My grandfather served his country as an aviation ordnanceman first class on PBY-5A Catalina aircraft in the Pacific theater during the second World War. He rarely spoke to me about the war when I was young and, as the typical disinterested teenager that I was, I never thought to ask about his experience. I therefore knew few details about his service when I waded into his footsteps in the Navy, then naval aviation, and finally in maritime patrol. As my young naval career progressed, I began to appreciate and inquire into my grandfather’s time in the Pacific and became inspired by the man I got to know in the process.
Most conversations with my grandfather are short. He’s not one for small talk anymore. But when I ask about the Navy and the war his entire disposition changes. His pace quickens and his voice, swollen with pride, elevates to a slightly higher pitch. The conversation becomes decidedly one-sided as he retells his stories with uncanny detail. He recalls the countless missions he flew out of Bougainville with VP-81 as one of Commander Eugene P. Rankin’s Night Raiders, the regular bombing and strafing runs against Japanese positions in the Solomon Islands, and coordinating with Navy PT boats to locate and sink Japanese troop barges. He casually mentions the time his crew made an emergency landing after one of the engines on his PBY was shot out by anti-aircraft fire. He has undoubtedly bookmarked his time “over there” more boldly than any other period in his memory. Occasionally during these conversations he will get confused and call me by my father’s name, but to this day he remembers clearly the names of every man he flew with in the Navy.
One of the first and best leadership books I read after joining the Navy was Rear Admiral Robert O. Wray’s Saltwater Leadership. As a flight school student and the esteemed officer-in-charge of myself, I had plenty of time to tear through the anecdotes and lists that RADM Wray uses to illustrate the essential qualities of leadership. My personal favorite leadership list in the book, adapted from John C. Maxwell’s, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, notes such qualities as a positive attitude, self-discipline, and servanthood as among the tools a leader must possess.[1] The challenge with lists such as Maxwell’s, RADM Wray’s primer, and other books on leadership is how to incorporate their lessons into the leadership decisions one must make every day. The average junior officer has access to innumerable books, articles, courses, and mentors that can teach him or her to be a better leader. If information was the only requirement, then the fleet would be full of future admirals, so why is that not the case?
A tired, over-worked JO is not going to stay late at work to polish his division’s evals simply because he read that servanthood is a key tenet of leadership. Nor will a JO who just told her spouse that her deployment was extended wear a smile into her shop because she read that she should always maintain a positive attitude. Leadership skills—the how, what, and when of leading—can be taught, studied, and reinforced through books and courses, but when those skills are put to the test the words on a page or in a lecture alone will not suffice. Words alone will not carry a leader through the task at hand. Leadership requires a why.
A leader is a servant to his sailors because he truly cares about their success and because he knows that their success will contribute to the success of his division and his command. A leader will face adversity with her chin held high and a look of determination on her face because she knows her sailors will note her attitude and follow suit, and she cannot expect them to weather the storm if she lets herself become discouraged. The common quality or character trait that enables success for all leaders is a belief in a purpose beyond one’s own success or gain. For a good military leader, that purpose is typically belief in the importance of the mission or commitment to the well-being of one’s subordinates, and ideally a combination of both.
Most commanding officers have likely developed the requisite attachment to their people and their cause by the time they assume the mantle of skipper, but these traits are not as natural among junior officers in naval service. This gap in purposeful leadership is due in part to differences in experience and is exaggerated by generational characteristics of millennial JOs. A typical junior officer in a community with an intensive training pipeline, such as aviation, could very likely progress two or three years into his or her young career without any significant experience leading sailors or achieving any meaningful military objective. Beyond the various commissioning programs and a basic division officer leadership course, structured “professional development” is rare and typically focuses on the management of one’s own career and the achievement of various career milestones. This extended leadership gestation period is exacerbated by a millennial predilection to seek leisure and extrinsic rewards such as money and status in the workplace as opposed to intrinsic rewards such as a sense of purpose or altruism.[2] This combination has the potential to produce JOs driven primarily by a desire to advance their own interests, whether in or out of the Navy, and who become disaffected when the demands of fleet leadership outweigh their sense of motivation.
I recently had a candid discussion with a department head mentor about the importance of motivation and its effect on a naval career. “They don’t pay us enough to put up with what we put up with,” he conceded. “You have to be motivated by something other than money. It’s all those tacky things to say, like service to the country and leading sailors.” Is the culture surrounding our careers so transactional that voicing service and leadership as incentives is considered “tacky”? When asked by civilian friends why I joined the Navy, I have no problem truthfully responding that I wanted to serve my country. But when one is asked about the decision to stay in the Navy, an affirmative response usually involves the security of a pension and a healthcare plan, or some variant of, “I’m going to keep doing it as long as I’m still having fun.” I have never said, nor heard anyone say, “I want to continue to serve my country” or “I want to keep leading sailors.”
This is not an essay about retention, but since the decision to stay or go arises frequently in discussion among JOs, the topic is relevant to this discussion. Much has been written concerning the factors depressing retention, such as overcommitment of people and assets, high operational tempo, decreased funding for training and readiness, and a “zero-defect mentality”—all challenges that we as leaders face daily.[3] We all have days when we want to throw up our hands and walk away. Amid this frustration, we often lose sight of the benefits of service and the aspects of our profession to which no private-sector job can compare. I recently had dinner with two civilian friends, a highly successful husband and wife who both have impressive titles at a top technology firm—the type of jobs that would lure many a capable junior officer away from naval service. Our conversation eventually turned to my profession. I did my best to indulge their sincere interest in what daily life is like in the Navy, where I had been on deployment, and how exactly a naval flight officer differs from a pilot. After I had satisfied their curiosity, the wife sat back in her chair and sighed. “You’re so lucky,” she admitted, “all we do all day is crunch numbers and try to maximize profit margins to make money for a company. But you get to do something that matters.” Her words struck me, and I could not help but think that if any argument could convince a disillusioned JO to reexamine the Navy as a career choice, that was it.
That is not to say that in order to be a good leader an officer must commit to a career in the Navy. Many fine junior officers will depart the Navy to pursue other meaningful challenges in the civilian world, and they should not be faulted for that choice. The test for all junior officers is not the question of staying in the Navy, but rather that they approach the challenge of leadership the same way, whether they strive for command or plan to move on after reaching their minimum service requirement. Military service, especially as a commissioned officer, is more than just a job. Military service is a calling, whether you choose to answer the call for four years or four decades. More specifically for officers, it’s a call to be a leader, and since we took an oath to well and faithfully execute our duties, we are expected to lead well.
In order to answer that call, junior officers must embrace the prerequisite of leadership—the why. We must reinvigorate and nurture a belief in a purpose greater than ourselves, one that propelled most of us into military service but may now lie dormant. Once cultivated, the why of leadership will make the other so-called indispensable qualities—the what, when, and how—much easier to manifest. Where to begin? Start by finding ways to engage with your sailors, or any sailors if you do not yet have your own, and experience the positive effect your time and efforts can have on their lives. Become an expert in your warfare specialty and then take time to teach the eager trainees who follow you. Find mentors who are similarly dedicated to your ideals and can attest to the ways that commitment to their profession has positively impacted their lives. Take ownership of and improve a languishing program or collateral duty. Do not encourage the antics of negative, toxic peers. Immerse yourself in naval history and cultivate an appreciation for the men and women who once stood in your shoes and whose dedication to the mission, the same mission you have since acquired, changed the course of history. Embrace the gravity of your position. Take pride in it.
My grandfather is proud of his service. He is proud to have been a part of such a historic endeavor. As John F. Kennedy suggested, serving in the Navy made his life worthwhile. Most junior officers today would be uncomfortable with the thought of comparing our service to that of the World War II generation, and rightfully so. The nature of what we do is different, and the world is a different place. But though we may not yet lay claim to the title of Greatest Generation, our service to the nation is similarly distinguished. Virtually all of today’s junior officers first joined the military after September 11th during a period of conflict. We all play our roles, large or small, in the war of our time, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, contingency operations around the globe, or by supporting the force at home. We can find purpose in that. We will remember that. More importantly, the men and women whom we lead will remember that. Like my grandfather, they may remember their service as the seminal period of their lives. Like my grandfather, they will remember their leaders. Therein lies the responsibility of leadership. We cannot be too self-interested or too self-conscious to believe that what we do matters, both to the sailors in our charge and to the nation. History will remember what we do, and our sailors will remember who we were. Our duty as junior officers is to remember why we lead.
Endnotes
[1] Robert O. Wray, Jr. Saltwater Leadership: A Primer on Leadership for the Junior Sea-Service
Officer, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013).
[2] Jean M. Twenge, Stacy M. Campbell, Brian J. Hoffman, and Charles E. Lance. “Generational
Differences in Work Values: Leisure and Extrinsic Values Increasing, Social and Intrinsic Values
Decreasing,” Journal of Management 36, no. 5 (September 2010): 1117–142, doi:10.1177/0149206309352246.
[3] Guy M. Snodgrass, “Keep a Weather Eye on the Horizon: A Navy Officer Retention Study,” Naval
War College Review 67 no. 4, article 7 (Autumn 2014), https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol67/iss4/7.
