got to try to find that balance. You got to be confident, but not cocky, right? And I said, humility is the most important quality of a leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's an honor to be here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So you've got to have some confidence, but you also, you can't be cocky. And I think just trying to find that balance was like, you know, knowing that like the instructor staff that, you know, some of the guys that would, you know, say, I hate officers and give us the hard time, you know, more than anything else, they ended up being my favorite instructors.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And they just, you know, even though they dished out the worst physical punishments and pain, they were just, they were awesome. And, you know, some of those guys who, you know, were like looking to give the officers a hard time, you know, one of the things I loved about in-doc too, do you remember the
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the officer belly flop contest off the the high dive oh yeah oh yeah off like the 15 foot board that was so awesome just you're like okay if i'm gonna do this i'm gonna win like i'm going all into this thing i want to make it so painful i'm gonna like knock the wind out of myself and someone's gonna have to like haul me to the side um but that to me was like it was it was fun i think you just try to you know try to make the best of it what was the
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that understanding this concept that we call extreme ownership and Man, our ego is such a powerful driver in the world and it wants us to point fingers or cast blame or make excuses or say, hey, look at that guy over there. He's more successful than me. Well, he got lucky or he got this break or he started with some advantage that I didn't have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I didn't think that was hard. It was easy. You know what was crazy? So we, I'm sure you watched the Discovery Channel like 50 times. I did too. And what I realized later, some things like Hell Week, Like, they really can't show you just how hard Hillbilly's gonna be, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So like, I thought Hillbilly's way harder than, you know, than I'd even envisioned it could be, just kind of based on watching that show. But some of the other things, like the ocean swims, the cold water, like the underwater swim, I realized they were focusing on people that were struggling, And so it made it look like it was impossible.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, yeah, I mean, I thought the 50-meter underwater swim was like no factor. Yeah. But some of the things that kicked my ass, man, were... Before, though, before we did them, what were you worried about?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I worried about it. I sweated every single evolution.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Every single one. And I had a friend tell me that, sweat every evolution. Like just, you better be worried about preparing. We're going to spend our weekends prepping, planning. We were doing stupid stuff too, like pool comping each other in like the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know in the in the uh in the like local like uh apartment complex pools you know into like civilian dive rigs that we rented from the local like stupid stuff like dangerous stuff if you're listening to this don't uh or watching this don't do that that's stupid you know you're gonna age yourself you definitely need a dive master there to make sure stuff like that's not going on um but
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But we just tried to sweat every evolution. I was worried about the runs because I had struggled with runs. And I found the runs were hard. I mean, they definitely were all outspread. But I don't think I got in the goon squad even one time. That was also because our good friend and classmate, Seth Stone, had made the egregious error of marrying one of the BUDS instructors. Oh, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I forgot about that. So the officers would get regularly pulled out and just beat on for that. And then the entire class would get beat on. And then wherever Stoner was, we call him Seth Stone, we call him Stoner, but wherever Stoner was in the lineup of the runs, if you remember, they would just find him and be like, goon squad, here I'm back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he would just embrace it, you know, and just start bear crawling. The goon squad, everyone's just getting beat on and everyone else is like circling up. But... You were a good runner, right? I don't think you were in a good squad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, I remember you being a good runner. The swims for me, I was like one bad swim. Our mutual friend who – I won't say his name, but we got put together. It was another officer, and he was – Not a great swimmer. And I was not a great swimmer. So we were like one bad conditions away from failing the swim. I think the only swim I failed was the ones where they forced us to wear like the new fins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Remember that one? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And like half the class failed because we had to wear these new fins that were supposed to be so much better. And we all went back to the old school, like World War II. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And when you do that, what you do is you don't actually take action to correct the problem, to actually implement solutions to fix that going forward. And so I think when you accept ownership for every single thing that happens in your world, every single thing that impacts your mission, then you could actually take action to solve problems, constantly learn, constantly grow, constantly improve.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But that was one where I wasn't a fast swimmer. I could go for a while, but I knew I was kind of one bad swim away. But I think one of the hardest things for me that I didn't anticipate was drown-proofing. People thought drown-proofing was easy. Did you... Have no problem with drown-proofing?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So many people did. Drown-proofing was horrible. No shit. That was hard for you? After we did, like, you know, bouncing off the bottom was fine. But once we had to do, like, the traverse, you know, with your hands and feet tied, and my heart rate got up, and then I started doing the flips.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I was struggling with it, and I was really struggling with it. And one of those buzz instructors who was the meanest instructor, you know, and he came to officers and just hammering them, he just pulled me aside and put me in, like, he put me in like the forefoot section. It was like, hands and feet tied, you're gonna do your bounding in the forefoot section. And he just like left me there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then he moved me over to the nine foot section. And it was just like a progression and that really helped me. And then actually one of the other instructors, remember we had to like, You were supposed to, so after you do the, you know, you do that traverse, then you were supposed to like, you do like a flip and then go down and grab the mask and then you bounce. Oh, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You were supposed to do like three flips and then like five bounds and then that was the end of the test. And one of the instructors on the side was like, I think I was probably 30 flips in. He was like, again, again, again. Yeah, and finally that same instructor that helped me out came over and was like, Babin, you're good. Get out of the pool. And so it was – he kind of helped me out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I mean, you knew you were going to get the full benefit on it, like no factor. Yeah. And that was – so that to me was harder than I thought it was going to be for whatever reason. And then life-saving was – Life-saving was a challenge too. That was a kick in the ass, man. The smallest instructor we had. So if you remember, you had your unconscious victim.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't think life-saving is like that anymore. What do you mean it's not like that? I don't think it's like a pass-fail evolution like it was. I don't think you can get kicked out of the program. Remember for us, like if you didn't pass it, like you got kicked out. And so the unconscious victim, I got the smallest buds instructor we had. He was like probably 150 pounds.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He was the unconscious victim, which means he's laying there. I just grab and haul him across the pool. And then the very next one was... If you remember this instructor who had started at – he had played starting linebacker at Arizona State University.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, man, he was an awesome instructor. I loved him. But he kicked my ass. I swam over to him and realized, like, he's like, save me. And I grabbed him. I think it took me – Was this Scotty Walker? Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't know if you can say, yeah, Scotty was, Scotty was hilarious, but he, he just like attacked me underwater and it was, it was a giant wrestling match with a, he probably weighed 250 at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that makes all the difference.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I remember that too. And we were all like, dude, that guy's an animal. And I remember it was probably, it felt like a 20-minute evolution for me to get him to the side. It probably wasn't near that long, right? But I finally get him to the side and I crawled out the combat training tank just outside and I just puked my guts out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then I just, and I crawl back in there and it was like the next one, the next one, the next one. So that was a tough evolution. But it was awesome. I mean, you also knew that like, what was cool about that is there's nobody that I can't save.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If I could save Scotty attacking me, you know, under those conditions and this monstrous human, and I could get him to the side and fight him the whole way, like I could save anybody, you know. It was, and just the training program itself was just awesome.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I had forgotten about that, yeah. Genius move. That was a genius move. I don't think that I – I can't remember if instructors shaved their armpits for that or if they stopped, but it was – I remember he had – what did they call that victim?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I remember instructor Nave had me, and I didn't even know what a triangle choke was. He had me in a triangle choke on the bottom of a 15-foot section of the combat training tank. I'm trying to go underwater to get away from him, and he just locks me up in this triangle. I'm down there on the bottom.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So in INDOC, I was the senior guy. I was the only officer for a little while. We had a few officers that ended up getting rolled back. So I think I was the... There were 18 of us in BUDS Class 241 that started with 241 and made it through in one shot. I think I was the only officer from that group. And... And the rest of our, like, 44 guys that graduated, you know, were rollbacks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, man, thank God for you guys because when you got rolled back in the class, like, y'all were – y'all brought in this, like, okay, we've been here before. We understand how to prep for these things. Because at the time, we didn't – other than the Discovery Channel show, like, you don't even know what's coming, right? The schedule's secret.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You can't – it's not like you can walk in and ask the instructors that, you know. So – That was massive. But we had several O's that were rolled in. And so I think when you got rolled back into the class, there was a senior officer who took that role through Hell Week. And then shortly after Hell Week, he got rolled out. And so then I became the senior officer again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's a great question. I think... Initially, I thought that this concept that we call cover and move, which is teamwork, right? We're working together as a team. You and I are trying to move across the street under fire. You're laying down suppressive fire so I can move. And then when I get across the street, I lay down suppressive fire so that you can move. Like we're covering and moving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So most of the class, I was the... I was a senior officer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I think it instantly, luckily I'd learned the lesson of like, hey, I can't do everything. I'm here to rely on my teammates to make this happen, right? I need to use my senior enlisted leadership. You know, if I'm running around trying to count everyone, right, that doesn't work, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You have to have a, and if the LPO, the leading petty officer is doing that, that doesn't work. We need squirrelly boat crew leaders. You know, you need people in those boat crews that are helping those boat crew leaders out. This is how decentralized command actually works. And so I think it was,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That to me was like, the thing that I was, you know, I would get, sometimes people would come up with ideas and say, hey, let's go ask the instructors if we can do this or we can do that. You know, people wanted to kind of try to cut corners.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was, you know, I think, I know I frustrated some of the class sometimes and I was like, yeah, we're not going to, we're not going to, we're not going to expend the leadership capital on something like that. we're going to just show up when they tell us to do it, you know? We're not going to ask if we can come 15 minutes later, right? We're going to, like, it's not worth it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think for people at that time, I know sometimes, particularly some of the O's and Boca leaders got frustrated with me, you know, with some of that stuff. But you have to just, I think, really prioritize, like, what you're going to push back on, what you're not. And we had a phenomenal class. I mean, it was awesome. And it was...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, you joining our class was one of my favorite stories of the whole thing, man. The whole week kickoff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Dude, that was so awesome. So we show up to the O course and we show up to the obstacle course. And if you don't know anything about the Buzz obstacle course, it's a notorious obstacle course. These things have been around for a long time. All these obstacles are named. And before even CrossFit or these kind of high intensity interval training was even a thing, the O course was that, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're going to do seven or eight minutes of like max put out effort when you're done with that thing. And then you add the soft sand runs and
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know uh to the uh to the demo pits and back um you know that's a mile and a half down mile and a half back um and then and then uh uh and then add a ruck you know ruck run you know uh in that soft sand on top of that for third phase so we were out there for that evolution and i can't remember what happened like our something got screwed up the schedule got screwed up i know i cleared the proctor we're supposed to be there but the instructors never showed up and of course i
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
there's nothing worse than like bored bud students standing around. So somehow it started with these wrestling matches that were going on. And we had some wrestlers in the class and people were calling each other out like WWE SmackDown style. And I remember like, I was just kind of like trying to stay above the fray, making sure, you know, because it's in the sand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We didn't want people's head hitting rocks or, you know, obviously at this point you get injured, right? You're going to be ruled from the program and potentially don't even graduate. So I wanted to try to prevent that. I was trying to stay above the fray. And all of a sudden, you know, I got Sean out there. You like walked out in the middle. It looked like Apollo Creed from the Rocky movie.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We're leapfrogging. We're mutually supporting one another. And when Jocko and I first launched Echelon Front, our leadership consulting company, We went in to talk to a corporate business and we thought, man, should we even talk about this concept? Like, how does that even apply? And we're talking, this is a gunfighting tactic from the battlefield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I want you. You were like babbling. I want you. And like just challenging me. I was like, okay, I guess I got no choice here. So they like drew a ring in the sand like Kumite. We had a big wrestling match.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think it was probably more of a stalemate than anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I still have to take that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think I just held you in place until it was like, okay, let's move on to the next. Everybody got bored. But, dude, my favorite story from you was that Hell Week experience because, you know, we were – no one knows – it's kind of like combat, right? No one knows – Hell Week was, I think it was the fifth week for us going through first phase. So we've been in five weeks to end doc.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We've already been in four weeks, you know, of first phase at that point. And I think we started our class, we started with 193 guys. And then I think we started with, I think we started a whole week with 101 guys. So our automatically was just getting, already a bunch of people had quit, right? It's getting whittled down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I remember those numbers well, because it was, so you're already losing a bunch of people, you know, in those first few weeks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Is what started with Bud's class 241. That's what classed up. Okay. The original class. Now, some of those guys left. Others got rolled back in. You know, the numbers are kind of switched around. And by the time we were in, we were about to start Hell Week, we had 101. Okay. So we'd already lost a lot of guys who quit, a bunch of injuries, people enrolled, things like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But you were a brown shirt rollback, which is like that coveted brown shirt had to be awesome. You'd made it through Hell Week.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, and I think that's what's so, I know people who, I know people who in the previous, previous years have been given a chance. They screwed up something in Buzz, you know, in dive phase or third phase and were given a chance to go back and start day one. And they're like, no, thank you. I won't do it. They turned down a career in the CLTs because they were not willing to go back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so once you've made it through—I mean, Hell Week is as close to combat as you're going to get. I mean, it was designed by Draper Kaufman and his staff at Fort Pierce back in World War II, you know, for the naval combat demolition units that were hitting the beaches at Normandy and—
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, you know, and blowing up all the, I mean, these were the first waves at Omaha and Utah, and they were trying to create as much mayhem as possible for them. And so they tried to combine all this training down, you know, weeks of training into just five continuous 24-hour days. These guys, you know, up all night, no sleep, explosions going off everywhere, chaos and mayhem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And just like combat, nobody knows how they're going to do until they get in there. And I remember just reading the Bible, having Bible study. You were having Bible study? Totally, man. In Bud's? Totally, yeah. Wow. Andrew Paul and I on our team, several others, we got issued those Bibles. Yeah. Those little Bud's Bibles that were...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
know in iv translation and and uh in the in the camo i still have that one man and we we were reading from judges about the story of gideon and the story of getting who's this reluctant warrior like the angel lord appears to gideon and says hey you're gonna go fight the midianites and gideon's like What are you talking about? I'm the least of my family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the moment that, you know, the senior executive team is telling us how, you know, the sales team and the production team, you know, are like, they're not on the same page and they're blaming each other and they're pointing fingers at each other. The marketing team is saying, well, the sales isn't selling that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I'm not even the biggest and strongest guy in my whole family. You know, Midian is so much stronger, more powerful than Israel. Like, what are you talking about? I can't do that. And the angel continually assures Gideon that... And he says, some translation, it's... You know, it was... you are a mighty warrior and God is with you. And those are just such powerful words.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
In some translations, it's God is with you, mighty warrior. And it's Gideon is this reluctant warrior. And of course, he is empowered. He calls out to Israel. Thousands of people come to the call. He has thousands of Israelite warriors that have answered the call. And God says, that's too many. People aren't gonna believe in the miracle of this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So he like whittles it down to just a few hundred and Gideon goes and destroys the Midianites with just a few hundred warriors, you know, through the power of God. And so it was, we were reading that verse. And in fact, Andrew, Paul and I like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
During Hell Week, when in the darkest hour, like the second day, like Tuesday night, and probably the largest number of quitters, I remember quoting that verse to Andrew, him quoting it to me. In the middle of it? In the middle of it, yeah. Wow. I said, I told him, you're a mighty warrior. God is with you now. go get back under your boat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, so like those things are, those verses were super powerful to make it through. But even then, like I'm nervous. Like I didn't sleep at all, man. You know, prior to Hell Week, like most people probably didn't. You probably didn't before your first Hell Week. And what's crazy is you guys at 240 had like the worst Hell Week of all. I remember it was like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was going into SEAL Team 5 because I was TAD there before we classed up. Actually, maybe I was already an INDA. I can't remember. But I was scraping the ice. I scraped the ice off of my windshield.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And the sales team is saying, well, marketing's not actually setting us up for success. You got a bunch of finger pointing, a bunch of blame casting that we say, okay, let's talk about this concept of cover and move. And they said, hey, that's exactly what I need you to teach to my team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I remember just going. Well, 240, you guys had a huge amount of guys that got pneumonia. Yeah. I think it was a particularly miserable one. It certainly wasn't the June hell week that we had, which the water wasn't as cold. The weather was cold. It just meant we ran more, you know. but you definitely went through a tough hell week for sure in 240.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so when you got assigned to come back and that brown shirt, so you get a white shirt, you know, you got a white shirt, you make it through hell week, you get that brown shirt. I mean, this is a super coveted thing. We're all looking at, you know, you and, you know, the guys that have made it through like, oh man, those guys made it through hell week.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we're talking, you know, the vast majority of the the 70 to 80% of the people that don't make it to training quit during health week. And so when they took away your brown shirt and like sent you back, you know, as a white shirt. And I just remember, like, I was in awe, man, of like the attitude that you had. You were like, all right, this is what it is. Like, we're gonna do it, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm gonna go through this thing. I'm gonna be a team player for 241. I'm gonna tell them what I know. I'm gonna support the team. And, you know, we're all nervous, man. We've been up, you know, for nights on end. Everyone's kind of freaking out. We're reading these Bible verses. They're trying to like strengthen each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And right as they kick off, you know, they come into the tents and they have an amazing way I think I hadn't slept for easy 24 hours prior to that, just as I was able to kind of relax enough to like fall asleep for, you know, 10 minutes, right? They come in, all of a sudden the blank fire's going off, they'll fit machine guns and grenade stems are being thrown.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I remember running out there and we had instantly had quitters from the team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
that had been thinking about it it got to their head and they're they're already ringing the bell within minutes and we're running after the grinder we're running around and i remember them calling you out by name and getting and pulling you out of the class and uh and uh and then and then giving you your brown share back and now you got to support uh and it was it was one of the coolest things i ever saw man because there were so many people who would have been like no way am i doing that
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I just did, this is supposedly the toughest military training in the world. You're going to make me go through it again. And like, that's what you were willing to do. And you were a team player the entire time. And then even as a brown shirt rollback, man, you were checking on us. You were looking at us. You're like, hey guys, you know, you were just strengthening us, giving us some encouragement.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so it's really just the recognition that it's not about you, it's about the overall team and the overall mission. And that applies to your family. I mean, when you see your wife or your spouse, it's like, struggling or frustrated with the kids or something that's going on on the home front.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was freaking cool, man. And I remember later you gave me some photos of all of us just like, we look like just, you know, just... Just disaster, like wet, sandy, all like contorted on these socks. You know, three days in when we get like our first chance to sleep for 45 minutes or an hour or whatever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And, you know, but you were like taking photos for us, like just helping us out, looking out for us. And it was awesome, man. It just was a, it was like the consummate team player and the person that's going to put the mission first. And you were like, hey, they're telling me to do this. Cool, I'm going to do it. And even you were willing to go into that with such a great attitude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you could tell the instructor staff was like fired up by that. And, you know, the respect and admiration that they had for you to be willing to do that. And you were like, because I don't, how much you were, It wasn't immediate, right? I mean, you were running around the grinder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, so we were probably 45 minutes or an hour of solid physical beatdown. At this point, you probably are 100% convinced that you're going through the entire next five days of no sleep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I haven't thought about that in a long time. Yeah. You know what, though, Sean? To me, it was... Failure is the best teacher, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you can say, hey, okay, those school applications are taking a long time and you got a bunch of stuff on your plate. Why don't you let me just take that off your plate? I'll take that. I'll run with it. That's cover move in action. You can actually, you're working together as a team, mutually supporting one another in order to accomplish a mission and win.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that those are the things that I can't imagine that that helped you as a shooter and as an operator, you know, as teaching tactics, you know, down the road, you know, those kinds of lessons learned and the weight and pressure after all that you've been through, you know, weighing on you, but for, you know, you were always like exactly the kind of person that we wanted in the SEAL team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So like exactly the kind of person I wanted. I remember at one point the instructor staff, going through the whole week saying, like, who's not performing in your boat crew? Like, who's, you know, always trying to solicit, like, info. And I'd always be like, me, I'm not performing. You know, I wasn't going to throw guys on the bus or things like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But you start to realize, like, hey, they want good people to serve in the SEAL teams. And if you don't want somebody, if you wouldn't want somebody on your platoon, you know, if you wouldn't want to go to war with somebody, then that's... Like, you owe it to the SEAL teams to, like, these guys should be weeding out the program, right? That's what the program is actually for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think that was somebody, like, you were always an absolute standout performer, always somebody that put the team first. And, I mean, to me, like... I don't think that was ever a question in any of these truckers' minds. Everything I could say positive about you was always said, man, because you were a go-getter. You got things done. You're smart. You're capable. You're talented.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're innovative. You're a hard worker. You're a physical put-out guy all the time. You're absolutely the kind of guy that I wanted to serve in the SEAL teams with, that other SEALs you would want to serve with as well. Frankly, my hat's off to you, brother, because I was 26 years old, man. I was an old man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There were a couple of guys that were older than me, our leading petty officer and a couple of our non-commissioned officers. But... Man, I had 26 years of maturity experience for you to do that as an 18-year-old, to have the maturity to train and the discipline to actually train and to put out and to be able to make the attorney book. I don't think I could have done that at 18, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, I mean, that's, to me, And that's what I loved about the SEAL teams. It was always about the guys and the quality of the people that I got to serve with and guys like you, man. And that's what I love most about Buds is like, hey, we might be getting beat on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
This might be physically punishing, but we could look at each other and just laugh about how ridiculous this situation was or how funny it was or how much we were actually suffering. And that's the best of the SEAL teams, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think initially we weren't sure how that would apply in the civilian world, and it absolutely does. I think one that's harder to apply is what we call our fourth law of combat, and that's decentralized command. Decentralized command is obviously something you're familiar with being in the military. It just simply means that everybody leads.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I wanted to be on the West Coast, you know, just because I'd been stationed in San Diego. My friends were out there. I had spent some time on a ship during a midshipman cruise in Virginia Beach. And I just – I liked San Diego. You know, I'd gotten to know it better, and my closest friends were there. So I think I'd put West Coast SEAL teams. And I got server-selected – I say server selected.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I got selected for, I was going to be sent to SEAL Team 1. And, excuse me, the, so I got sent to SEAL Team 1 and, or I had orders to SEAL Team 1. And that was a problem for me because in their rotation, like, as you know, I put on Lieutenant in Buds. And so I was already a senior guy. What that was going to do was I was going to start as a one-time platoon commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I wouldn't have the chance of being an assistant platoon commander under my belt. And that was a problem. I was going to, like, instead of, you know, having a full workup cycle and deployment as an assistant platoon commander, which would give me some experience in the SEAL teams and give me some perspective. I just didn't think that was good for me. It wasn't good for the SEAL teams.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so luckily, I had some good friends. It was my same friend that was at SEAL Team 5 and several other friends that were there. They went in and talked to the executive officer and commanding officer at SEAL Team 5. And they pulled some strings for me and got the D-30 to cut me some new orders. So I went to SEAL Team 5 as an assistant patrol commander.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So even though I was a lieutenant, I got a chance to be a platoon commander. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I'm so thankful for my friends that were there and for the senior leaders that were there that pulled strings for me and made that happen and really opened some doors for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So we got a chance to go through and got a chance to serve with some of our mutual friends, Elliot from our BUDS class, who may be— Elliot may be the most senior, the most significantly wounded living SEAL, like through the GWAT era. Yeah. You know, who got wounded in Ramadi and TBI, you know, and lost his leg, wheelchair bound, like, you know, significant injuries.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But just an amazing guy, man, and such an awesome dude. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
um always love like stories from buds i i pull strings to get him over to seal t5 and try to stack the opportunities coming out of you know the 18 delta uh um combat medic course special forces combat medic course and our corpsman went to um but it was it was great to be there with elliot some of the guys that were in you know classes just just before us and and behind us we'll get into we'll get into deployment cycles and everything that happened but just real quick i mean when you
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
My first full call was to my dad. My dad and mom were praying for me the whole time and knew that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, just wanted to thank them for their love and support, you know, and all the prayers. And that was... I think my dad has since got, you know, disappeared, but he had a voicemail from me after Hell Week that I called and left for him, you know, too, as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think a lot of times when you talk to a leader that wants to control everything, they want to do everything, obviously, That doesn't work on the battlefield. And that's one of the strengths of the SEAL teams and special operations units. You've got thinking shooters.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But that was, it was a proud moment, man, and getting that, getting that trident. And you and I, you know, we didn't get pinned together because that was at SQT during the time, but... Um, I remember, remember well, Ty Woods, who, uh, was, you know, our instructor at, uh, steel qualification training that, uh, he probably, probably pinned your trident on his chest just like he did for me. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, as well, man, that we later lost in, in Benghazi. He was an awesome guy. Um, and, uh, yeah, that, that, That blood-pinning ceremony was something that we had a full-on Navy investigation on. I had to answer all these questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, and they were like, you know, this can't happen. This is hazing. And so an officer was like doing an investigation. And I was like, I wasn't hazing. Like, this is completely voluntary. This wasn't hazing in any way, shape, or form. Like, I saw that as a ritual. It was like, this is what I wanted to be a part of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I asked him, the investigating officer was like, hey, did you get your trident pinned on? He was like, well, that was a different time. Oh, shit, it was a seal? Yeah, I was like, that was a different time. I was like, there was no hazing whatsoever took place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I've fallen so far, Sean. I've stumbled as much as anyone out there. And I'm glad I had the foundation built in me. And by the way, man, I love that you share your faith with people. I think that's an incredible thing. I don't know how people... who have been through dark times in their life, make it through without faith, man. People ask me, how is it that you're doing okay?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, even going through buds together, when you were 18 years old, you're a smart, capable, talented individual that just because I'm the officer and I'm in charge, I need you to be able to step up and make calls. I need you to be able to solve problems. I need you to be able to move the team forward in a positive direction. I can't make all the calls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think knowing that there is a creator that's in charge of the universe that has all things planned out and has a plan for each one of us, right? That to me is everything. And knowing that you can screw everything up and all you have to do is simply just ask for forgiveness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and strive to follow the righteous path as best you can, knowing that we're all going to fall short of the mark, you know? But that's all it takes. And I think that to me is everything. And I think, thank God that was instilled in me at an early age. I didn't realize or fully appreciate that. I went to the public school. I went to a private school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
at a small like three-room log cabin schoolhouse until I was in like fifth grade. And then I went to public school in a small East Texas public school. And then before my junior, I transferred to a public school, or I'm sorry, a private Catholic school in the bigger town of Beaumont. It was about an hour away in Southeast Texas. And so, you know, it was,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The level of education there, I think, was going to open some more opportunities for me. It was probably easier to get accepted into the Naval Academy, you know, as a result of that, or one of the service academies. But it wasn't until I started going to school, and, you know, I was going to school, and the Catholic school was an outstanding school. We had a religious class every semester.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I was going to school with kids that had been in a religious class from kindergarten on. You know, and I remember, so this is my junior year, and this is my first ever, like, religious class, because in public school, we didn't have that. But I went to, you know, Sunday school every Sunday with the First Baptist Church of Woodville.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was involved in the youth group, and we were constantly, my dad would study the Bible and talk about it at home. It was constantly something that we referenced and talked about. And so I remember the teacher in high school, in this Monsignor Kelly High School, asking, like, in the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
in in the uh uh spiritual class they're like uh what is how did the israelites get to egypt and and i was like you know i just i was kind of looking around the room i was ready for somebody to jump in and i was like i was like i just raised my hand and and um And I thought, I talked about Joseph, the coat of many colors and, you know, his brother sold him into slavery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then, you know, he's, which is an amazing story from the Bible, right? Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers that are jealous of him. He goes, his brothers think he's dead. He goes to Egypt years later. There's a famine in the land of Canaan. His brothers bowed down before him and are asking for, you know, for food supplies. And, and, and,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
what he says to him is that you know what you use for good you know what you uh meant for evil god chose to to use for good and so all the israelites come and so they they uh and they start to become um you know populist in egypt they they eventually they slay 400 years of slavery uh that results from that in egypt until moses leads them out and i was kind of looking around the room like everyone knows the answer to that question and afterward people were like
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I can't, you know, if you're just sitting and waiting for me to tell you what to do, that doesn't work. So, That's a concept that's hard to get across in the civilian world. People say, well, I don't trust my team or, you know, they don't have as strong relationships. So we help them work to build those relationships. It's all based on the strength of relationships. It's built on trust.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
dude, like, how did you know that? And I was, like, halfway paying attention in, like, Baptist Sunday school, you know? Like, getting kicked out because I was bad and, you know, cutting up and punching people in the back of the head. But I realized, like, studying the Bible was – that had been ingrained in me. That's something my family did.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's something that we did in church and in my youth group, like opening the word, studying the word. And I'm so thankful for that foundation that was built in me. And there's times when I strayed very, very far from that. But I thank God that that always has brought me back to like, the truth, right? Always understanding that there's forgiveness for anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that all it takes, you know, is to recognize your own failures and flaws. And none of us are actually good enough, you know, to achieve righteousness on our own. And only through the blood of Jesus can we do that. And that's all it takes. So that to me is, I've shared that with many people when I talk about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, we don't need an openly secular organization at Echelon Front, but I think there's so many, foundations that are biblically rooted, right? When it talks to being humble, I mean, you know, you can't study scripture and not realize like abject humility is like continually the theme, you know, the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And that's throughout the scripture and particularly in the New Testament. But I think, you know, the idea that like, if we got to take ownership of our problems, like we're never going to actually be good enough. And that's, that's what prevents us from, you know, from achieving salvation. So that to me, I think to me, faith is everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think having that foundation that's, you know, that that's built in and, and study of the word. I try to be like the, the, Paul talks about the noble Bereans who, after he would preach to them in the synagogue, would study the Word to see if these things were so.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, right, you hear something in a sermon, you hear something from a pastor, you hear something from somebody in the world, we would actually search the Word, open up the Bible, study Scripture, make sure that that actually is the truth and that it's open for any of us to study and know. I just, you know, it's been really cool to hear about your spiritual journey.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I thank you for sharing that because I think for so many people out there, they're trying to find some answer, you know, in the secular world. They're trying to find, whether it's fame or fortune or money, you know, power, followers on social media, whatever it may be. And they're never going to find that, right? We all know that that doesn't lead to happiness.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
When people understand not just what to do, but why they're doing it, you know, what we call commander's intent in the military, the purpose and the goal and the end state. But oftentimes now we start to see leaders in the civilian world, they release the authority, they give people ownership and they kind of let people run with stuff. The problem is they get too detached. They get too far away.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It is the, and I think being grounded in that By the way, have you ever been to the Palace of Versailles? I don't think so. So the Palace of Versailles, I got a chance to go to France this summer just before the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Oh, man. And I did a go-ruck event there. We did the 80-kilometer ruck, you know, about 50 miles.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was brutal, man, 19-hour, get some evolution. But awesome to do that with a go-ruck team. But we went to the Palace of Versailles, and my wife and I took our kids there. And we had a nanny there that came and helped us with the kids, and she did some great reporting there. And the Palace of Versailles is probably the greatest monument to...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
the idea that money and power and fame and fortune cannot buy you happiness. It is the most magnificent place you could ever go, like Golden Gates. And I mean, this was the seat of power, right, for the French kingdom. From Louis XIV, who was the Sun King at the height of France's power, one of the most powerful people in the entire world, you know, all the way through Louis XVI, who eventually
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, he and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were led to the guillotine. And I think one of the reasons that happened is because I don't think they had a clue what was going on outside the palace, man. It is, I think they were, they're surrounded by people who, you can walk around these amazing gardens and this incredible, just ornate palace that would have just eclipsed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's mind-blowing to think about the power and fame and fortune and influence and, you know, that was going on. This is the reality show, right? TV at a time that everybody wants to be a part of. And you just sense that it's probably the most miserable place you could be, right? You can't trust anybody. Everybody's got their agenda. Everyone's trying to undermine the other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think it's just a living monument to that. I think it's worth going and worth seeing for that. But it's, again, just leading us back to the faith of like, what buys you happiness, right? It's the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. And only through recognizing that,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
my own failures abject failures and flaws and weaknesses, you know, can I actually Find salvation, you know through through through Jesus and I hope that's something that that others can turn to and see because That is that is how you find peace in this world I'm not like extremely wealthy or anything, but it does but you know, I'm working towards it and so
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, those are great questions, man. I think Abraham... was very wealthy. I had massive herds. So did Isaac, so did Jacob. Joseph became second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, you know, the most powerful empire of the time, you know, and the day. I think... I think God—I mean, Job was given tremendous wealth, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so it's always a balance, right? It's a dichotomy and you're getting pulled in different directions. So you want to be detached as a leader. You want to step back. You want to let your people step up and lead and run with a plan and execute the plan, give them ownership of the plan. But you can't be so detached. You can't be so detached that you, don't know what's going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's one of the things that was taken away from him when Satan was trying to get him to curse God. So I think there's—I think God— I think God gives us... I think as long as you remember that it belongs to God. It belongs to God. And so you can choose that to do good with it, or you can choose it to be selfish with it. I think God has given you the means to help people. And I think...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I kind of like Dave Ramsey's take on it. You know, when you have, like, the—you can't help anybody else out, right? If you came to me and you're like, hey, Leif, I'm having trouble paying my bills, and, you know, I might lose my house here if I can't pay my mortgage. And if I don't have my own finances in order, like, I can't help you. I can't do anything for you. So, like, I need to—if—
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If I have my finances in order, then I have the ability to actually have the means to help you. It enables me to help other people. So I think when it becomes the object of worship as like, no, no, I want more money. It's money for the sake of money. I think that's where it becomes a problem. And when you know that it's all... man, it's all like, it's just all dust, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You can't take any of it with you. I think when people kind of hold that up, it's like, this is what success looks like. I think you do have to be careful that it's, there is... You know, I think that Jesus talks about the Jewish culture of the day was like, hey, if someone was poor, well, that means that God, like, you know, they did something bad. If someone was rich, then God had blessed them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They did something good. And Jesus threw that on its head. Like, that thinking is not true at all. In fact, when his disciples had asked him, you know, when he encountered a blind man, you know, who sinned, this man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither. This man is blind so that God could be glorified. And then he healed them, you
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So, I mean, I think it just throws out the idea that like, you know, bad things can happen to us at any time, right? All of this can be, you know, can be given and taken away. And I think as long as you use the means that are given to you for good, you know, to help those in need, to help others in need. And I love what you're doing that, man, with like the veterans advocacy groups.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and bringing people into the fold, like not working yourself, right? So you can actually help people and get them into the fold so they can get taken care of and get the benefits they deserve, you know, through the VA. I just think, I think those things, using the platform that you've been given for good, man, like that's, that's, you've been given this platform for a reason, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
God has placed you in that position for a reason. Yeah, yeah. And you can choose to use it for good or ill, right? And when you share your faith with people, when you try to help those in need and try to actually reach out to those that are struggling you in hard times, like you're using it for good, man. And that's what I think has been so awesome about seeing your success.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're too attached from the challenges and problems. And then you can't actually support your team. You can't guide your team. You can't actually step in and help them. You know, if you're not even familiar with the challenges or you can't see when they're getting off track and you maybe need to, you know, help redirect them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think there's definitely something to that, man, right? I mean, if you become uncancelable, you know, like where somebody, they're trying to put the pressure on you, you know, and you could say like, well, I'm not going to do that, you know, or hey, I'm going to, oh, yeah, that might be a big paycheck.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
but I'm not actually going to take that sponsorship because I don't want you dictating what I get to say.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I think that's what's been awesome, man. That's what's driven the success of your show, man. I mean, there's no question in my mind about that. You get to talk to people you want to talk to. You don't pull punches. You say what you want to say. And not that you're not smart about it or professional about it, but I think there's –
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think the self-censorship, I think you were talking about with Joe, you know, on the Rogan, Joe Rogan experience was like, that's the worst of all, right? Like, oh, I shouldn't say that because someone doesn't want to say that. I mean, I just think it's, I think that's the kind of thing where I think there's enough people
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
pushing back on things now where that pendulum is starting to swing back, where people are like, yeah, we've had enough of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle. is the passage that Jesus talks about. Now, there's some controversy about whether or not he's talking about an actual geographic place or an actual needle himself. And then he was asked about it. His disciples were asked about it. He's saying it's not impossible. And there clearly are many, many, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
many examples of wealthy people, including Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy man that Jesus was laid in his tomb. Nicodemus, who was one of the Pharisees, and Jesus called him the teacher in Israel. And John, where he comes to Jesus by night and asks, like, you know, how do you get to heaven? You know, how do you be born again? And so those are things that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
These were believers that were wealthy and positioned to power and used their power for good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I struggle with it too, man. I struggle with it too. You know, as we started to gain some success as well. But I mean, the cool thing is like, as you're, I mean, you've got a growing business, right? You're employing people. Like you're creating livelihoods for people. You're, I think that's huge, man. That builds our economy. Yeah, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're promoting, you know, the sponsors and those companies, you know, that employ people. I mean, those things all have huge impact. So you can't lose track of that. I think we live in a society where you kind of get demonized, right, of like success. And you shouldn't be apologetic for it. I think you should be, again, confident, not cocky, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like you're confident knowing like, hey, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is, God's given me the opportunity to do this. I'm going to use this platform for good. And then I'm going to help people in need. If I see someone in need, I can help them. Cool. I'm going to absolutely help them. And I'm going to use that, the means that I've been given for good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think also, again, knowing that ultimately our faith is not in money or savings or even our firearm stash, as much as I hate to admit that in our house. Our faith is in the almighty creator of the universe who's in charge of all things, man. And even if he lost everything, like Job did, he's still on the throne. He still has a plan. And that's...
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Pretty fast, pretty fast usually. I think initially some people will think, I guess I can put it this way. The biggest excuse is that, I think the biggest excuse that any of us give ourselves, me included, is that it's harder for me than it is for other people. And so, yeah, Sean's maybe experienced some things on the battlefield. Well, how does that really apply to me?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, it was awesome. Walked across the corner deck there at SEAL Team 5. And we were in the old kind of Quonset huts, you know, then. And we ended up building like a new building that was all kind of fancy. And some of those old Quonset huts have been out there since the World War II, you know, underwater demolition team days. But it was awesome. I knew a bunch of people at SEAL Team 5.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was great to be a new guy there. There was a bunch of pie pitters there. There were people that were just, they had just come back. I checked in in, We came back from Alaska, our winter warfare training trip, which I did in August of 2003, which was actually miserable. It was like 40 degrees and raining on us, you know, for a lot of the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But we had a great time up there, you know, on the, awesome fishing. And we came back. Excuse me. We came back from that, and I immediately went on like an elk hunting trip with my dad and my brother. We went up to the mountains of Colorado and went and pursued some elk with our bows.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then I came in, I checked into SEAL Team 5, and the guys were just, a couple of people had just come back, but the team was deployed. So Iraq war had just kicked off. And so, you know, SEAL Team 5 had taken over from Team 3 that had done kind of the initial takedowns of the oil platforms off the coast. And then SEAL Team 5 had really gotten into the mix with the DAs, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The direct action missions, the capture kill raids. And they were... They started using vehicles and jumping in, you know, using those vehicles as, like, their mobility element. I think they initially had to borrow vehicles from the National Guard unit because we didn't have the capability in the SEAL teams at the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so that became, like, I came back, and the guys that were coming back from that deployment started trickling back, you know, over the... in the fall were highly experienced. I mean, they had more experience than any SEAL unit since Vietnam at that point. So it was really cool to learn from them and talk about the real-world experiences that they were getting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was just a lot of great mentors, a lot of open-up notebooks and asking a lot of questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Or, hey, you've done some things in your life and you have some good lessons learned, but that doesn't really apply to me. I have a different situation. Instead of keeping an open mind, instead of saying, oh, what can I learn from Sean? What has he experienced? How can that apply to my world? What lesson can I take and apply to that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was very intimidating, man. When I graduated BUDS, you know, when you and I graduated BUDS together, you know, we felt like, hey, we just graduated BUDS. Like, you know, we're ready to go take on the world, right? Then you start going into SQT, SEAL qualification training. You start getting some of the fundamentals of close quarters combat and land warfare and, you know, maritime operations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I know absolutely nothing. And then I deployed to combat, you know, I deployed to Iraq. And when I was leading my first combat missions, like I know absolutely nothing at all. Like it's even less than nothing. So it definitely was very humbling. It was cool though, because there was, I think just realizing that, hey, I can learn from these guys. Let me talk to them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Let me understand what they know. I think everyone was trying to get into the war effort. Everyone wanted a chance to go forward and be in the fight. For me, right off the bat, Our very first training block was the assaults block. And so we started going through and learning that and doing our close quarters combat. And then we did our visit board search and seizure block shortly thereafter that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was... That was, I had had a bunch of experience boarding ships, as we talked about, you know, in the Persian Gulf. So I'd climb down these ships onto a, you know, climb down the Jacob's Ladder, right? The rope ladder and the plastic rungs that you lower, you know, from the side of the ship. I've climbed up and down those things a thousand times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And in my very first VBSS training block, we're doing some hook and climbs from the 11-meter ribs, you know, from the special boat team detachment that took us out. We're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego, and we're boarding the duty oiler, right? It's like 800-foot long, a U.S. Navy service ship. This is the ship that's refueling the Navy warships and the carriers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And before Jocko and I wrote the book Extreme Ownership, I'd have a lot of that. Businesses would say things like, well, how are you going to translate this to the business world? They would say that over and over again. Tell me how you're going to translate these combat leadership lessons to the business world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so we're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego, and we're doing the hook and climbs, you know, climbing up that little caving ladder just as you've done. And I remember I was about to walk off the— I was like the first down on the ladder to climb back down onto the rib. And we'd had a guy that was driving the boat. They clearly had a new coxswain at the helm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like he was somebody who was having a tough time, you know, and you remember what it's like when you're climbing up that little, you know, paving ladder, right? You're getting, your boat's going, you know, left and right, like, you know, or moving out, hauling out from the ship. Like it's treacherous as you're trying to climb up the 25 foot freeboard and you're bouncing up and down the waves.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so we kind of complained about it. We thought, this guy can't drive the boat. And people were kind of complaining about it. But no one said anything. I didn't say anything. And so I'm about to climb down. So now the caving ladder, we climbed up. We cleared the ship. We took down the bridge. And so now we're going to do another run.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And they threw the Jacob's ladder over the side, this big, heavy rope ladder with the plastic rungs. This is now admin, right? We're just climbing down back onto the rib. So I'm climbing down this thing. And right before I go, one of the training detachment instructors that's running the training says, don't be scared, Babin. He made some comment like that. I'm like, whatever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, I just, I just like, like, I was like, man, I've done this a thousand times, dude. I walked out. So I get down to the bottom of the ladder, right at the waterline. The waves are going up and down. The rib comes in as the ribs about to hold off on the side of the ship.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I go to step on, or as the rib comes in, I'm about to go step onto the ship and the rib hauls out, probably 10 or 12 feet from the side of the ship. And I went right down in between the rib and the ship. And it would have been fine if I had a positive flotation on. We went and did our dip test, the combat turning tank, you know, just like we're supposed to, we have positive flotation on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, if not, I'd have been 2,000 feet on the bottom, you know, off the coast of San Diego out there. But it was, I go, I got my leg wrapped up in the painter line. Oh, shit. So now I'm getting dragged upside down underwater by this 800-foot-long vessel. And, I mean, I didn't know what to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, this was, they're going like 12 knots, which is a lot of pressure, you know, if you're underwater underwater. and my leg is like suspended, but my body's like underwater. I got my helmet body armor, you know, radio, all that stuff on me. Luckily we had a weapon shape, not a real weapon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think once they read Extreme Ownership, they realized that the hardest part about combat leadership is it's not about planning, executing missions under fire. It's not about maneuvering troops with bullets flying over your head. The hardest part about combat leadership is
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Cause I ditched that, you know, as soon as I could, I was trying to get to my, you know, my little scuba bottle, the heat bottle that got just ripped away by the force of the water. So I couldn't get to that. The rib comes in and just, and they're trying to rescue me and they just smashed me between the rib and the ship. And
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Luckily, if I'd had a pro-tech on, a plastic helmet, I'd have been killed. Almost certainly would have smashed my head. I had my Kevlar on, and so the boat smashed my nose. It just kind of like filleted my nose open. But... the rib realized they can't help me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So they just kind of hauled off and they were sitting probably 200 yards off the, you know, off the quarter, just kind of just no one knew what to do. The guys on the ladder didn't know what to do. Um, and I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm trying to reach the water. Every time I tried to get my hand, I would just get ripped right back down by the force of the wave. So, um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And within probably, you know, it felt like an hour, right? It probably was two or three minutes. But I very quickly realized, like, I'm not going to survive this, man. This is over. Holy shit. And it just happened like that. And it was – I just remember thinking, what a – Stupid way to go, man. This is like, this is so dumb. You know, I've done this a thousand times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And luckily some heads up guys on the ladder, my teammates above me on the ladder, they realized, you know, climb back. They climbed back up the Jacob's ladder and everyone was kind of just wondering what to do. And they started, one guy was like, hey, let's hold this thing. And they started holding it in my hand. And they lifted me. I mean, that was a massive feat of strength.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And very heads up, you know, for them to do, because it was a contingency that they hadn't really even thought about. And so they started hauling the ladder in, and as it lifted me up out of the water, the painter rope popped free off my leg, and I floated down the side of the ship.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I mean, I could see just blood pouring down my face. The rib, so the rib driver, the lead meter rib comes over to pick me up. I just float right down the side of the ship. I'm kind of in the stern wash, you know, as they come pick me up. And their faces were white. I mean, they were like eyes this big. I must've just looked- I thought you were dead. Blood just pouring everywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I probably looked especially crazy, Sean, because I had a gigantic smile on my face. I was laughing because I was so happy to be alive, man. And I did not think I was going to live through that. And I was stoked. And actually, Elliot Miller was the corpsman on that, man. Elliot treated me and was keeping pressure on my face, took me to Balboa. You know, they got me stitched up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
getting a diverse group of people with different skill sets and different agendas and different perspectives to work together as a team to accomplish a mission. And obviously that applies to any team in any situation. It's people. It's actually getting people to actually work together as a team, put their own egos and their own agendas aside and put the mission first.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I sat out for another couple weeks till the stitches healed, you know, and got our go plats on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I don't know if I did a great job. I'll tell you, I learned, I made a lot of mistakes. And as I said earlier, like mistakes are the best teacher. And I think so many of the, you know, when you ask me like, what are you looking for in a leader? Humility is number one, because I think so many of the mistakes that I made, particularly early on,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
where when I was really trying to prove myself, you know, when I was like, I need to show people that I'm a competent leader and I need to show people that I know what I'm doing and I'm in charge of this or, you know, and I made all kinds of mistakes like that. You know, instead of actually what you need to do is show people that you're humble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
What you need to do is show people that you can listen. What you need to do is show people that you can lean on the most experienced people. We were lucky. We had a super squared away crew in my first platoon, 155 Bravo platoon, and, you know, They were awesome, man. Like, it was a great crew of guys. We had a stellar crew of new guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we had some experienced guys that had just come back from combat. And it was... And we had a... We had a, our platoon was tough as nails, man, because our physical training coordinator was Dave Goggins, who was- Oh, shit. He ran all our training, and Dave was exactly who you see Dave today, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was, you could always tell our platoon, because no one had any skin on their shins, because we were constantly climbing ropes, doing hundreds of pull-ups and running like crazy, and he organized all the PTs, and it was good, man. It was a good time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We were all fighting to get a chance to go to Iraq, and we learned that we were going to get surged forward. They were going to combine. We were going to be part of SEAL Team 3's deployment. So they took some of the platoons from Team 5 and split them up. And so the plan was to go half of that to Iraq and then half to the Pacific Theater to run J-sets with our partners.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and, uh, so we knew we were going to go Iraq, uh, first of all, and then all of a sudden the, uh, you know, SEALs got handed the personal security detail mission for the top five interim Iraqi officials. I don't know. Did you get, did you get tied up in that for your, uh, first of all?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that's what makes the SEAL teams great. Certainly the best units in the SEAL teams have that. They put the team and the mission before anything else. And it's not about them as an individual, right? It's about the team. They're going to sacrifice for the team. They're going to sacrifice for their brothers on that team.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Well, I can't tell you that. I mean, having done a bunch of that on that first deployment for a few weeks, And then on our second deployment to Ramadi, just seeing, you know, so much of that war was a defensive war, right, for those guys that were, you know, when the enemies, 70% to 80% of attacks are IEDs, you know, roadside bombs, and when there's nothing to shoot back at, you know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you don't even know who placed it there, and you're losing guys, and you're hauling your dead and wounded comrades out of the street.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There was nothing, I think, more powerful, you know, for a morale booster than, you know, for those conventional units to know the soldiers and Marines that were out there in the streets running those convoys, knowing that they had frogmen on the high ground, snipers that had their backs, you know, and were covering for them so they could move.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think it was phenomenal to be able to do that and support those guys. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was just game changer. If you think about every bad guy you eliminated, right, is more soldiers and Marines are coming home to their families as a result. And I don't think we did near enough of it. And some of the people that criticized us later of like, that's not a special operations mission.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I was like, man, you know what you're talking about, man. These are Americans that are getting killed. Like whatever we can do to try to help win this thing and help more of them come home to their families is what we're going to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I think that when people realize that that's how these concepts translate, it's just about getting people to work together as a team, to mutually support one another, to accomplish a strategic goal, that applies to everything, everywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That's awesome, man. That's outstanding. And I think you, sometimes, you know, when you think what it's all about and, like, you know, all this loss of life and, you know, friends that we lost and families that have been destroyed, you know, in the wake of it. And even those guys that are seriously wounded as well, right? Lives are changed and altered forever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It's really good to remember that, man. It's good to remember the impact of that. I think it's a little bit like that. You know, it's kind of like it's a wonderful life, right, with – with George Bailey there and getting a chance to see like, you know, what it would have been like if you didn't do that stuff, right? And I think it's a good reminder, man, of the impact that it has.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it's just, it's so much bigger than us. Like for me, like I was gonna do everything in my power always, right, to help try to bring as many Americans home as we could, do everything we could to do as much damage to the enemy as we could. And I think that's just an obligation that we all have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So for me, like it was, I was lucky enough, we got assigned that security detail mission and the team right before us had been given it. And man, that was not what we wanted, as you remember. But I think Blackwater came in with like a bid. It was like $100 million per guy. And the Bush administration said, negative, that's too expensive. Seals, you got it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But I think seeing that like, two of those guys had been assassinated, in the months prior to the SEAL teams taking over it. And so when this is like a no-fail mission, we have to keep these five interim Iraqi government officials alive. I love one of the guys that passed down to me, you know, for the previous SEAL team said, you know, we know there's bad guys looking at us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We know they're going to try to, you know, they're going to try to take us out at some point. Our whole goal is just to make them say not today. Not today. They look at us, not today. And we're going to be, you know, we're going to be a hard target. They're going to look at us, not today. We'll try somewhere else. We'll go hit some softer targets somewhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
and uh and i thought that was something that always stuck with me um and uh and and the seals did that amazingly well i kept all those guys alive um it was frustrating for me as a as a i got to go out with the detail uh every once in a while but most of the time i was assigned to the tactical operations center so i'm in there as the as the liaison officer um you know just tracking their movements and kind of setting up their logistics um
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We do have people that push back. We'll come into a company. I was with a company a few weeks ago and they were, there was half the room of several hundred leaders were female executives. And these lady executives, some of them were pretty skeptical.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
not what I wanted to do, but it was a job that needed to be done. And I felt like I was probably the best guy, you know, to be able to do it for my platoon and help them and support them. Learned a ton, you know, about passing information back to the TOC and how they can best support you. And luckily I had a great executive officer who sent me out. He tasked 12 of us, a bunch of us from,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
uh, you know, from SEAL Team 5, uh, SEAL Team 8, uh, got a chance to go, uh, go and, and, uh, be a part of, um, some sniper operations up at Samara supporting the, uh, the big red one, 1st Infantry Division up there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, you know, didn't see a lot of, got shot at a few times, kind of small little teams kind of, you know, going through the city, little four, six-man teams and climbing up on rooftops and trying to do the sneaky frogman stuff. It was, it was pretty fun. You know, we engaged a few guys. I think we had one confirmed kill from that and,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
you know, a few problems, but we definitely disrupted the IDs that were being laid and the mines were being put in the street. And it also gave me an appreciation, you know, obviously I love the SEAL teams, man. And I'm so proud of the training that we went through and the guys that we served with. But when I flew up to Samara, And it was funny because we left Baghdad. We had 12 guys with us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
It was like 82 degrees on the tarmac in Baghdad. We landed Samara after a couple other stops. It's nighttime. It was 39 degrees. I had five guys with no warmies. Yeah, man. And it was like, so we're trying to piece together this stuff. We're living in this like burned out, you know, building.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I didn't realize, you know, our guys are complaining about, you know, Baghdad and they're eating at the Al Rashid, you know, hotel with ice sculptures and stuff. And I remember jumping in a, you know, we're rolling around these up-armored vehicles and, you know, and it was a lot of times in and out of the green zone. Obviously, there was dangers. I mean, people were trying to attack the guys.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I'm not saying the risks were limited, but I remember sitting in the cab of a big like five-ton truck There's like, you know, quarter-inch steel plates welded on the back. They didn't even have doors on the cab. It was an Arkansas National Guard unit. And they're giving us a ride from the airfield over to like in the downtown city center where there's an ODA team. We were going to stay with them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm talking to this, you know, Arkansas National Guard soldier. I was like, man, you're kind of hanging it out up here. He's like, oh, man, this baby. He's like, this baby's eating about 14 RPGs at this point. Yeah, she's my good old charm. And I was just like, man, here we are. Like, these dudes are out here roughing it, right? They're in the fight. They're getting attacked all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They don't have near the equipment that we have. They don't have near the training that we have. And that to me was like, I'm going to do everything I can to help every American that's on the ground here in every way that I possibly can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
They told me afterward, I was pretty skeptical about how this applies to me, how we were going to take these leadership concepts and apply them in our world. And And they came up and said, this absolutely applies. We need more of this. And so I think once people are just willing to open their mind, they realize that every problem that you face in life is a leadership problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Was it this platoon? It was the next platoon. So he stayed in that same platoon. I rotated to a different platoon in SEAL Team 3. We ended up getting rotated out of Iraq, so we went up to Samara for like three weeks. Then we came back, did our turnover, and then we did the relief in place between the squadrons. And so we got sent to the Pacific Theater.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So we went around doing the J-sets with the Royal Thai SEALs and the Republic of Korea SEALs and And, excuse me, we spent a little time in Okinawa. You know, just, I got to see a different theater, got to train a little bit, spent a bunch of time in Guam, surfing and partying. Nice. And basically, we just trained like madmen the whole time and got in really good shape.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And we're itching for a chance to go back. You know, so I came back with SEAL Team 5. And luckily, my commanding officer at SEAL Team 5 at the time, he said, you're going to SEAL Team 3. And I was so pissed about that, Sean. Like, I was like, these are my guys. I want to take over this platoon. I want to be their platoon commander. And, you know, he was detached from this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he said, look, you're already senior. It's important that you'll be six months ahead in the workup cycle, you know, that you deploy so that you'll be eligible, you know, for promotion down the road. And, like, this is best for your career path. And I was like, I pitched a fit about it, man. I was like, are you kidding me, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, I was kind of the argumentative pushback type, and he was like, nope, it's happening. You're going to SEAL Team 3. And thank God he did that, man, because I love those guys at SEAL Team 5. They were awesome and still some of my closest friends in the world. And they relieved us in Ramadi. But thank God I got a chance to go serve in Task Unit Bruiser in SEAL Team 3.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And so I showed up at the end of that deployment. I came back, did a little, you know, got a little bit of a leave and then went straight to SEAL Team 3, checked in as the platoon commander, got assigned as Charlie Platoon. We heard about this guy, Jocko Willink, who was our platoon, our Task Unit Commander. He was in charge and I had heard about Jocko. I'd never seen Jocko.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Thank you, Sean. That means a ton to me. That means so much coming from you. And I'm so proud of you and your success and the powerful voice that you have been for so many great stories and how you've represented, you know, as a teammate, how you represent the SEAL teams, how you represent the veteran community. And it's great to reconnect with you. It's been way too long.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I didn't know anything about Jocko. What did you hear about him? I heard he was pretty intense. I heard he was a—my platoon chief, Tony Afrati, was a phenomenal, phenomenal SEAL. And I think probably one of the best SEAL chiefs that—one of the best platoon chiefs that the SEAL teams has ever produced.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Like, phenomenal battlefield leader. Wow. I'm talking like, hey, we're taking massive fire from that building across the street. Give me two guys on me. Let's go. Wow. And I'm like, he is absolutely the guy that you want in a gunfight, you know? And so he was like, you know, he had a reputation. Tony, everyone loved Tony, been around for a long time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And he'd been busted down like, you know, multiple times for, you know, shenanigans. Yeah. You know, just old school, you know, teams. And so here he is in the platoon chief. He's like, trust me, Jocko is the one guy that we want as our tasking commander. I was like, all right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Um, and then when, uh, so when Jocko, Jocko had been the Admiral's aide, um, so he got assigned as the Admiral's aide and he gets, he, he comes over. And when I met him for the first time, you know, Seth Stone, our brother from, uh, you know, from Bud's, he was the Delta platoon commander. So we were, we were platoon commanders together.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We had a bunch of guys from our Bud's class in there, you know, as well. I knew a ton of these guys. I've been deployed with SEAL Team 3 just before this. So I, I got to meet Chris Kyle and some of the other guys, you know, just, just prior to that, they'd been in,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
in Baghdad doing a bunch of cyber ops on, you know, Haifa Street and supporting the Fallujah offensive, you know, that went down while we were deployed, you know, in the fall of 2004. And so now we're here in the spring of 2005, standing up the task unit, and so Jocko shows up, and I was like, man, this dude looks like an axe murderer. He doesn't smile at us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Your frustrations with your spouse, your frustrations with your kids, your friction points in the community, the frustration you have with your boss or the people on your team for not doing what you... want them to do, or the people outside of your immediate team that you depend on for support, these are all leadership problems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He just walks up like just mean mugs like, hi, I'm Jocko. Like no smile whatsoever and like just walks away. And, dude, you remember Stoner, like, you know, who's an emotional guy. Man, I love Stoner so much. And he was like, that dude hates me, man. I can see it. You know, he's like, and I was like, hey, man, listen, I hear he's the guy that we want. I was like, let's, we knew he trained jujitsu.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, we knew he just got his black belt. You know, he's a big jujitsu guy. Like, we knew he had a ton of operations. You know, he'd come from SEAL Team 7 as a platoon commander. He had a bunch of operations that he'd done. And so he probably had as much experience as anybody in the team at that point. And so I was like, hey, man, come on. Let's work hard. Let's train jiu-jitsu.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And after a couple months, like, yeah, Seth and Jocko ended up being, like, super close. So, in fact, I think, you know, it was – Seth was probably the little brother that Jocko never had, you know, to Jocko. But Jocko was like – He set the tone for our entire task unit. We had an awesome crew of pipe hitters in there, man. They were excellent. They were just coming back from Iraq.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
A lot of experience. You know, Chris Kyle was our lead sniper point man, and he had a ton of experience coming from Fallujah, coming from Haifa Street, some of the other places in Baghdad. And then the new guys that we got in were studs too, man. You know, we sent them to schools. It was an awesome team. And, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But Jocko really set the tone for our entire team and of like, hey, right away he was like, right away he was like, we're not tasking a Bravo, we're tasking a bruiser. Interesting. So, you know, we had three task units, ABC, right? Alpha Bravo Charlie and the phonetic alphabet. And I was like, I thought that was weird for like 24 hours, like task unit bruiser.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then like 24 hours later, we're like, we're task unit bruiser. So like, it was actually, I learned later, this is something that he got from A book by a U.S. Army retired colonel named David Hackworth called The Bout Face. And if you haven't read this book, it is a phenomenal, phenomenal book.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Hackworth joined the Army when he was a—he lied on his paperwork and enlisted when he was 17 to try to make it into World War II, just missed World War II, but was brought up through the ranks. as, you know, I'd learned from all his mentors who had just, you know, defeated the Germans and Japanese in World War II.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think once we think about those problems as leadership problems, then we can start to apply leadership to the point of fruition, as the Marine Corps would say, to get those problems solved. But you see that what might seem like a hopeless problem actually is a solvable problem. Interesting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And then he served in Korea and was eventually, you know, commissioned as an officer, made it up to Colonel, multiple deployments to Korea, multiple deployments to Vietnam. I think he was the, when he died, he died in the early 2000s. I think it might have been while we were deployed to Iraq that first time. And I think he was the, he was the,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
The highest, the most decorated, like, living soldier at the time. Wow. I mean, like, crazy, crazy awards. But, like, they call him, like, Mr. Infantry. And so much of, he changed the names of his units.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah. For what? To give them, like, a personality.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
in that platoon the culture was massively strong you know in in our platoon charlotte platoon adult platoon obsessed platoon you know and the entire task in it and uh you know there's two 60-man steel platoons and a five-man headquarters element the jock was in charge of that we started out with and and he set the tone right from the beginning like we're tasking a bruiser we're gonna work harder than everybody else we're gonna train harder than everybody else
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We're going to be ready for the worst case scenarios, you know, on the battlefield. And that was the culture of our team. And what's interesting about Jocko is you look at him and he's got this like super stern kind of look to him. But he actually, and even though he didn't smile at us for the first couple of months that we worked together, In fact, the first time, we were all training jiu-jitsu.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We'd come in at 5 o'clock in the morning and train jiu-jitsu. He'd lay mats out in the high bay at SEAL Team 3. It was mandatory for all the officers, and we had a bunch of enlisted guys that would come in and train, too.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you could tell us at officer's call, you know, the morning meeting, because you'd say, you know, if you said, like, hey, Leif, or hey, Seth, like, everyone would kind of turn their head, like... their whole body because their necks are all like jacked up because we're like cranking on each other and hurting each other and everyone's going just full bore level 19 berserker mode.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If you're my boss and you're micromanaging me, and I'm feeling like, Sean, I just need to get off my back, I'm being micromanaged, and... I feel like I'm in a hopeless situation. Well, Sean doesn't trust me. What can I do about that? He just needs to back off and trust me and let me do my job. But if I realize that actually, I control that situation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But the first time that I realized that Jocko was like actually, you know, not super serious all the time. Like I'm demoing, he's like demoing a jujitsu move at five o'clock in the morning. We're in the high bay. He's like, he's like, Babin, get over here. You know, he's like, grab my hand. Yeah. my other hand, my other hand. And he's like, bow to your sensei, bow to your sensei.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I'm like, wait, that's Napoleon Dynamite. He's quoting Rex Quando from Napoleon Dynamite, but he's doing it with a straight face. And he's not like, he doesn't even smile. And I'm like, okay, this dude's joking around. So like, that was the first time I got to see, you know, Jocko, who's totally, like totally jokes around, you know, like, and is obviously professional when he needs to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But what, I think what Jocko did for us was, I think channel, like, aggression and guys that wanted to go get after it into, like, he... He really taught me to be what we call, and I just call him the silent leader. That's what good leadership looks like. You would look at someone like Jocko and think, Jocko's in charge. Jocko's a prior enlisted SEAL.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Jocko's got more combat experience than anybody else here, so he's going to dictate everything and run everything and tell you what to do. And he did the complete opposite. He said, hey, here's the goal. Why don't you come up with a plan and tell me how you want to do it? And it was the first time that I saw like, we'd roll out on operations. Well, he doesn't say anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
He's letting the team run it. So I realized that's what I need to do as a leader, is let my team step up and lead. And so when my team is leading, now I can look up and out, right? Every leader should be trying to look up and out. down the road. So instead of me solving the immediate tactical problem, I'm thinking about the next step or the next step or the next step beyond that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You're thinking about the long-term strategic problems down the road. And that's what every leader should be trying to do. And Jocko also, he used what we call the indirect approach, which is instead of saying, hey, listen, You know, I had one platoon under my belt, didn't really have, I had a handful of combat operations. I had zero DA missions, right? Capture kill raids at that point, zero.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Seth had done a couple of them. You know, I'd done a handful of sniper operations, but I didn't have any, I didn't really have any experience. And, you know, but instead of saying, you know, for us, when the training detachment instructors, who obviously drive a very high standard of performance, when they would say things like, Hey, you guys are good to go. You met the standard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, we're out here at land warfare. Okay, your patrol's good to go. Hey, your immediate action drills when react to contract and, you know, those are good to go. Hey, you guys can take it back to the camp. Instead of Jocko saying, like, you knuckleheads aren't as good as you think you are. Combat's harder than you think it is. You know, we're going to keep pushing the standard even higher.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We're going to do this again. He actually just called us over and he said, hey, Leif Stoner, do you think we're ready for the worst case scenario on the battlefield? And we looked at each other and we're like, no, man, no, let's do another run. Let's do another run after that. Let's do three more runs. And it was us doing it. If we just said yes, he would have been cool. Sounds good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Let's go back to the camp. But he just, he would ask us an earnest question, right? A question that he wanted the answer to and let us reveal the truth of ourselves. And I think it's such a powerful leadership concept instead of, you know, this works on your kids, right? This works with your spouse, with members of your community, with your team at work, anywhere in life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
If I take extreme ownership of that situation and realize if what I'm feeling is micromanaged, you're asking me questions about what's going on. Well, that's because you care about the situation. And you don't have enough information. You need some more information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
When you can ask someone a question and allow them to reveal the truth to themselves instead of trying to just bash them over the head with the truth. Because what good is telling people the truth if they don't listen?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
But when you can ask someone a question like that, now it's not Jocko saying do two more runs and everyone's complaining about it. It's actually me saying we need to do two more runs so that we're ready for that worst case scenario and talking that over with my platoon so they understand it as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that was the kind of culture that became part of the team of like, hey, we have to be ready for the absolute worst case scenario that we might come up against. Um, and, uh, and so I think that was, it was a culture of always striving to do better. And immediately, I think what, what I said, our task in a part was, um,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
In my previous task unit, it was kind of like most SEAL task units where we had some really talented people. We had some experienced people. We did some things well. We did some things not so well. But the things that we didn't do well, when training detachment would say, hey, you should improve on this, there was pushback. We were kind of like, eh, I'd like to see them do better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We're good to go. We'll play the game and just get through this and get overseas. And in Tasking the Bruiser, it wasn't like that. We were our own harshest critic. It was really critiquing ourselves. And when these training instructors said, hey, look, your head counts are taking too long. You need to figure out a way to be more efficient. We're like, absolutely, let's figure this out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Let's work on that. And we were our own harshest critic. We're always trying to get better and improve all the time. And that became the culture of the team. Whether you're a brand new guy, you know, that was trying to contribute in some way to, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
managing your fire team, you know, all the way up to me as the platoon commander to Jocko as the task of the commander and figuring out ways to be more efficient and effective all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think that's the strength of the SEAL teams, right, is always that innovation, like always trying to get better in what we're trying to do, always trying to improve and seeking inputs from everybody, no matter if they're in a leadership position or if they're simply just a shooter, you know, who's in charge of just themselves and their piece of the mission. I think when you've got to
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
When that becomes the culture of the team, that makes all the difference. You've got a team that's constantly improving, constantly learning, constantly growing. We made all kinds of mistakes in Tasking Your Bruiser. We screwed all kinds of stuff up. But we learned from those mistakes, and we would implement solutions to try to fix them and prevent them from happening going forward.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
So I start to take action to push more information your way, to build a better relationship with you, to talk to you about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, to get some guidance from you so I understand the strategic goal and that we can be aligned. And if we do that, then I can get that problem solved. All of a sudden, you're like, hey, Leif, you got it. Good to go.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I don't think so. I think we were honest enough with ourselves, right, to know, like, hey, man, I've never been in the worst-case scenario. So are you ready for it? Like, are you going to be ready for it? And I think, you know, when you show up to something and you're over-trained, like, hey, we didn't train that hard, cool. It's easy, you know? It's easy. Like, that's what you want it to be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, if you can make training harder than actual combat, like, that's awesome. That's ideal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, and that's one of the lessons that we brought back to Ramadi, you know, with us, you know, after we deployed, if you'd asked me, if you'd asked me as young Lieutenant Leif Babin, Charlie Platoon Commander in Tasking and Bruiser, hey Leif, are you going to be in, you know, do you think you'll get in a blue on blue, like friendly fire situation?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Man, I'd tell you like that happens to losers who don't know how to plan and execute missions. And The book, Extreme Ownership, that's chapter one. That's chapter one, the very first major combat operation that I was a part of, massive blue on blue, massive blue on blue issue. And we talked about before the idea that we had to, if we didn't take extreme measures to mitigate the risk,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
of that happening, it was absolutely going to happen, particularly in the urban environment where it's confusing with so many different units that are out there, particularly with our SEAL snipers that were going out under cover of darkness beyond the forward line of advance.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And you've got US tanks and Humvees and units that are coming into an enemy held area and they're getting shot at by enemy fighters. You know, just the idea that like that is absolutely going to happen unless you take massive steps to mitigate the risk of it happening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And it was just one of those things where like I just realized like combat is so much harder than I thought it was ever going to be. And those things can happen so much easier than you ever thought it could be. And once you're in it, you can't just, you can't just peek your head.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, if you're taking an effective fire, man, you can't just peek your head up over the wall and say, Hey, who's shooting at us? You know, like your head's going to be gone. That's going to be the end of you. So, um, if you're getting suppressed, uh, man, that's all, that's all you can do, you know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
And I think it's, uh, you know, we had, we had such a close call on that first, that first situation where we had about that whole squad of my guys, um, on that operation, uh,
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
That was the first version of your operation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Yeah, if you will, maybe it's better to back up to talk about what it was like to arrive in Ramadi and start there. When we were, we thought we were going to go work with the, with the ICTF in Baghdad and do this high-speed Iraqi commando unit that probably had the most training of any Iraqi unit out there. And that's what we thought we were going to do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
Let me know how you want to do this. And so those check-ins become less frequent. And so what seems like an impossible situation actually is easily solvable the moment I put my ego in check and the moment I actually take ownership and I start to lead up the chain of command and apply leadership to get problems solved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
We were going to go do these kinetic operations. It was going to be super fun. We were excited about it. Everyone left to go on pre-deployment leave. And while we were on pre-deployment leave, We got a change of orders. They decided to consolidate the two different squadrons that were deploying, and we found out we were going to Ramadi. So at the time, Ramadi was just a violent hellhole.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I mean, it was... It was... A city of 400,000 people is the capital of Anbar province, and it's a fraction of the size of Baghdad. I think the whole greater area of Baghdad has something like 2.5 or 3 million people in Baghdad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There would be more significant attacks or enemy attacks that happened in and around the city of Ramadi, this small city of 400,000 people just a few miles across the city center. There would be as many or more attacks in Ramadi on a daily basis as there were in Baghdad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think it was in the heart of the Sunni triangle, right? And it was the largest, it's the capital of Anbar province, which is the Sunni capital. So this is where Saddam's kind of base of support and operations were. So I think there was a lot of support for Saddam and the insurgency that came out of there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
I think after the Marines smashed Fallujah in 2004, many of the fighters that were there fled and went to Ramadi. And so from like late 2004 into 2005, Ramadi was just really the most violent place in Iraq. Zarqawi, who was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time, had declared that Ramadi was the capital of his caliphate, and he was going to establish the capital there in Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
There was something like 3,000 to 5,000 insurgent fighters that controlled most of the city. And when we arrived in April of 2006, It was, man, it was, I think I landed on the ground. It was like April 3rd, 2006. It was instantly, it was apparent that this was a very different deployment than the one I'd been on previously. And I've been hearing about Ramadi.
Shawn Ryan Show
#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones
You know, you'd hear every day in the news, you'd hear like, You know, three U.S. soldiers killed in Anbar Province, or two Marines wounded in Anbar Province, and most of those were coming in and around the city of Ramadi. I think Anbar Province was accounting for something like 70% of U.S.