Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out

The words of Jocko Willink thunder with the raw edge of a warrior’s wisdom: “Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.” In this teaching, the former Navy SEAL commander reveals a truth as old as battlefields and as enduring as the human spirit—that leadership is not forged in comfort, but in the crucible of trial. The calm seas never make the skillful sailor, and the quiet fields never raise the seasoned general. It is only through fire, confusion, and pressure that true leaders emerge.

The heart of his command is simple: stress is the teacher of strength. Leaders must be tested, stretched, and broken open if they are to grow into pillars of resilience. To put them in stressful scenarios is not cruelty, but a gift—the gift of preparation. For the world will never lack storms, and the leader who has never felt the sting of frustration or the weight of anger will collapse when crisis comes. To demand decisive action when the mind quivers and the heart pounds is to force the leader to grow sharper, steadier, more unyielding.

History bears powerful witness to this principle. In the fires of World War II, a young Winston Churchill had already known failure and ridicule. But through decades of trial, of being pushed aside and dismissed, he had been tempered. When the bombs fell on London and the world teetered on the brink, Churchill’s voice did not falter. He had been made strong by adversity, prepared by the long training of hardship. His leadership in Britain’s darkest hour was not born in ease, but in the stressful scenarios of a lifetime of struggle.

So too with the story of George Washington at Valley Forge. Cold, hungry, and surrounded by despair, his men watched as he endured the same suffering they did. Washington’s ability to lead did not come from noble birth or from theory—it came from surviving winter’s cruelty and from holding steady while his army threatened to collapse. He had been made flustered, desperate, even near broken, but in that fire, his resolve hardened into iron. It was precisely the pressure that made him the leader who could see America to freedom.

Willink’s words echo the training grounds of every great warrior culture. The Spartans cast their youths into the agoge, where hunger, pain, and fear molded them into unbreakable fighters. The Romans drilled their legions under punishing strain, ensuring that when chaos struck, discipline and decisiveness ruled instead of panic. These lessons remind us that leadership is not theory written in books, but instinct carved into the soul by trial after trial.

The deeper meaning of his teaching is that failure under stress is not the end, but the beginning. To see a leader stumble, grow frustrated, or flounder is no shame—it is the necessary step on the road to mastery. By confronting chaos again and again, the mind learns to remain calm, the spirit learns to endure, and the leader learns to decide when indecision would destroy all. Growth comes not from avoiding hardship, but from embracing it as the hammer that shapes the steel of the soul.

The lesson for us is direct: if you would be a leader, seek not comfort but challenge. Do not run from pressure, but place yourself in situations where your limits are tested. If you mentor others, give them not only praise but trials that stretch them to their edge. Demand calm when they are flustered, decisiveness when they are uncertain, courage when they are afraid. In time, they will emerge stronger, steadier, more worthy of the mantle of leadership.

Therefore, O listener, carry Jocko Willink’s wisdom in your heart: leaders are not born—they are forged. Stress, frustration, and chaos are the forge-fires of greatness. Do not fear them; embrace them. For every time you act with courage in the midst of pressure, you carve away weakness and reveal the leader within. And in this way, you not only prepare yourself—you prepare all who follow you for the battles that must come. Seek the fire, endure the test, and let leadership be forged in you.