Part 4

Get Your Ship Together: How Great Leaders Inspire Ownership from the Keel
by Michael Abrashoff

(Page 4 of 5)

Thinking about Buddy Gengler, I have to wonder how often great leaders initially go unnoticed or unappreciated just because they don't fit the prevailing stereotype. I've been guilty of it myself. My heart sank the first time I met my executive officer on Benfold, Lieutenant Commander Jeff Harley (sorry, Jeff). We were among six prospective captains and six prospective executive officers going through the Aegis weapons training course together. It's a four-week course designed to train captains and executive officers for their demanding duties. If I had been told to choose any of the six to be my executive officer, Jeff wouldn't have made the cut. Here was the guy who was going to be my right-hand man, and he didn't look at all like the type you'd pick for football talk over a beer at the corner bar. Mild mannered and bespectacled, he resembled a professor more than a salty seaman. I had a hard time seeing myself teamed with someone so different from me.

The executive officer is sort of the ship's vice president. It's up to the captain to decide if that VP will be weak or strong - a Dan Quayle or a Dick Cheney. If your XO has the right stuff to wield influence, that's a force multiplier for the captain. If not, well, at least you've got someone to handle administrative duties.

Jeff arrived on USS Benfold three months before me because I still had more training to complete. I had immediately judged him to be the administrative type, so my first inclination was to keep him pigeonholed. But before I made that snap decision, I decided to call a close friend, Captain Dallas Bethea, for whom Jeff had previously served on USS Cowpens as operations officer. My first inclination could not have been more wrong. Dallas had nothing but wonderful things to say about Jeff, and his glowing report opened my closed mind just a bit. I am forever grateful to Dallas for that.

When I allowed my mind to open up completely, what I saw changed my entire perception of Jeff. He had the answer to every question I asked, even ones I myself had had to look up back when I was an executive officer. He knew minute details of Benfold's operations and demonstrated an encyclopedic grasp of information about my fellow commanders - which ones were already in the Middle East; which ones, like us, would be deployed soon; and how each of them liked to operate. I had been out of the region and out of the loop for three years, so Jeff's knowledge saved me enormous time and legwork.

Any remaining doubt about whether this rather unassuming man could be an active and influential executive officer who would command the respect of the crew was shortly laid to rest. Jeff had a wonderful way about him that made everyone more than happy to follow him - he was likable and genuine, not to mention technically competent. The crew would bust a gut for Jeff. All he had to do was ask.

In his earlier days as an officer, Jeff had served on USS David R. Ray, a destroyer that had a nasty habit of flunking its engineering certifications. Two chief engineers in a row had been fired before Jeff arrived as number three. At that point, he had no engineering background whatsoever. But he was a warm body with a pulse, which was enough to land him that job. Initially, I think, Jeff's new captain had also made a snap judgment about him. But being the tenacious sort, he just dug in and got to work, trying to learn everything he could about the job at hand.

One day the commanding officer called Jeff to say his cabin toilet wasn't working. Jeff was ordered to report to the head and stay there until it was fixed. Now the area in question was pretty cramped. Jeff ended up spending the whole day sitting on the CO's toilet, wheel book in his lap, looking up who was supposed to be doing what and when, and using the CO's phone to run the engineering department. (When Jeff describes this scene, he breaks everyone up.) After the needed parts finally arrived and the toilet was fixed, Jeff was set free at last - but only after the CO had test-driven his newly repaired toilet.

After hearing Jeff's story, no one would turn down a chance to work with him - me included. Jeff Harley turned around the engineering department on David R. Ray and parlayed that achievement into two promotions that brought him to Benfold. Given his depth of knowledge, experience, and leadership skills, I was only too happy to make him both my number- one administrator and my number-two war fighter. It was a decision that paid off enormously, as you'll soon see. But first, let me share with you some of the leadership lessons I discovered in my conversations with Buddy Gengler.

LESSON: Call in the reserves when you need them.

Like any good leader, First Lieutenant Buddy Gengler gives full credit to his troops for their top-notch performance in Iraq. They couldn't have done it without him, of course, but he doesn't let the kudos obscure a hard truth: there are many things Buddy Gengler doesn't know, such as how to turn a band of rocket launchers into a quick-reaction force. One of his great strengths is his willingness - determination, even - to look for outside expertise.

If that kernel of wisdom seems too obvious to make a fuss over, ask yourself how often you've heard a leader say, "I'm not smart enough to do a real good job of teaching you how to do this. I'm going to find somebody smarter." Because that, in effect, is what Buddy Gengler told his soldiers when they unexpectedly had to take on an entirely new and very dangerous assignment in Iraq.

Truth telling takes guts. It also takes a high level of self-confidence and a willingness to be seen as less than the all-knowing leader - two things many people in authority do not possess. The irony is that underlings can sense that fear of exposure, and once they do, they lose respect for their leaders. By contrast, having the courage to admit ignorance and the wisdom to seek help, as Buddy did, wins the admiration of those you command.

As soon as Buddy learned of his platoon's recalibrated mission, he set out to find someone with solid experience in what the army calls MOUT, military operations in urban terrain. A ranger-trained officer in Buddy's battalion who fit the bill agreed to put the platoon through the necessary exercises, teaching the soldiers how to cover for others under enemy fire and similar combat techniques.

On their first day as quick responders, while nervously awaiting news of a flare-up that would require them to take action, Buddy took the opportunity to talk about how platoon members should process any prisoners. He had received some training at West Point but was far from expert. Waiting alongside Buddy's platoon were the operators of the Bradley armored transport vehicles. One of the Bradley operators was noticeably listening in, so Buddy asked if he had anything to add. It turned out the man was a former marine MP who had dealt with war prisoners. He gladly pitched in with first-rate advice on how to restrain prisoners, make sure they weren't carrying weapons or explosives, and handle their belongings.

The marine had barely finished when the order came to move in. Buddy's platoon was soon pouring out of the Bradleys on a street corner under siege. "Adrenaline was rushing, shots were being fired," he recalled, "and I saw my soldiers immediately do a job perfectly that they had never done before. It absolutely blew my mind." When the firefight subsided, Buddy's platoon counted thirty-eight prisoners and more than fifty weapons, including mortars, taken in its first mission. Best of all, nobody in the platoon was even injured.

For Buddy, the experience of that first mission reinforced something he already knew: "When there are ideas or expert reference power around you, you've got to be able and willing to use it. I couldn't and wouldn't do anything else in Iraq with my soldiers' lives on the line, but it goes beyond that. A lot of leaders I've been around in other much less dangerous situations were not willing to [ask for help]. They put their own pride first. It's a big mistake."

I battled my own vanity one dark night in January of 1998 when Benfold was tracking an Iraqi smuggler down the coast of Iran. It turned out to be the one and only night when I was, by necessity, not in command of the situation.

We were looking for a 125-to-150-foot Iraqi ship, a minitanker of sorts, that was smuggling fuel oil to avoid the sanctions placed on Saddam Hussein by the United Nations. Typically, these outlaws off-loaded their oil at a port in the United Arab Emirates. After leaving Iranian territorial waters near the Strait of Hormuz, it was only about a ten-mile jaunt through international waters into UAE territory. That's where the cat-and-mouse game of trying to intercept a smuggler's ship was played.

On this particular night we knew exactly where the smuggler was, but we didn't know when he was going to leave Iranian waters and make his dash for the UAE. When he suddenly made his move, Benfold and a British cruiser were ordered to give chase.

I ran to the bridge, knowing we had one chance, and one chance only, to get this guy. As I went topside to oversee things amid all the confusion, I found myself positively blinded. I had no idea where we were in relation to land and couldn't see a thing because of a full moon and the paralyzing glare of background light from land and the other ships in the area. Until my eyes adjusted, I experienced a spatial disorientation that I had never felt before - like a pilot who can't tell air from water or stars from city lights. It must have been similar to the pilot's vertigo that in 1999 caused John F. Kennedy Jr. to accidentally plunge his plane into the Atlantic waters off the coast of Massachusetts near Martha's Vineyard.

Making matters worse was the anxiety I felt. It was my job to catch that smuggler before he escaped into UAE waters, which he could do in less than thirty minutes. Each passing second of disorientation made me more panicky, and the more I panicked, the longer it took to reorient myself.

Finally, I realized I needed help, so I swallowed my pride and turned to Jeff Harley, my XO. "It's your baby," I told him. "You've got the conn" - meaning that he had control over Benfold's maneuvering. "Take responsibility...because I can't right now."

Night vision is crucial when you're navigating a ship, and you don't always have the couple of minutes it takes for your eyes to adjust to the dark. The navy tries to counteract the problem by installing red lights in cabins and passageways. After dark, the white lights go down and the red ones come up. I usually spent evenings in my cabin under very subdued red lights just in case I had to go up to the bridge. That way, my eyes would adjust quickly.

On this particular night I had been doing just that. Ironically, I was too well prepared for the dark. The full moon and the glare from the land made the outside world a lot brighter than I had expected - certainly brighter than my cabin. Jeff had been on the bridge for hours, so he was fine. I wasn't happy at being temporarily incapacitated and unable to lead at that moment, but I was proud to have such a worthy leader to fill in for me. It was unconventional to turn over command to my executive officer - it was the first and last time I had to let someone else take charge. But it was absolutely the right thing to do.

I'd like to be able to end the story by saying that Jeff performed flawlessly and we caught the smuggler, but that would be only half right. Jeff did perform flawlessly, but the smuggler got away. The only way we could have stopped the guy was to ram him, and we weren't going to risk a billion-dollar ship on a rust bucket. So the British cruiser started firing warning shots at the smuggler. Unfortunately, Benfold was in the line of fire on the other side. I thought of picking up the phone and saying to the Brits, "I surrender, so stop shooting at us." But I didn't want to be the first modern U.S. warship to surrender to the Brits - even in jest. We had little choice but to drop back and watch the smuggler steam off to bootleg another day.

Copyright © 2004 Michael Abrashoff. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

D. Michael Abrashoff served for almost twenty years in the U.S. Navy, culminating in a tour of duty as captain of the $1 billion warship USS Benfold. After leaving the navy, he wrote a bestseller about progressive leadership called It's Your Ship. He lectures to business audiences around the country.