How Great Leaders Inspire Ownership from the Keel

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

One of the worst experiences of my navy career was also one of my best. I received the Ship Handler of the Year Award in 1983, a much-coveted prize for seamanship, and I did it in one of the least encouraging environments I could ever imagine.

Straight out of officers' school, I was assigned to an old rust bucket, USS Albert David. It was a frigate, a low-powered submarine-hunting class of ship devised in the 1960s mostly as a money saver. Believe me, you get what you pay for. But I didn't have much choice in the assignment. All the plums went to officers who had better grades at the Naval Academy, and I could either sit around waiting for something better to come out of overhaul or lake Albert David. I didn't want to sit.

But just as the best junior officers go to the best ships, so do the best senior officers. Which meant that Albert David was not the first choice of the senior officers assigned there either. In fact, the environment was so belittling and downright abusive that most of the young guys didn't even want to drive the ship. There was no encouragement, no allowance for the occasional misjudgment. You'd be standing there with your engines on line as the micromanaging captain screamed orders in your ear that you were supposed to parrot. Or maybe he'd stand there totally silent, allowing you to make the calls, until some perceived miscue prompted a sudden stream of obscenities.

I didn't like it any better than anyone else, but I loved driving the ship, so I put up with it. If the criticism I got was justified, I took it. If not, I let it roll off my back. But operating in this high-pressure environment helped turn me into a very good ship driver. I became the go to guy for taking Albert David in and out of port, and for the most difficult ship-handling maneuvers, as well.

That year, ten junior officers in the Pacific Fleet were named Ship Handlers of the Year. I was one of them and it was a tremendous honor. I probably owe that certificate, in part, to the crummy atmosphere on Albert David.

What I learned, though, is that leaders are also teachers, for better or worse. They teach us what not to do as well as what we should do. Even though I survived and succeeded in that environment, I vowed I would never emulate the abusive leadership styles. I've had to develop a style of management that better suited me and my sailors.

Buddy Gengler learned the same lesson as a cadet at West Point, where he cocaptained the baseball team. The coach treated his players like children. He was a micromanager who ordered the players around arbitrarily and refused to give the cocaptains any role in dealing with the rest of the team. He discouraged suggestions from the players and ignored those that came anyway. "I hated the way he led us," Buddy told me. "We played in spite of him; we played for each other."

But there was one thing Buddy liked. The coach encouraged a never-say-die attitude: "Challenge me. I will not give up. I will not succumb to any situation. I will not be afraid to be great." Some of the players were nervous about going to the plate when the game was on the line-bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded. The coach would spur them on, insisting that these moments of peak challenge were life's greatest gifts and should be welcomed and sought out.

Today Buddy says, "I will eat up any challenge anyone puts in front of me"-and he owes his winning attitude in large measure to that baseball coach.

Like most of us, Buddy has thrived and suffered under the sway of more than one mediocre leader. His commanding officer at Foil Hood gave him plenty of examples of negative leadership, made ever so slightly more palatable by a positive note interjected here and there. For example, Buddy is quick to point out how grateful he is to this CO for giving him the chance to head up a new mission in Iraq. But by and large, he thinks the guy's behavior was a study in poor leadership.

"He could not deal with people," Buddy said. "He took no input from his subordinates on how things were going or how they should be done. He issued his orders, and that was it. He stifled initiative. To cap it all, he was rude and insolent, undermining junior leaders in front of our troops."

The morale of the battery sank so low that some soldiers were willing to leave their families behind and transfer just about anywhere to get away from him, Buddy said. Finally, Buddy went to see the CO after they'd had a major falling-out. He pulled no punches, telling him: "You have completely isolated all of your leadership, and people would rather leave this battery than have to see you every day." Buddy's comments were initially met with a blank stare. Then the CO became defensive, suggesting that his subordinates were less skilled and not as capable as he was of understanding the leadership role.

After that confrontation, the commander's attitude improved ever so slightly, Buddy said, but not nearly enough. The CO could still drive a soldier to despair-and did during the early days of the battery's tour in Iraq. Buddy told me about the day when one troubled young man nearly went over the edge.

Drained by the intense heat, a group of soldiers were sitting and talking casually when this fellow suddenly put a bullet in his weapon and stood up. "His eyes were red and wild looking," Buddy recalled. "Where you going, soldier?" Buddy asked him.

I can't handle this anymore," he responded. "The commander represents everything that's going wrong in my life."