Leadership Book Club: It’s Your Ship by Captain Michael Abrashoff

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: \ Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen. 

Mike: And I'm Mike.

Kristen: And Happy Thanksgiving if you're in the U. S. This is airing the day before.

Mike: Happy Thanksgiving? You know I want to do a whole like, anti Thanksgiving spiel.

Kristen: I know, but I feel like nobody tunes into our podcast for that. 

Mike: Well, you don't know. There could be some vegetarians out there that have suffered through a lifetime of uncomfortable family dinners. My, well, I'm lucky. My entire, well, part of my entire family is vegetarian. My sister's been vegetarian. My mother's been vegetarian longer than I have, but my mom would cook like turkey for my grandfather. Which I just can't do. Like I can't even. 

Kristen: I Well, you

Mike: She would roast him a turkey . Like, I can't

Kristen: You did very sweetly the consider making me fish.

Mike: I thought about it for likea point zero one second and then I'm like, that is not going to

Kristen: The fact that you even considered it though

Mike: Well, that's how much I love you.

Kristen: was very meaningful. So,

Mike: how much I love you. And then we figured out meal delivery service is a win win for both of us. 

Kristen: Even if you marry a chef, sometimes meal delivery services are still the way 

Mike: Sorry. All right, so.

Kristen: So anyway, we figured we would, I know a lot, a lot of podcasts take this week off,

Mike: But we don't.

Kristen: But we figured we would put a new episode out just since a lot of people are driving.

Mike: That's true. A lot of people are driving. So, uh, today we have an LBC This is, It's Your Ship, Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Commander Michael Abrashoff This is a very, it's a very special book to me. It is the first leadership book I read.

It was given to me by, interestingly enough,a leader who does not practice what is in the book, but maybe thinks he does and ouch. Yeah. And but this book was, it just, it opened my mind. Before reading this, I had some understanding of the, like the concept of leadership and I had studied some great leaders, both military and civilian, but I didn't really understand that this was a topic or,a subject that you could study and improve.

I was like, aren't leaders just born? Well, no, sir. In fact, they're not. And there's a whole, lexicon of books and studies and courses. And so it opened a world to me and I just, I haven't stopped since. I've read maybe, 300, 250 leadership books since then. I, uh, I just consumed them, you know, some are good, some are great, some are,redundant, but I continue to use this book as, one of my, trinity of leadership books, which I now need to create a quartet.

And for a minute, I thought about bumping this book from the trio with Brene Brown's.But it's just such a, it's just such a great story. And, Kristen, I know you're going to talk about, it's mostly narrative and that irritates her, uh, because she's such an analytical, and I am too. But like, I will also say, I had a very different experience reading the book this time than I did listening to, Abrashoff speak the book I could listen to him talk for weeks. Like he's got a great voice and he just has so many great stories and I could just listen to him talk forever. But when I read the book, it was a little bit of a different experience. So I think that's an interesting thing that we need to explore a little bit more.

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, no, it's an interesting thing. I mean, I guess a couple of things. I pretty much never listened to audio books. Even though I love consuming podcasts, I just prefer to read books in like actual Kindle form. So I, I can totally see why, given that he's like a very in demand public speaker.

Why the audio book like it being so narrative with an audio book is a little bit different from 

Mike: Yeah, it's, it's a different experience. So 

Kristen: I also, for the record, I'm not against all narrative leadership books. Actually, like one of my favorites is like a parable, basically. But I have some requirements that maybe I'll go into at some point that make me like how a narrative turns into something that's like more practical and useful. So, just for clarity.

Yeah, I think it brings up a good point. Everybody learns a little bit differently. We absorb information different. This is all personal preference for me.

Mike: Personal. I actually learned very well from parable from narrative and then, sprinkle in some data and I will get the big meaning of it.

But that's me. So not only do you have to figure out how you learn, you have to figure out how your teams learn. Super important.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: Okay, little background. Commander Abrashoff is a 1982 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he did not excel. He finished in the bottom third of the class, and he talks about it a lot.

It actually allowed him to have some more opportunity early in his career. If he had finished very highly in the Naval Academy, he would have gone to the best ships. And been in competition for, ship handling time with, the top graduates. And that wasn't the case. He went to the bottom, so he had a little bit more opportunity.

And he, he made use of that, and he grew his career to where in 1997, at the age of 36, Mike Abrashoff was selected to become the commander of the USS Benfold. At the time, the most junior commanding officer in the Pacific Fleet, a 36 year old captain is pretty young.Prior to commanding USS Benfold, he served as the military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry. And he has a lot of great stories about that. After leaving the Navy, he became an entrepreneur and thought leader, having founded GLS Worldwide, a leadership development company dedicated to helping organizations and individuals grow their impact. It's Your Ship was written in 2002 and is of course, a New York Times bestseller.

And I'll talk about, some of these concepts are going to sound very like familiar, But this man was doing this in 1997, it was a little bit before the leadership revolution of the, the early aughts with the tech growth and things like that. So,

Kristen: And I think considering the timing, I mean, we, we always say when the book was written, because I think understanding that context is important, but he talks about and the end of it, that it was going to press basically as the response to 9/11 was happening, so. 

So it's always a good thing to keep in mind. 

Mike: Okay. So a one note, the interchange between commander and captain can be a little confusing. Commander, Abrashoff's his rank, I believe was commander, which is technically one, one level below Captain, but he is often referred to as the captain of USS Benfold.

A captain in the Navy is a higher rank and they generally command even bigger ships, you know, aircraft carriers and things like that. Benfold is an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer. It has 310, sailors on it. I don't know if that includes the captain and officers, but there are not that many officers.

Kristen: So,little introduction to overall theme of this book is success through people, winning by helping your teams grow their capabilities, change their outlooks and alignment and thus prosper and thrive.And I, I do say like, I read, I listened to this book at least once a year to get my like mentality straight. And having read it now, I can really see how the techniques and approaches have really shaped the entirety of everything I do. It's the foundation of who I am as a leader and It's your origin

Mike: story. 

It's my origin story. and definitely I hope for good. I find it inspiring then, I find it inspiring now.

I will say this book is a little bit different than many military leadership's books. It doesn't have a ton of, like, war stories. They are involved in some action in the Persian Gulf, but very minimal. They chase down some pirates. But it isn't like the Navy SEALs,shoot them up. It's very high minded concepts and approaches to getting, his little, piece of the world, this, 310 sailor destroyer to function in harmony and be extraordinarily high achieving. So Navy officers are generally rotated through commands into your stints. I think that's correct. Generally in the military. Please someone correct me, but you don't generally get the command of a boat for like 10 years or something like that you go through stints.

I don't know why that is. That's kind of interesting. I'm, I'm interested in that. But so this book is really an account of Commander Abrashoff's 18 plus year Navy career, but focuses mainly on the two years he commanded, USS Benfold. 

Kristen: A couple other things I've picked up from the introduction,He said that basically what all leaders, no matter what you're leading have in common is the challenge of getting the most out of your crew or team, which is depends on three variables.

The leader's needs, the organization's atmosphere and the crew's potential competence. He didn't really get much into these again, as far as these variables, but I liked them. And I think another kind of thing that was helpful for me, just with somebody who knows very little about the military in general, but was, he talked about like what the, the typical thing to doin his position is to just kind of toe the line, There's a lot of just doing the bare minimum to get by, do what's expected of you, but not really try to go above and beyond. And he probably would have been promoted anyway, and maybe would have had a better chance of being promoted,by just doing that.

Which I think that there's a lot of that in organizations where there's not rewarding of risk takers, it's rewarding of people who just toe the line and go along with it. 

Mike: Yeah I think you know I've heard jocko talk about that too. A lot of military leaders. 

With it.

You know rock the boat rock the status quo and they'll just go along there'll be you know mediocre leaders and of course, he'll get promoted He would have gotten promoted because he was incredibly successful at it. But if he had not been, he was really taking a chance. So even you know, he has a chapter later called take calculated risks. This whole thing was a calculated risk and was the culmination of his career.

He was like, I've learned all this now. I just need the courage to put it into practice. So he does and it works and it worked out for his crew and it worked out for him later in life. So here we go. Chapter one, Take Command.The books really, It is really narrative based, so I'm just going to sum up some stuff, that we read and, go from there, but, it starts out with, during the change of command ceremony, for the boat, which is, you know, a lot of pomp and military circumstance.

The captain's greeted with a stark reality when the crew jeers the departure of their old captain. This is a brazen breach of military etiquette. And he realizes he must do something drastically different in his leadership style than the Navy's historically tried and true command and control. He does some cursory research into why people leave organizations and finds that the kind of list we talk about frequently nowadays.

And again, remember this book was, written in 2002 and he was doing this in 1997. So he comes up with a pretty good list that we talk about today. Number one was not being treated with dignity. Number two is being prevented from making an impact on the organization. Number three is not being listened to.

Four is not being rewarded with more responsibility. And number five is pay. And since he can't adjust number five at all, he focuses on the first four. As a manager, I can also share that a lot of times you don't have control over the pay structure of an organization. And I will also say, it's a little bit different in terms of probably leading, a group of sailors or military team, what you're doing is their whole life.

They may have personal lives, they have families, butthey can't do anything else. They are beholden to you. you can yell at

Kristen: When you're literally on a ship. You're

Mike: on a ship for sometimes months at a time. You know, he has the ability to affect every aspect of their life.

And they will probably have a moreI don't want to say dramatic, but what he does and how they respond will be more in tune than in a business organization. If he makes their life better, which he does, that's different than making people's lives better a little bit. If you work at Google or something, cause they go home, they have the ability to change their life outside of work.

These people live at work. So I would say the effects of what he does can be amplified, either good or bad. 

Kristen: Yeah. And I also, I mean, I think in terms of what he said about why people were leaving, I think really tracks with motivation theories, I think we'll do pretty early in the new year as a topic, because I think it's also really important for leaders to understand like what motivates and demotivates people.

But I think that tracked in line with what often shows up in companies as well.

Mike: Yeah, so though he started out as an officer, having graduated from the Naval Academy, he believes that being a good skipper is to see the ship through the eyes of his crew. This is very smart. This will be probably the most frequent refrain in the book. He puts himself in their shoes and I think nowadays we talk about empathy, but that's a big, in 1997.

He aims to change the established military control structure that breeds order takers, and he wants to create a crew of 310 initiative takers. very smart when everyone lives at work. a little background, the namesake of the ship was Edward C. Benfold, a Navy hospital corpsman who died in action during the Korean War.

Several enemy soldiers approach his foxhole that he's in with several, other soldiers. and toss grenades into it. Benfold picks up the grenades, storms out of the foxhole, storms the enemy and kills both them and himself in the process. So he's posthumously awarded the medal of honor and they named this, bad ass ship after him.

Kristen: I do have to say, this really, I kept reading it as Benfolds. As in like Ben Folds Five. The, like emo band?

Mike: Yeah, I still don't know that.

Kristen: Okay. I guess it's lost on you, but for our listeners,

Mike: So, you know, Corman Benfold was a badass and, they name a boat after him and the captain, as he won't, you know, in organizations too, it pays to, have a focus of, what you're doing and why and something to inspire people, and he used that story of Benfold, and his history to inspire his career, like that's the kind of courage that you want to inspire your, soldiers and sailors.

So.So another overarching theme of this book is that not only is there frequently a better way to do things that goes contrary totradition,

these insights might also come from team members of any rank or position.

Very very smart when you have 310 people, harness their talents, brains, abilities, all those things.

So he has a very people focused idea that the key to implementing lasting changes will to be encouraged and to allow people to have fun while doing them. Also good, especially when you live at work,

From from the get go, he allows his sailors to see him respectfully challenge the status quo with his senior leadership.

He talks about an instance when he requests a variance to the usual practice of navy ships docking in order of the ranks of their respective captains. While the other ships in his battle group were elsewise occupied, he asks his commodore, for permission to dock over a very public communication channel.

Really against tradition. The commodore asks for a good, he's a little annoyed, asks for a good reason and, the commander gives him three. He says, we will save taxpayer money by not wasting fuel. he has a repair that he needs to affect and he wants his crew to enjoy a day at the beach rather than floating aimlessly.

He's like, by, by my account, that's three good reasons. To everyone's surprise, the Commodore clears his throat and says, permission granted. And that's the beginning of him taking command of Benfold. His sailors from this realized that, that he cared more about, the performance of the boat and taking care of them and getting them a day off than he did about sucking up to his boss and getting his next promotion.

And he says, they hightailed it in at like 30 knots. So they didn't save gas, but he got his crew a day at the beach and again, you live at work. So that's pretty awesome when your boss cares about you enough to like, Maybe get himself in trouble by asking for something that only benefits you.

Yeah, I think he, I, another thing I liked in, or a quote from it as well is, I believe any of us fortunate enough to come from stable families have a responsibility to try to understand the experiences of those growing up without support, security, or positive role models. And I think that this really gets into a lot of this book. , He's motivating a lot of very young men and,

Some women, and

Kristen: And some women, but, have come from a variety of backgrounds and he even gets deeper into improving their self esteem and kind of ways he focuses on that.

But I liked that quote. 

Mike: He, at some point. He sits down with every sailor, tries to learn their name as quickly as possible and learn where they came from and he found more than 50 percent of them were coming from, they joined the military to escape some really bad situation.

And he's inspired by that. they didn't start out with a lot of privilege, but they're still trying to really make something of their lives. And he taps into that. Another key concept we will see in this book is the commander learning to put himself in the shoes of his senior leaders.

By doing this, he is able to intuit what they would want from him as a member of their team. And he takes a lot of independent action that a lot of leaders are scared to take. But he, as having seen from their perspective, he knows what he would want from one of his commanders in a battle group and he does that and he becomes the go to guy. He discusses how his job is really to create a climate and an environment that enables people to unleash their full potential. So that's awesome.

Kristen: Yeah, Yeah. And the other quote I liked from this section was empowering means defining the parameters in which people are allowed to operate and then setting them free. 

Mike: Talks about a free person has a lot of reason to try hard, to achieve and succeed

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: Okay chapter two learn real leadership. This chapter is largely an account of his time working in the Pentagon as an aide to Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry,who he credits as his primary leadership role model, at least on the positive side. So he actually gets this job against the belief of the, the Navy, officer who recommended him for it. He's like, you weren't our first choice. Uh, please don't embarrass us. He's like, great. Thanks for the, for the, uh, But,but he got the job and later he asked the team how he got the job and they said, we thought you would be the easiest to work with.

You know, we could see you being a really good team player. So you know, the secretary of defense has a two star admiral as his like direct aid and then several high ranking, officials from each military branch. And it's a veryhigh profile position, but it's, you know, he's not commanding a boat.

He's working in the Pentagon. So while he's there, you know, in the beginning, no one knows him. No one really respects him. He's got to work for that. So he takes all the most terrible jobs in the office.

The ones that no one else thinks can win or wants to be bothered with, the Admiral takes the jobs that are, sure successes. But he, he, by doing this, he both earns people's respect and also,is successful at a lot of these of drudgery tasks. 

Kristen: So here working for Dr. Perry, he learns one of the most important concepts of leadership. The difference between being an individual contributor and being a leader was being able to think like your boss.

Mike: So he has a cool story to elucidate this principle. His job is to sort through, every day, sort through a four foot high stack of paper that has been submitted up the chain of command for Dr. Perry's attention. Every day, four feet of paper. He comes in at like five in the morning and leaves at like eight at night and that's his main job.

And he doesn't even send it directly to Dr. Perry. He sends it to the two star Admiral who then further culls the load and then sends it to Dr. Perry. And what he finds is the Admiral is only sending on like 20 percent of what he sends to him. And the Admiral's giving him no feedback.

He's not explaining what he does. He's like a hyper intellectual dude, but he's not a teacher. So,most of his work is just getting tossed and burned backs.So he, he takes it upon himself to study what the Admiral is passing on and what he's weeding out. And after a little bit of time doing this, he's putting himself in his admiral's shoes and in his boss's shoes Like what is his boss looking for and he starts to reverse train himself. To see what the admiral thinks is most important to go on to the secretary of defense. Obviously very limited time, you know only the most critical stuff can get passed on to him and you know after a couple weeks or months of this like almost everything that the commander sends on the admiral will pass on to Dr. Perry. So, you know, this is one of the most important concepts I think to going from being like part of a team to a leader of a team you have to think like your boss and you have to get rid of the us and them mentality to do that. 

You know, your boss doesn't want you to fail. Upper management's not trying to make your life hard.

They might not just see it from your perspective and that's maybe their fault, but it's also your fault. So he gets rid of that mentality and is able to see that, you know, he's got to think like his boss. If he doesn't do that, all he's doing is being a problem for the organization so. 

He learns to like really anticipate Dr. Perry's needs. He's very inspired by him as a leader. It's very, it's kind of beautiful. Like he's obviously a a genius of a man with a lot of insight, and there's an incident where the red phone in the office is ringing and he knows that's like that's the hotline.

He's he'd been watching the news. He knows he knew there was trouble in the middle east so he was just waiting for like the orders to come to send Dr Perry to the middle east and the phone, the phone rings and he picks it up. It's Dr. Perry and he already knows He's like Dr. Perry. What time are we leaving for the middle east? Dr. Perry's like, I don't know you arrange it. And he arranges it like a boss, he thinks 10 steps ahead. He's got you know, instead of the normal 737 or something he knows Dr. Perry wants to stop at all these military bases along the way and kind of multitask and check out the new bases that they built and also stop in England and France to liaise with their defense minister.

So he gets very creative. 

He thinks ahead and he gets the concept that you're supposed to lift burdens off the shoulders of your leaders so that they can focus on the bigger picture stuff that only they have purview to do. And I can guarantee you, if you do this at any level of the chain of command, your boss is going to trust you.

They're going to appreciate you. They're going to give you the promotions and the assignments and the, all of that stuff, you know? So I. I've definitely put that into practice and I've taken a lot of risks, calculated risks in my hotel career. I've made decisions that, maybe another leader would have sought authorization for.

And I'm like, nah, he won't want me to do this. It'll, it's gonna, it's gonna be good for the hotel. We're going to make money and, you know, 

Kristen: Yeah, a certain degree of ask for forgiveness, not for permission. 

Mike: Well he said he takes, you know that's a later chapter but he said he takes risks that he thinks he can defend within his scope of authority and job description. And probably like most people are not fully inhabiting their job description. And they're afraid to take action because they're afraid of the consequences.

He didn't do anything that was, you know, dangerous to the United States. And as a captain of a guided missile destroyer, you can cause a lot of trouble if you make a mistake.

He talks later about what he calls the Washington Post test. You know, when you run a hotel, yeah, it's great. And you, when you run a hotel, if you mess up. Could you be on the news? Maybe you'd have to do something nowadays. They'll put you on the news, but the stakes are lower than if you command a vessel with likethe most sophisticated modern armaments and then 310 sailors who can absolutely wind up on the Washington Post.

So he, he calls the Washington post test, it's his conscience, right? If what he does winds up on the front page of the newspapers, will he still feel okay about his decisions? And if he does, he'll move forward, and he's trusting his own conscience more than he's trusting rules or established doctrine, and that works out very well for him.

And, there's a Chinese saying when the, you know, before radio, right? When the general is in the field, he doesn't take his king's orders anymore. It's both because the orders take time to get there. And also, you expect your general to be a free thinker and understand the big situation and the big goals.

And if you can do that, of course you want to set them free. So chapter three, lead by example. A key concept for him is challenging the status quo and letting his team see him do it.

He encourages them to do the same. And when they come up with good ideas, he puts it into practice very quickly. You know, that's the good part about being the sole commander of a vessel like this is he can change many things very quickly without having to go through red tape or ask anyone's permission.

Kristen: Yeah, Yeah, I think this is the chapter I personally got the most out of. There's a lot of really good stuff in here. I liked the quote, A leader will never accomplish what he or she wants done by ordering it done. Real leadership must be done by example, not precept.

Which is so true. Yeah, it's and I think that is commonly misunderstood, right?

If everything relies on you giving orders or requesting people to do things, you're always going to be missing out on so much. 

Mike: Missing out on their sincerity, their heart, their full effort. They're going to give you the bare minimum and they're going to, like he saw in his predecessor, they're going to cheer when you leave.

That's not what you want as a leader. You want people to know you trust them. So, he, he takes 

extreme ownership by, anytime something goes wrong on the ship, using these three kind of self reflective questions.

Did I clearly articulate the goals? Did I give people enough time and resources to accomplish the task? And did I give them enough training? And 90 percent of the time he found out he was at least as much a part of the problem as his people were. So, 

know, 

Kristen: I love these.

I think this is a really good framework that people can take away for like things to ask yourself when stuff goes wrong. 

Mike: And I think too, he doesn't, one of the questions in there isn't, could I have helped them personally do it? When you go from being a high achiever to being a leader, you still want to get your hands into everything. And while that can be an admirable quality at some points when you have a ship of 310 people, there's no way you can do everyone's job and you shouldn't be trying to. So it's really like you're responsible for creating the climate, giving them resources, giving them time. You're not responsible for personally going down there and doing it and can, do you sometimes wanna like toss sandbags with the team when they need to? Yeah, sure. Yes, absolutely. But that's not exactly how you're gonna so

Kristen: Yeah. it's basically like, were they set up for success? 

Mike: Were they set up for success?

Kristen: Did they know what they needed to accomplish?

And did they have what they needed in order to accomplish it. 

Mike: Yeah, and he learns this lesson when he's the XO, I think on a boat called Shiloh and he, he's brought the case of a sailor who falls asleep on watch and he's still early in his career and he's just like, no, this is an open and shut case.

You can't fall asleep on watch. It's a very serious offense. People can die. So he sends them to a captain's mast, which is like bringing him up on charges. And then the captain, who's a little bit more seasoned, has his, has the meeting and he starts asking questions. And he asks the sailor, well, did you fall asleep on watch?

Yes, captain, I did. Why did you fall asleep on watch? Well, captain, I was up all night cleaning a workspace until 8am.

Captain's like, why were you up all night? And he's like, well, the chief told me we had to have it cleaned by 8 a. m. And now, you know, commander Abrashoff is sweating because like they're digging into like what happened here.

And the captain asked the chief, like, why did you Why did the sailor need to be the one that was cleaning up the workspace? And then she was like, we were short handed And you know the xo told me it had to be cleaned by 8 a. m And you know now the commander's probably not a commander at this point he's sweating buckets because he knows he's actually messed up.

He created a situation where Or, he told his chiefs that this needed to be done, but he never asked them, do you have enough people to do it? Is there anything that might be stopping you from doing this? And he didn't know they were shorthanded, but he says he should have either known they were shorthanded because it's his responsibility to know or he should have been approachable enough as a leader for the team to come and be like, Hey, there's some problems with your order. And he learned from this lesson, andI try and emulate this. I always ask why I try and ask why, there's always a story behind stuff, you know, and some of this is assume positive intent, you know, 

Kristen: Yeah. Some other things I like that he covered in this, I think one quote, leaders need to understand how profoundly they affect their people, how their optimism and pessimism are equally infectious, how directly they set the tone and spirit of everyone around them.

I mean, we've talked a lot about this on this podcast, but being, aware of just how much your attitude, your demeanor, your everything affects everybody else around you. And he says optimism and pessimism are equally infectious. I think the pessimism, just because our bias towards negativity in the human brain, I think the pessimism is actually even more contagious, and you have to work that much harder on being conscious about having a positive, optimistic, overall take on things because of that. 

Mike: He talks about too, so he's like, everyone has a dark side. His dark side would come out when he would get woken up to fix a problem. And if he got woken up enough times or had to leave his bunk enough times, the next day would be, he would be very grouchy, . And you know, I'm, sure on a Navy vessel, the demeanor and mood of the captain is a to a frequent topic.

It's everyone knows it right away.It's definitely a little village. And but he knew this and you know on those days when he knew he was very grouchy He tried to isolate himself. And I've done that too now if I'm not in a good frame I'll close my door. And i'm just like i'm gonna work on something else I'm gonna try and minimize my negative impact on people. You can't pretend like you're not human and it doesn't happen but you, like Kristen said, we have a negative bias in our brains, so you gotta minimize your impact.

Kristen: Well, this goes back to what we talked about with Megan Romano on the election mental wellness episode too, right? Where it's like, don't be afraid to call a timeout, like whatever that means. So if you're in a meeting, it might be an actual break. But it also goes to like you as a leader, knowing that, when you can't regulate yourself enough to a point where, like, you're not going to have a negative impact by people being around you, it's okay to isolate yourself.

So I like that as well, and I think it's, especially relevant when you live at work, but this comes into play all the time in a more traditional workplace as well. 

Mike: And I think, something, if you read this book and you really should,you'll see the commander, he's very strategic about everything he does.

He thinks through everything. He thinks through every move, even like, Hey, I'm in a bad mood today. I'm going to strategically isolate myself. He's just, he's very thoughtful about everything he does. He's very intentional. Later there's a story of him like not cutting in line for chow and he does it so intentionally because he knows the weight of his office and he knows the reaction that his officers will have from this.

Oh,

Kristen: Oh, hi

Mike: This is this is an alternate cat visit. 

Kristen: it's not, not Beezus. It's Arya.

Do you wanna mew into the mic

Mike: you mew for us?Like noShe's like, I do not mew on command. 

Kristen: Who do you think I am, a circus animal? 

Mike: The meme is like, if you have two cats, one is a beautiful idiot. And the other one is plotting world domination.

This is the world domination cat.

Kristen: Yeah, she's 

Mike: which she could achieve if she didn't sometimes get locked in the closet.

Kristen: Definitely, or 

Or outside.

Mike: So he, he's super strategic about how he leads and he leads up the chain of command very well.

He's very, careful about it. At some point, he's part of a group that has a very aggressive admiral who berates everyone on the team and really stifles communication, stifles free thoughts, stifles discussion. He doesn't challenge him in public. He thinks it through and eventually sends the Admiral a private email and says, Hey, you probably don't realize, but when you yell at people like that, they get scared and they don't want to contribute.

And this is actually a risk for him, right? Like he could have just said nothing, bided his time, waited for the Admiral to be reassigned somewhere else, which happens, you're just, it's a waiting game, two years in a billet and they move on. But he. He cares about the team. He wants to, he wants them to be successful.

The Admiral actually responds like, Hey, I respect you for sending this to me. And he actually tried to improve and change. And this was a very calculated risk. He didn't need to do this, but you know, that's just, that's who he is. So,Yeah. Leaders set the tone for the entire workforce.

Respectfully challenge your chain of command when they do something that you might know there's a better way. 

Kristen: Okay, lots of cat distraction. 

Mike: It's part of, It's part of love and 

Kristen: of Love and Leadership. It's like love and leadership and 

Mike: Love and Leadership and Cats.

Kristen: It's like our alternative show title.

Mike: Okay, can you, are you done? Yeah.

It's so distracting. 

Kristen: Okay, let's move on.

Anyway!

So yeah, some other things I, I liked in this chapter too, he gets into like, how many times have you gone into your boss's office and felt smaller?

So for example, they're working on an email and they don't even acknowledge your presence or they keep interrupting your conversation to pick up the phone.This really resonated right because it makes you feel not important when your boss treats you that way. And I know I've been in those situations so many times.

I'm sure I've also done that to other people. So, um, something as we talk about presence a lot in this podcast, it really is in line with that. And, I liked the quote, as a leader, you need to steadily signal to your people that nothing is more important to you than them, which means not getting promoted yourself, not pleasing your boss.

Like they are the most important thing to you and signaling that, which is hard.

Mike: Yeah, and I think companies would do well to remember that in the types of like administrative and higher level demands that they put on leaders and managers.

There's so many reports, so many trackers, so many, oh my god, like I get it. People up the chain of command need that information for their responsibilities, but it should be the sailors on the boat and the team on the ground that matters the most. And that's how an organization is successful when they remember that. You know, of course it comes down to you as the leader.

This really resonated with me the first time I, I read it and I'm terrible at this. I like to multi, triple task and send an email while I'm talking, but you're telling your people that there are other things that you are more important than it's not good. So he worked hard on it.

I'm continue, I continue to work hard on this.

Kristen: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And then the last thing I really liked in this chapter is he talked about if you have an objective towards something that your boss wants you to do, or a policy or whatnot. Like, make your objectives known to them privately in their office.

But, if you lose the argument and you have to carry through with it, go through it as if you have always supported it 100%. And this is in line with what we talked about with Rebecca Yang a couple weeks ago. 

Mike: Own the message.

Kristen: Yep, own the message, right? It doesn't matter how you feel about it when it actually comes to rolling it out.

You need to own it 100%. 



Kristen: All right. So, chapter four. 

Mike: Listen aggressively. So again, this is 1997 when he's forming this model. So I know we talk about that a lot now, but this gentleman is ahead of his time. So he's inspired by Dr. Perry, who he notices whenever he talks to somebody, he gives them his full and undivided attention, which much must be difficult as the secretary of defense.

These guys, his schedule was like down to the minute and he expected meetings to start and end on time. But while you were there, he paid complete attention to you and it made people blossom. People can tell when you're giving them your full attention and everybody likes that subconsciously.

He talks about, of course, you know, are you listening to understand or listening to speak? Something we discuss frequently nowadays. He talks about, many organizations put leaders in a transmitting mode, we're passing information down the chain of command, this policy change, this policy update, uh, you're a transmitter, you're not a receiver.

So you have to shift your mindset. We should be in receiving mode, should be listening more than we're talking. He right away, he tries to learn all 310 sailors names. I've put this into practice wherever I've been. I try and learn the, if it's a community, I try and learn all the residents, I try and learn all the staff as quickly as possible. I take that as a sign of respect. He listens to his crew when they complain about, onerous tasks and he makes the drudgery less, uh, painful. He has an example where, you know, on the ship,you, every quarter month, who knows you have to like sand everything down and paint it because it rusts.

And a lot of this rust comes from these iron bolts and a crew member says like, hey, why don't we use stainless steel bolts? And Oh, brilliant idea. So they look through the Navy manual. There's no stainless steel bolts available. So they scour the globe and find appropriate stainless steel bolts. They use the ship's credit card, which I don't know, probably has no million dollar limit, who knows? And, and they buy the bolts and replace the bolts. And all of a sudden the crew doesn't have to sand and paint the ship every month anymore. And, another frequent topic in this book is how the things that he and his crew like enact eventually become standard operating protocol for the entire Navy, and this is one of them.

And I've taken thisinspiration as well. So I try and solve problems as soon as they come to me. Like if you need a bigger monitor, let's just buy that off Amazon. Do I have to requisition that from some supply department?

No, let's just solve the problem here. Put it on the credit card and people feel taken care of. They feel listened to. And you solve problems. And this, this is part of being a sailor, right? But it's not the fun part.

And by removing the, so many hours spent doing these menial tasks, they're able to focus more on their actual job, which is combat readiness. They're able to train more. They're able to focus more on the communication systems, all of these things that are what he sees as his one, one product that he's selling to one customer, his Commodore, his, he's selling the product of, of combat readiness.

So yeah.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I see a lot about your leadership style and tactics well, from this book in general, but from this chapter especially. 

And the thing that kind of struck me about this chapter is really just the power of understanding who people are and like what really matters to them. And yes, it's a little bit different when people are basically giving up their lives to be in the military and they're living on your ship, like with you all the time.

So you do have to be a little more measured with it, Because some people in the work setting don't really respond very well to personal questions at first, but it is so powerful to really just understand deeply like who people are and what matters to them.

Mike: Yeah. Listen to them. I mean, especially if they live at work, they're going to tell you when the things that they're not happy with it. So I'm sure I put it in notes further on but he focuses on improving people's quality of life, you know because he can't change their pay but he can change the way they live and one of the things he does is he stops buying the standard Navy rations of the crappy peanut butter and instead goes and buys JIF everybody wants JIF. And it's cheaper too.

So he uses all of the savings from this to send his cooks to culinary school.

Kristen: Yeah, I love that.

Mike: Cause he, when the change of command happens, he brings his parents on board. Oh, they're so proud. And he takes them to eat in the mess and they have like rock hard chicken fingers. He's like, okay, this is, people are miserable, but the food doesn't need to be bad.

Like I can serve 300 people a day and the food can be good. It's not rocket science, but

Kristen: Serving 300 people a day with a homemade pasta from your kitchen, right? Yeah.

Mike: Not quite 300, but yes. If you have experienced cooks, experienced chefs that have had real training from experts,it's not that hard to do. 

Chapter five, communicate purpose and meaning. The whole secret of leading a ship or managing a company is to articulate a common goal that inspires a diverse group of people to work hard together. Yep. he worked to give them a compelling vision of, the good that their work was doing and a reason to believe that it was important.

And there's a reason football teams have a fight song and companies have mottos. His was the sun always shines on Benfold. He taught the sailors to introduce the ship to anyone coming aboard as welcome to Benfold, the best damn ship in the Navy.

Uh, you know, and this got a lot of, it generated some resentment among his,his peers in his, in his battle group, but he didn't care. He got the esprit de corps going on. Jocko, when he took over his task force in Iraq, he changed it from task unit Bravo to task unit Bruiser.

It's a type of branding, but it lets people know what you're about, what you want, what you stand for. And what, the boundaries of the organization are. Jocko wanted a, a badass military unit that threw their weight around. Commander Abrashoff wanted a team of 310 people that were, had a very positive outlook and worked together. That's Words

The words are very powerful.

Kristen: The key with any of that is like repetition.

Mike: It's repetition. Yeah.

Kristen: As he says that too, it's like the, get really like sticking with the sun always shines on Benfold and the best damn ship in the Navy like had to be repeated so many times that it becomes a norm.

Mike: He had his soldiers like introduced the ship that when visiting admirals came aboard, it's a little, it's a little bit of hubris, but you know, you, you want that in a fighting force. You want them to have some super confidence in themselves. Right.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: So he uses the public address system very, Very adroitly. 

He doesn't use it to criticize or braid people. He uses the public address system to share new ideas, to praise people, to explain goals and keep people working together. Anytime somebody had a good idea, he'd just get on the mic and be like, let's do this. This is, air Airman O'Malley's idea and we're going to do it right away.

Not airman, obviously. The, eventually his sailors jokingly started calling him Mega Mike because he was on the, he was on the PA so much. Uh,

Kristen: This could be an aspirational name for you.

Mike: I could use a PA system. I don't like public speaking really, like it's not my favorite thing. I can do it. I have some performance genes, but it's not my favorite thing.

So he says, anytime before launching a new, big policy or change, he would ask himself how his sailors will see it. If it made sense from their vantage point, it was probably a good policy or decision.

Kristen: Yeah, another quote I like, just change frightens workers and their fears thrive in silence. The antidote is obvious, keep talking. And I completely agree with this when we talk about communicating change, like the continuously talking about it is the most important thing and explaining to people like what's happening, how it impacts them, what's expected of them, and especially like why it's happening is so essential for getting buy in and doing it continuously, consistently over a period of time. And I also like the, no matter how fantastic your message is, if no one is receiving it, you aren't communicating it. 

Mike: Yep. That's extreme ownership. Okay.

Kristen: knew

Mike: So he knew the crew, he knew the more the crew understood the purpose of a plan, the better that they would carry it out. it, I, again, 1997, we talk about this a lot now,involving all his sailors in knowing what was going on was, during some of the Early Middle East crisis was pretty important and he got their buy in, right?

So his core principle is tapping the talents of his crew, raising them up to both, theirs and the Navy's benefit, he's, he has a radio man. So when he was in the Gulf, they talk about like communication was a problem. The normal communication net was slow. It was bogged up.

It was very ineffective, and these modern ships communicate amazing amounts of information to be digested in real time.A World War II destroyer did one or two things and his boat did like 10 things, and it's a lot to manage and you have to use decentralized command.

But anyway, the radio just, I don't know, to the point where a lot of the ships were paying 10. 95 a minute to use some sort of like commercial satellite communication, but he had a radio man who was so smart and figured out what was going wrong with the systems, figured out the fix.

And a different captain might not have listened to him because of where the information was coming from. It was coming from the bottom of the chain of command. That is not. commander Abrashoff's reaction. He puts this into practice immediately, runs it up the chain of command so that everybody knows they have a fix.

And now they're like flying this guy all over the Gulf to fix the systems on everybody's boats. And the radio man, when he was finally done, he went to work for the company that built the system. So raise your people up, everybody benefits from it. You benefit from it too, as a leader, it's all right to have a little bit of self interest.

You need people to perform or you will fail. So,the climate of freedom that he created, it didn't erode discipline. It actually created a better discipline that was focused on the outcome rather than theimage of discipline. Free people have a powerful incentive not to screw up. And he encouraged this. There was a incident where, they had an, what they call the after action report, which he stole from the Army.And so anytime they had an operation, they would sit down at the end. And the only rule was like, just facts, like nobody take anything personally.

We're going to be very honest. And his team would be like, captain, your ship handling stunk today. It was bad and it made us do extra work. How many captains will allow you to talk to them that way? Buthe didn't feel like that's how he needed to main control, which is like a traditional image of respect and fear.

No, tell me what's wrong and we'll fix it. Like the guys on the front line know, you'll earn their trust that way. So it was fun. He says, intrepid sailors win wars, intimidated sailors lose them. So 310 initiative takers. 

Kristen: Yeah.

This is a good chapter and I actually, in case you want to read ahead at all, our last LBC book of the year is going to be Start With Why by Simon Sinek.

Mike: And, it's a great read. And we're gonna, so we're gonna be talking a lot more about like vision and purpose and how to communicate that and get, inspire people to take action. Yeah. Chapter six, create a climate of trust. The best way to keep a ship on course is to give the troops all the responsibility they can handle and then stand back. Trust is a human marvel. So one of the things he did, and I love this, he changed competition to collaboration. So in the Navy, apparently the competition to be named commander of a ship is fierce.

And, he has four department heads on his boat and probably only the top two of them are even in the running to get their own command. So there's a lot of,fighting between the departments. One of the first things he does is sit them down and say, that's not how he's going to score them.

He's going to rank them based on how well they cooperate with each other and how well they further the goals of the boat, and whether you like your boss or not, they have a lot of, especially in the military, have a lot of power over whether you advance in your career or not. So he wants to get rid of this unproductive competition.

He succeeds at this, and he says, even if you're not ranked in the top two, he's if you really, work with this collaboration, he's going to go out of his way to try and help you advance your career, which is, for someone in their position, it's huge. So they get bonus points for that. They stopped fighting, they started to trust each other, and as a consequence their department stopped fighting and started to work together and trust each other.

So, yeah. Important.

Kristen: The other that came up in this chapter I liked that,he said like even the worst screw-up may still be redeemable and this is especially around like not giving up on people too quickly because everybody else notices. He talks about how he got a, a sailor under disciplinary action and, really turned out to be like a great performer.

So,that's just like, don't give up on people too quickly. It's easy to put all of your attention and energy into the people that are easiest for you to work with, the people who are, you see the most immediate results in their success, but you also need to make sure that you're investing in people who might need a little bit more from you in order to show their progress. 

Mike: Yeah he has a sailor who misses the boat, which is a serious offense, when they leave port. Uh and they have to like fly the sailor out on a helicopter, it's embarrassing, right. The sailor knows he screwed up. He doesn't try to make excuses. He said, captain, I overslept. I missed the boat. I'm sorry. The captain, because of his honesty and his willingness to take accountability and not pass the buck, he only gives him about half the punishment that he could have given them. It, that's a very serious, offense.

And one of the things he does is make him write a letter to his teammates and apologize because he, he let them down. And if it was a true, you know,conflict at the, at that time, like it could have been bad. So he writes the letter, he's doing his penance. I actually used this technique when I was in hotels.

We would get reviews from someone saying, Oh, this staff member was rude. I would make the staff member reply to the guest and say, Hey, I'm sorry that,that happened. I wasn't super polite and you could say anything. I was having a bad day. We know that's not the service you expect. it worked really well.

Team members were used to like managers having to take all the heat from the guests. They could get away with whatever they wanted and the manager is going to have to, Nope, you have to apologize because you're the one that, and it really worked. But anyway, during this, sailors punishment phase, it was like, I don't know, six weeks restricted duty, something. 

His mom was sick, right? And he, he asked for a leave to go to see her and the entire like officer corps is no, don't do it. He's on disciplinary action. You can't do it. You'll set a bad standard.

But,the captain agonizes over this and eventually decides to send him home and he does. He gets to spend time with his mom. I think it turns out to be very, very serious. And he's there for a minute. And, they tack his time onto the end of his sentence and he comes back, but he comes back a changed man, and he is just absolutely an exemplary sailor after that. No problem, just a real high achiever. So by investing in people, even when they might not be at the top of the class right now, you don't know, you don't know where they're going to end up. Even the worst screw up is redeemable for sure. They are. He talks about, welcoming bad news.

And don't shoot the messenger because a boss who does this is sending the signal that to your people that you don't bring you the big problems. You have to be afraid to bring the boss the real, you don't want that. You want them speaking up telling you what's wrong 

Kristen: Brene Brown talked about this too. Yeah. It's don't shoot the messenger.

Mike: So he has an example of some Aegis software. I can't remember what this does. It's a complicated boat. Anyway, this software degradation 

Kristen: And this is like 25 years ago.

Mike: It was noticed by a petty officer and you know the chain of command like generally assumes the petty officers know nothing so they don't listen to him.

But this captain did and it was some serious degradation of the software. And, he took it to the Commodore looked through it and he's you're right, and again, this, that now this, uh, petty officer winds up like getting the credit for fixing the sophisticated software in the entire fleet, you know. So listen to your people.He leads up the chain of command very well. He doesn't cry wolf. He doesn't complain about small problems. And thus, when he went to his with this problem, the Commodore listened to him, you know. He knew that this was serious, 

If you cry wolf all the time and complain all the time, when something's really wrong, your senior leadership won't won't hear you. They'll be like, uh, you know, he's complaining again.

Kristen: Yeah. Escalate carefully.

Mike: Escalate carefully. 

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah, the last thing on this that, I think it's worth noting that he talks about is the importance of shielding your team 

when you have a challenging boss who has like a hair trigger temper and will go off really dramatically on things. How important it is to shield your team from that.

And he talks about with one boss he had where he figured out like what would trigger his rage and then would make sure that he delivered the bad news in private so that his team would be shielded from it, and he would take the brunt. And I feel very strongly that as a leader, this is something that can be really hard to deal with.

And it's why it's so important for you to have your own outlets to deal with things and process things that are not people on your team. But it really is your responsibility to shield your team from this as much as possible.

Mike: For sure. To the point where I've had bad bosses. It was a goal that my team not even know my boss was bad.

That I somehow brought things to them and back up the chain so that they didn't know. 

You want to give your boss face and lift the burdens and raise them up. And, if you're talking smack behind their back to your team, that's not actually productive. It might feel good, but it's not helping the organization.

It's not helping your team. So chapter seven, look for results, not salutes. He works to chip away at the rigid hierarchical system, creating a culture where fluff and flattery were less important than results, which he defines as combat readiness, the sole purpose of a ship. So I'm sure in the military, the Navy, probably more than anything, there's a lot of saluting and, the brass is, one class and the enlisted men are another class.

And he tries to get rid of that and he gets good results from it.He does this early on. He observes they have, they're having a cookout on deck on Sunday doing, the, you know, barbecue. And he sees a long line of sailors waiting for their lunch. he observes his officers cutting to the head of the line to get their food and then going up to the next deck to eat by themselves.

So he very dramatically goes to the end of the line, and his officer's gawked. And so, you know, he uses the weight of his office a lot and he knows that, a Navy captain at sea has a mythos and an ethos and there is a gravitas to everything he does.

And it's not a personal thing. It's not a personality thing, but just because he is who he is, everybody's jaws dropped and finally some officers elected to go talk to him and says, captain, you don't understand. You get to go to the head of the line and he's like, no, that's okay. If we run out of food, I'll be the one to go without.

And then when he finally got his food, he

Kristen: Leaders Eat Last.

Mike: Leaders eat last., he

Another 

Kristen: Simon Sinek book. 

Mike: Yeah. He stayed on the lower deck and ate with his sailors. and next weekend he didn't have to say anything. He didn't have to chastise his officers. They all just went to the end of the line, with him. So that.

He uses this weight of his position to break a class of society, which was not easy. I find this very apropos in business today. The idea of management and employees is it's for me, it's insane. It's pretty dumb.

We're all in this together. Everyone to some degree is really just trying to maximize their own value and time in the market.

He does this with,his senior leaders too. When his Commodore comes to visit, you know, he grabs lunch and he's like, okay, we're going to the officer's ward room. And he's like, no, we're going to go eat on the mess decks. And he leaves his sailors to sit at a table alone with the Commodore and let them talk to him.

And most captains would not do this relinquish control in this way. But he sees his sailors, like they asked the Commodore very, like very good questions. They're very respectful. And the Commodore has a really good reaction to it. Crews often complain when senior officers or VIPs are scheduled to come aboard.

They have to clean and paint the entire ship in preparation, but then they have to be out of sight when the eminence arrives. he turns this on his head, and instead, the crew is the thing that he wants to show off when visiting dignitaries come.. And I experienced this in hotels when the asset manager or the VP is coming, we got to work for weeks to prepare and clean everything and take a toothbrush to the top.

Why? Why is it that like, and that guy's not even, he's there for like two hours, you know? So why is it what we do every day isn't good enough for the VIP? It should be. So don't drive your team crazy when you have important visitors. It's okay to clean up a little bit, you don't have to paint the whole boat.

So, you know, his core principle is really creating a culture where everyone in feels empowered to speak up. If the captain wears no clothes, let him be told so. There's a Chinese proverb, a King with righteous ministers will not lose his kingdom. A father with righteous sons will not lose his family.

And, a brother or a friend with righteous friends will not lose his honor, something like that. It's all right to have people tell you the truth when you're, Brene talks about letting people tell you when you're out of an, out of your integrity. It takes confidence and, to let people do that. 

Kristen: That chapter just made me so hungry.

Mike: Oh, because

Kristen: of the, because of the cookout, I'm like, Hmm, I want a burger now.

Mike: You can get a burger, you can order from your whatever burger place got. Anywho, I mean, French fries are nice. 

Kristen: Um, 

Mike: Chapter eight, take calculated risks. Show me someone who has never made a mistake and I will show you someone who is not doing anything to improve your organization.

So yeah.Captain Abrashoff took risks, Commander Abrashoff, that he thought his boss would want him to take, things that he could defend within his job description and authority. This is a genius. And as a leader, that's absolutely what I want from people. I don't want team members who are timid and we want team members who will take bold action and well wielded the authority that they are given.

In fact, we desperately need this and only ego prevents us from truly empowering it. In one very recent position. that I have, I arrived to refrains that the chef in, in, in my community was difficult,and I was given the example, oh, she moved all of the, beverages, the iced tea to the center table and she didn't ask anyone if this was okay.

And I was like, why does she need to ask anybody if it's okay? And I was like great, this is somebody that takes action within the scope of their authority and maybe it was not turned out to be the best idea. But I didn't care. I was like great and she has gone on to develop into a very strong leader and I look for people that will do that So what will I have to control everything?

She needs my permission to oh. People hate that nobody wants to be controlled You know, people want to be guided. People do need some boundaries. You can't just, you know, but I was like, great. This is somebody who's gonna, I knew it from day one and it turned, I turned out to be right. And she's amazing.

Kristen: Well, I mean, I see you do this kind of stuff with your team all the time where you're like, this is the, these are the only areas where I am the only person who has a final call on this. Like everything else, like you guys can take initiative. 

Mike: Like Keno was really good about that at my hotel, he said the only.

But 

Kristen: Which you should explain who Keno

is, just 

Mike: Well Keno was one of my leaders in hotels.. I think we've mentioned him.

I learned this.

Kristen: If, if you listen to past

Mike: you listen to past. So he was the GM of a hotel that I was in AGM at, and some listeners, probably worked there with me, but he did just so many of these things very naturally. And he created boundaries for leaders very naturally. He did a lot of stuff that I found in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

He was just very kind and approachable. And he said he didn't used to be that way actually, like before COVID he was It was a more like classist society. But I think for a lot of leaders that changed in COVID, but he would always say the only things that I have to be involved in is safety, security and severe financial loss. AndCommander Abrashoff said the same thing. He's like, if it involves, costing the taxpayers a lot of money, damaging the ship, or killing someone, I must be involved. And if not, have at it.

Yeah, he took risks that he thought his boss would want him to take. Early in his tenure, he allows a very junior officer to command the ship during a dangerous at night refueling procedure.

Uh, even to, like, the junior officer's scared, he's, uh, and, and, 

So the captain says to him, Hey, don't worry. I've never done this procedure either. We'll learn together, even though he'd done it hundreds of times. So he puts him in charge of this very difficult procedure. The junior leader does very, very well. And he builds, capability and he builds confidence. And everybody knows that like the captain is not a top down leader. All right. He says, if all you give is orders, all you get is order takers.

So again, with the branding, since his goal was self starters, Benfold's motto became, it's your ship.

Kristen: Yeah. I mean, I think he kind of, like two of the ways he talks about this is that like, if the, if a rule makes no sense, break it. And then if the rule makes sense, break it carefully. I mean, these are obviously not meant for every situation, but he gave kind of a fun story of how he loaded on beer when like having alcohol on the ship is like strictly against

Mike: Yeah. And the entire, his entire leadership cadre is like, no, and he's like, just do it. 

Kristen: Just do it. Just do 

Mike: And he doesn't, he winds up not serving it on board. They get some barge and they have a great new year's

Kristen: A New Year's Eve barge party.

Mike: He doesn't let anybody drink on board. He knows what he's doing. Break it carefully, yeah, but he's, he's just, he's so intentional and thoughtful with everything he does.

I'm super inspired by that. know, my recently assistant executive like says that to me. She's like, everything you do, you're thinking through. You know. And you're not always going to be right, but you're going to be more right than if you didn't think everything through.

Okay. So chapter nine, go beyond standard procedure. So in this chapter, for me, it's a bit of a rehash about fun stories about how he challenges convention. In one story, he goes around his normal chain of command to get satellite TV for his crew, which of course they love. They can watch football. They can watch movies.

And, as in many other instances, what he did, became the standard operating practice for the rest of the Navy. And he affects this by challenging the status quo. I love this story. So one of the best things he does is he changes the standard qualification procedures for the Navy's enlisted surface warfare specialist program called ESWS 

It's a superb program that teaches sailors to be experts in their entire ship. He changes this partly to circumvent an overly clever Admiral who is now tying shore leave for young officers to passing the ESWS program, which is very difficult program. So.the Admiral changes the rules and now you can only go ashore if you have the ESWS qualification. So the captain says, if you can't ignore a stupid rule, use it for your own purposes. So he kind of realized that the ESWS program was essentially teaching sailors to be tour guides for the entire ship. So, in this context, a good tour guide could explain how the engines work, the generators, weapon systems, how they control aircraft, the mechanics of the anchors, and more.

So, once he framed it this way, the sailors saw it in a new light, and they believed that they could attain it. Where like only one or two people qualified in the previous tour for the captain before him. He qualified 200 people. So after qualifying the first batch of sailors, he allowed the first person to pass to show a visiting four star Marine general around the ship.

This is unheard of because the general is, was in command of the entire Middle East force, and generally when visiting dignitaries or brass like this come aboard, the captain wants to spend every second that he can to get face time and suck up, you knowSo the general comes aboard and he's like, all right, I'm ready for the tour, show me around.

And the captain's like, actually, it's going to be Fireman Cotton who will be showing you around. The general, his jaw is like on the floor, like, what are you talking about? You know, and the captain says, you know Fireman Cotton he's my first qualification for the ESWS program and he lets the general pin it on him of course, they love doing that and he's like he knows the ship as well as I do. And you know the general just he can't believe this because he's just, it's such a ballsy move. It's such a ballsy move to have like a, the president of your company show up and be like, hey, actually the teller is going to show you around the bank and explain the systems. And that'd be lazy if they didn't do a good job, but if they understand the ship as well as you do, it's such a ballsy move.

The general's taken aback by this and in the end moved by the sailor's incredible knowledge of the ship and his enthusiasm. He rips up a prepared speech that he was going to give that night and instead, spoke off the cuff about empowering young sailors to assume major responsibilities. In the end, the, yeah, the Benfold qualified 200 of its 310 sailors.

So he says there's no downside to having employees who know how every division of an organization functions.

Kristen: Yeah. And I think the other point he made in this chapter that is also important to note, because I think reading this, you. You could in one way take it as like, oh, he was just doing all this like out of the box, crazy stuff, like defying military rules, right and left and all of this, which I'm, yeah, there, there is a lot of that.

But he also says that the obvious solution is often the best one. So it doesn't always need to be this super innovative, out of the box, like cool solution. Very often the obvious one is the best one. And this reminds me a lot of the way we train in improv too, is like, you don't, you don't always need to overthink it.

Like sometimes your best impulse, your best instinct is usually right.

Mike: You know, the next chapter is really his raison d'etre is build your people up. So he does break rules. He does challenge conventions, but it's always with the, goal of empowering and highlighting and giving his sailors the limelightHe kind of retires not, I think too long after this, he could have gone on to be admiral because his, they, at the end of his time there, they were flying other captains over to learn what he was doing because it, all of this is fluff if it didn't result in an amazing product, but it turned out that it did. And he was by far the most like combat ready ship in the Gulf. They have the highest like gunnery score that's ever been recorded. And they, because they, instead of wasting time, they were training and they had a great team and they had an esprit de corps.

Kristen: And it totally worked. And his whole thing is build up your people. So he says, show me a manager that ignores the power of praise and I'll show you a lousy manager. Praise is infinitely more productive than punishment. Yeah, this is kind of where he talks about building people up with their self esteem too, and how, again, a lot of the people he's leading are enlisted at 18 and have a whole lot of trauma. Um, He says like, I, I know most of us carry around an invisible backpack full of childhood insecurities, and that many sailors often struggled under the load of past insults, including being scorned at home or squashed at school.

I could make the load either heavier or lighter and the right choice was obvious. 

Mike: I, you, if you read the book, you will get the sense that this is somebody that you would want to work for.

Not because they just let everything slide, but because, you know, they believed in you and helped you improve and you know. Your success was their triumph and that's what they were looking for. Yeah. So he had some very thoughtful ideas. He would buy greeting cards for his sailors families that he would send to the families on like their birthday or something.

You know, I can say, Hey, your spouse is doing an amazing job. We really appreciate their contribution. And by this, he was able to like, kind of bring the families into Benfold's orbit. It's very, it'd be pretty touching if you're in the Navy, if your captain took the time to write a note to your wife and say thank you for his service.

I don't think most people think to do things like that. He also built up his bosses. He knew he could not succeed as a self promoting careerist. I'm sure those are frequent in the Navy and in business, right? He aimed to be the consummate team player, anticipating his leadership's needs before they had even realized they had them.

He had the, he had a mentality of customer service. He had one customer to serve. His Commodore, and he had one product, which was combat readiness. But I think that's, it's kind of genius. He put him himself in his boss's place and decided that what they needed was a self reliant ship commander who accomplished whatever needed to be done without needing to be micromanaged.

So I actually, Keno, back to Keno, at one point Keno asked me what I did all day and I took this as a, I was like, what do you mean what I do all day? I do so much. And he's like, yeah, what do you do here? And I was like, is he trying to fire me? He wasn't trying to fire me. So I spent like two days writing four pages of like what I do all day, you know?

Kristen: I remember this. Yeah, 

Mike: And it really stressed me out. And I'm like, what does he mean? What do I do all day? I'm so busy. Keno I talked to you for two hours a day, just chatting it up because you want to, I was like, can I put that? So anyway,I wrote all this up he's he was interviewing for another job at that point, which I kind of knew, which he got, but he was talking to some, the president of the company, some really high level VPs who were able to frame things differently.

And he's like, he looked at my thing and he's like, this is insane. You know, if you, if if you were interviewing for the GM job in New York or whatever, and you told somebody that like, if the president asks you what you do all day, you could, all you needed to say was, I do guest satisfaction and employee satisfaction.

I blew my kind of blew my mind. So now if you ask me what I do, I do three things. I do resident satisfaction, team member satisfaction, VP satisfaction. That's it. Three things is easy. It is easy, butfrom the bottom up can be hard to see what we're really doing. So he saw what he was really doing.

Combat readiness provided at a moment's notice, ready to go. He was a weapon to wield for his boss. And that's what his boss really wanted. And the little stuff that he asked him, can I go into port early? The boss didn't really care about that, cause his boss turned out to be pretty smart.

So one of the, another building people up, he built a really strong bench. When he got there, he noticed a lot of critical jobs only were, only one person knew how to do them, which puts you at a lot of risk and mercy of that person. What if they get transferred? What if they get injured?

What if they, you know, rebel against you? So he, he got to the point where like three people knew how to do everything, which I think is super smart. It allows people a different level of ownership. It allows you more flexibility.It's a very very smart practice. 

Chapter 11, generate unity. Uh,this is the. He handles a racial incident, pretty creatively. He scraps the Navy's atrocious,diversity program and substitutes unity training.

Uh, this is a little clunky. It's definitely early in the, it's a little clunky.

Kristen: It's a little cringy. It could have been way worse when I saw the subject and I was like, Oh God, this is a military leadership book written in 2002. It definitely carries, I think a little bit of the, um, nineties 

like 

Mike: Treat everyone equally. 

Kristen: Yeah, racial blindness. Let's focus on our, what makes us similar instead of what makes us diferent which I feel like we all know at this point.

It's not really the effective way to talk about this stuff, 

Mike: It's not. You know, he's in a little bit different scenario too.

He's, He's preparing a weapon for war. He's not, you know,

Kristen: I mean, it could have been worse.

I, I wouldn't really take anything away from this

Mike: I don't really have anything to take away except he, he definitely tries to get everybody on board with, mutual respect. Right. And he tries to start from that. And he does say like,when he took over, like there was a lot of complaints of racial and gender inequality.

And when he left, there was very little. So his sailors at the time were satisfied, you know, it's, it's a different world today, Chapter 12, improve your people's quality of life. We talked about that. I love the idea of sending his cooks to culinary school and overall, he encourages people to have fun at work.

They play movies on the giant bulkhead. They just, they enjoy being together. they live together, they work together. They're very close and he fosters that climate. Having a boss that is makes a difficult situation worse by not letting you enjoy being there. Why do that? You know, let's go.

We can have fun at work. So

Chapter 13, life after Benfold. Um I love this chapter. He disinvites his Commodore from the ceremony where he's going to hand over the ship to his replacement choosing instead to celebrate just with his crew .So Commodore at this point, he's kind of used to him and he just mails him his medal. He was like, I know you at this point. So,on the day of his departure, it included, he included four hours of training in the morning because that's just what they do, I say in jujitsu on Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have an open mat, and that's how we celebrate, training is every day, training is life. 

Kristen: So, he then assembles everyone on the flight deck for the shortest in the history of the Navy change of command speeches. He says, you know how I feel. Mic drop, and that's it, and that's it, so.

Mike: I love his concept too. He says, good leaders should not be judged until six months to a year after they have left an organization. His replacement is pretty intimidated by his success, but he walks them through,the Benfold playbook. This gentleman gets it and the boat continues to thrive after his departure.

And that officer is now, I believe a two star Admiral. So yeah. Set people up for success. Main theme of the book, I think. Okay, overall impressions. he is successful because he empowers 300 plus people, and harnesses their talents, and, uh, passion and alignment. He thinks like his boss, but takes the perspective of his team.

He cares for them in a way that resonates with them. You know,he's super strategic and calculated and everything he does. Everything has a well thought out intention and goal, even when and where he eats lunch. One of the, my favorite quotes that I use frequently is going from thinking like a high achiever to thinking like your boss is the difference between being a follower and becoming a leader.

So, uh, what didn't resonate? Kristen, do you want to go first? 

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, I think like, this is none of this is going to be shocking, but it is very heavy on the narrative.

I feel like there's some filler in there, especially towards the end. He's made his points and I feel like there's just more stories. 

Mike: If you listen to him speak, you will, it's different.

Kristen: Yeah, and I also

Mike: tell me your story, sir. Tell me all your stories.

Kristen: Like, he's clearly an incredible public speaker, so I can totally see why listening to the audiobook could also, be a different experience.

Mike: Yeah. Mega Mike.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think,in the book, it almost verges on getting into, more, like, memoir territory. 

Mike: It is a little bit for sure. It is like

Kristen: A management versus a leadership book. Which is not always like my favorite, but I did find them, the stories like a lot more palatable than like Extreme Ownership.

Mike: Well, it's, It's less war and more like just an organization.

Kristen: Yeah, exactly. Like there's very little, like

Mike: There's almost no

Kristen: Yeah. Almost no combat whatsoever. it, The only combat is like they're being, getting ready to launch a missile and they never launch it.

Mike: they they never launch it.

Kristen: Um, so yeah, so it's, it's definitely more palatable for me at least in that regard, but yeah, it's very narrative heavy.

I think his tone sometimes can be like a little bit self congratulatory.

Mike: It is. And he writes another book where he, he kind of mea culpa a little bit. He's like, if I could have done something differently, I would have been more of a team player with the rest of the battle group.

Kristen: Yeah, I think, yeah, that's good to know that

Mike: know. He's 36.

Kristen: Yeah, he kind of owns up to that. 

Mike: And you, you want to, you want a military commander to have some generally some bravado. 

Kristen: Oh, for sure. Like as a leader. For sure. Just as writing your reflections on your book, it can be a little

Mike: He's definitely proud of it, and he should be, but, yeah,

Kristen: I think that, that can be a turn off 

Mike: sure 

Kristen: for, for a lot of people.I also just would have liked to see more discussion of like the actual techniques he's talking about and how they could be applied.

I think he wrote this very quickly after Command and he hadn't spent much time, doing like the leadership focused practice that he does now and, but I, But yeah, I think like more discussion of the actual tactics. It was more like, here's like a sentence about it and then like here's a story.

Mike: Yeah, it's, it uses parable to teach. Yeah. But I respond to that.

Kristen: Yeah, well, yeah, and a lot of this is personal preference, right? I like some narrative. It's probably heavier on it than I would prefer, but there's a lot of good stuff in it, so. 

Mike: So, you know, I say kind of the same thing. There are many stories telling the same guiding principle.

Kristen: It's building your people up, and free them from top down leadership. I enjoy the other stories. If you listen to him, you could just listen all day, but some of it's filler to make a full size book. Which like short books are 

Mike: Short books are great. 

Kristen: I don't know why there's such a, there's so many business books. I feel like it's like, we got to get to like 200, 300 pages.

And they're like, no, you don't. No, you don't. Not, that's not in every case.

Mike: Yeah, not in every case.

Kristen: Like Dare to Lead like made those pages count, but

Mike: She did, but even her end was a little

Kristen: I feel like most of them get a little weaker towards the end. I'm learning so much about how to write a book from just going through all these in such detail.

Mike: It's true.And I do say I experience this very differently from when I read it versus when I usually listen to it. Listening to him talk, I could listen to him tell his war stories all day in print. It's a little more obvious. They're just, they're talking about the same principle over and over, which is this important principle, but you know,life changing takeaway.

So for me overall, the entirety of his leadership style and approach, reading this book now, I see so many of the core concepts of my own leadership model, decentralized command, build people up, reward free thinking, let people own it, think outside the box and take risks that I think my boss would want me to take, for successful outcomes.

I give people a ton of freedom, that does come with accountability for success, longterm.Kristen, what's your,

Kristen: Yeah. I mean,I definitely enjoy just overall the kind of peek into your leadership origin story, as I said. Just as your wife and fellow leadership nerd. But I think there were a lot of good stuff in here. I think the thing I will probably take away as a framework was I just really liked the three questions to ask yourself when something goes wrong. Like the, did I clearly articulate the goals? Did I give people enough time and resources to accomplish the task? Did I give them enough training? I think it's a really practical thing to take away. 

Mike: So funny fact, one of my sales directors, I usually try and give this book to people. I'm trying to inspire them and, tell them what's on my mind, without me having to spend six months going through the process. Some of them read it, some of them don't. But she read it, she was super inspired by it, and to the point where she wanted to find,Commander Abrashoff and have him come to speak, she quickly found out that his speaking fees are like 20, 000 to 50, 000 per event.

She's like, Oh my God. I was like. He's a very, you know, little outside of our budget, the, I'm sure most of the stuff is in, in the book and it'd be different to have like same thing with Jocko, to have Jocko come in and do, or have, Commander Abrashoff come in and do a week long workshop with you would be one thing, but the speech is in the book, you know?

So anyway, I thought that was funny. She was like, it blew her mind. But, it goes to show you what you can do when you, amalgamate your experiences into learning. I'm, I'm super inspired by him. He, throughout his career, he, he really. Every day he was trying to improve. He was trying to improve himself.

He was trying to improve his leadership and he was open to learning and there's a, did he, was he proud of himself? Sure. But he was also humble to like take feedback from his crew and learn along the way. And, just so many beautiful principles in here. So that's it. It's your ship.

Kristen: Amazing.

Mike: Thank you for joining us.

Kristen: Thank you, everybody, again, for here in the U. S., have a great Thanksgiving, and thank you guys for listening, and we will see you next week with another brand new episode.

Mike: Thank you everyone. Happy holidays. 

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

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