On Extreme Ownership

This past Friday was one of the most intense moments of my life as a parent.

My son had a friend over and they were playing video games in the basement. Up until recently, the basement had become a non-functional catch-all for years of accumulation.

Toys my son had outgrown. Random office stuff. Clothes meant for donation. You know, just a whole bunch of stuff.

We live in a 2 bedroom townhouse so it's not like there's a ton of extra rooms or anything, yet the basement offered an opportunity to carve out some dedicated "boy space" where the video games and bobbleheads could reside.

I remember being 9. I definitely would not have wanted to hang out with my buddies confined to a living room with my Dad. So I totally get it.

Anyway, the basement came out great and is a work in progress still but WAY more functional and a really cool spot to hang out now.

Okay, so it's Friday afternoon, my son has just called his Mom to ask if he can stay a little while longer because he's playing with a friend and I'm on a meeting.

About 20-minutes later, his friend came running up to tell - 'Jonny is crying.'

Confused, I push back from my desk to figure out what's going on. I stroll downstairs to see my son curled up, scared to look at me.

Now, my son and I are super tight. The night before he told me "you have the best attitude" and that I make it 'easy' for him to be himself. Our relationship is built on respect and communication and we thrive for it.

At that moment though, I saw my son completely shut down and crying.

"What's going on guys?" I asked.

My son had screwed up. Bad.

He'd made a really bad decision that put some of his other friends in a really compromised position, and he was feeling it. He'd done something really unsafe and a couple of his friends were upset with him.

It meant that we were going to have to apologize to some parents. Two sets of parents, in fact. Oh, and explain the incident to his Mom.

Man, I was not envious of the position he was in.

But I had a choice, do I:

1. Tell him it's 'okay' and pretend nothing happened? OR
2. Help him own it and teach him about being able to have hard conversations?

I mean, obviously, the right answer is #2.

But that also meant that I had to have hard conversations too. With other parents. People who I want to respect me and trust me - what would they think?

"Who's fault is this?" I asked.

"It's my fault" Jonny replied.

"No, who's fault is it?" I asked again.

[For those of you who've read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, you'll remember this exact exchange from the opening chapter between Jocko and his team.

Personally, I had forgotten about that story from the first time I'd read the book 4 or 5 years ago, but was reminded as I'm re-reading it as part of my own professional development.]

My son looked at me confused. He'd just taken responsibility. He knew he had screwed up and was owning it. I'm sure he thought - "why is he messing with me? I screwed up bad enough".

And he had, he had screwed up. But this was a serious moment and he needed me.

"It's my fault." I said.

"It's my fault that you were even in the situation."

I'm not really sure what he thought after that, but I like to think he knew it was all going to be 'okay'. We walked across the street with his friend and explained the scenario to the friend's Dad.

"That wasn't bad, right?" I asked.

"Are you serious?" he replied.

It had sucked. 100% it totally sucked.

"Okay, well now we have to tell Dylan's parents too".

"Come on, Dad, please!".

And we walked to Dylan's house. And had another hard conversation. Two down, one to go - Mom.

"Ya know, the goal of having hard conversations is so that you don't have to have too many of them," I told him. But he was feeling pretty down. My heart broke for him, but as a parent, there are moments when you have to let life harden your children despite the primal desire to protect them.

And ultimately, that is the thing that protects them - traversing adversity.

We sat on the stoop after that and he just cried. He leaned into me and I put my arm around him.

Life is a really good teacher when we let it be.

I had done something similar when I was his age. A different kind of dumb decision, but a super dumb one nonetheless.

I remember how embarrassed I was walking up with my Dad to a friend's house to take responsibility and apologize for something I had done. No, I don't think I felt any better immediately after, but 28 years later I remember it and hope that Jonny Rowe remembers this one too.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is this: doing the right thing is always the right thing, no matter how hard the conversation is.

And read more. I know the whole "leaders are readers" may feel a little corny because it rhymes, but there's something to it. Thanks for the book recommendation, Sam.