Staring Down the Wolf

Staring Down the Wolf is a leadership book by Mark Divine, a retired Navy SEAL commander and entrepreneur. It asks what it takes to command a team of elite individuals and argues that the answer lies in seven commitments: Courage, Trust, Respect, Growth, Excellence, Resiliency and Alignment. Teams that hold to these deeply, Divine says, build the character that makes uncommon success possible.

Divine draws on what he learned on the battlefield, in training SEALs, and in running his own growth-focused companies. He founded SEALFIT, NavySeal.com and Unbeatable Mind. His experience spans twenty years leading SEALs, twenty-five years of success and failure in entrepreneurship, and ten years coaching corporate clients. That background has shown him how elite teams operate and how easily a team can fail when it breaks these commitments.

The book shows how to develop the principles in yourself and then align your team around them, so that people step up every day to do the uncommon. The aim is to help you and your team do well in VUCA environments (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), whatever your background or leadership experience.