For anyone who has met and gotten to know a Navy SEAL, the experience is surprising. Very commonly, he is the polar opposite of what you’ve been taught to expect by Hollywood. Pop culture portrays Navy SEALs in a gung-ho manner with a “shoot first/ask questions later” attitude. For the most part, the individual you actually meet is soft-spoken, deflects attention, listens more than he speaks, shows no signs of cockiness, and refers to the “team” and “us” instead of “I” and “me.” The Navy SEAL exudes a quiet, smart confidence.

Living and working in Silicon Valley, there is a stereotype of entrepreneurship that parallels Hollywood’s portrayal of Navy SEALs. Mass media, bloggers and pop culture have conditioned us to expect grandiose claims, a headstrong demeanor and the glorification of the genius artiste. While a small handful of entrepreneurs do live up to this image, many of the best are a lot like the actual, not fictional, Navy SEAL. They are humble, empathetic and intensely competitive. I have come to think of a certain type of entrepreneur as the Navy SEAL entrepreneur—media portrayals of “hero” entrepreneurs condition us to expect one thing and what we actually get is something better. Here are some core traits of the Navy SEAL entrepreneur.

Humble

Navy SEAL entrepreneurs tend to be great listeners. They have a genuine belief that the world and their companies, customers, partners and suppliers are full of smart, ambitious and experienced people who bring a unique lens to each problem. They tend to be deductive, not inductive thinkers. They reach for pieces of data and evidence to build a model to view the world, not to suit their preconceived model of the world. They accept the possibility or even probability that they are wrong, and design processes and approaches to fail quickly and less expensively. They are quick to admit mistakes. They view crises as opportunities for their team to rise to the occasion, and they display no emotion or blame in the moment. In a crisis, they show a deep desire to dive in personally to help find and fix the root cause—and they lead by doing.

Ways to know you are dealing with a Navy SEAL entrepreneur:

• Rarely, if ever, uses the personal possessive, “me” or “I”—their speech is full of “ours” and “we.”
• Talks less about the answer and more about how and why they got there.
• Is generous in crediting others for ideas that worked out.
• Creates board materials and company presentations that are full of metrics and trends, both good and bad.
• Expresses appreciation and gratitude over random things, both big and small.
• Never takes a crisis personally and is the last one to leave until it’s resolved.

Empathetic

Navy SEAL entrepreneurs are empathetic—not weepy Oprah or Dr. Phil empathy, but a genuine ability to think from the perspective of others. They care about all stakeholders, and not just the interests of those stakeholders relative to the company but the people themselves. They are obsessive about customer satisfaction. They imagine themselves in the customer’s shoes and feel personal guilt when the customer did not get the value expected. As empathetic thinkers, they are good chess players. They understand the motivations, interests and desires of all players in their business ecosystem, and they are good at anticipating the evolution of the chessboard more than one move ahead. They can anticipate where interests are likely to collide and coalesce, specifically because of their empathetic thought process. Navy SEAL entrepreneurs also create bonds tied to a shared value system, not just a shared corporate mission. They understand the basic human desire to participate in an organization with an essential integrity or philosophy that characterizes norms of behavior and interpersonal interaction.

Ways to know you are dealing with a Navy SEAL entrepreneur:

• Remembers something about you unrelated to business.
• Rapidly forgives an error made as a result of a good analytical process.
• Uses leverage with a partner, customer, employee or supplier prudently, and never to an extreme. They show mercy with leverage, except versus a direct competitor.
• Can tell you where the people who once worked for them are today; and it’s clear they have been in touch recently.
• Is recalled by employees, partners and customers in a positive light that has nothing to do with business.
• Other members of the organization behave and articulate the same norms of conduct and cultural/philosophical underpinnings that you heard from the Navy SEAL entrepreneur.

Intensely competitive

Navy SEAL entrepreneurs demonstrate a deep inner competitiveness. When you scratch that surface, their competitiveness is arguably sharper than that of the loudest CEOs. They show the kind of competitiveness that is about true excellence—seeing an organization or product as close to perfection as can be imagined. Their competitiveness is less about vanquishing an adversary and more about holding themselves and their organization to a standard of excellence that is always just a few feet over the horizon. Their competitiveness is rarely relative in comparison to others, and it is never relative on a personal financial basis. Personal economic incentives are highly motivating, but they are motivating as the output variable that measures the excellence of the business machine they have built. When it comes to competition, Navy SEAL entrepreneurs are absolutists, not relativists.

Ways to know you are dealing with a Navy SEAL entrepreneur:

• Talks about something a competitor does that they wish their company does or did first. If a competitor is only to be criticized for its flaws, then this person is not a Navy SEAL entrepreneur.
• On a major product release or business victory, points to something that the company could have done a little better. This is not done in a critical way, but as learning to be incorporated into the next cycle.
• Hates to lose, not because the output (losing) is bad, but because it means that something about the process or product/service was flawed. Excellence was missed.
• Outworks and outhustles everyone.

In combination, these three traits—humility, empathy, and intense competitiveness— characterize the Navy SEAL entrepreneur. Other personality types and profiles surely lead to entrepreneurial greatness; but in terms of consistency, the Navy SEAL entrepreneur produces the most predictably strong results.