This paper gave me the opportunity to reflect on the leadership skills I developed through my academic and professional careers and put my thoughts to paper. I was extensively trained in leadership in the U.S. Coast Guard, but I don’t recall spending much time reflecting on how I developed as a leader or articulating my own leadership philosophy. Most of my portfolio is focused on my achievements and the hard skills I gained through my military and academic careers. I believe this paper serves to paint a clearer and more complete picture of who I am for potential employers or business partners.
The Development of my Personal Leadership Philosophy
In September of 2022, I retired from active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard at the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. For 30 years, I worked as an avionics technician and as an aircrewman on C-130 aircraft as a navigator. Most of my leadership philosophy was developed in the military, but I gained valuable insights and experience during my high school years that have stuck with me to this day. In this paper, I will illustrate how my leadership philosophy developed through stories and examples, borrowing the first four of Tuckman’s five stages of group development (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning) as the framework.
Forming
When I was 14 years old, my family moved to Novato, California, and I started high school as a sophomore after spending my freshman year in homeschool in Alaska. My father was in the Coast Guard, and I had a fascination with the military from a young age. I found out that Novato High had an Air Force Junior ROTC (JROTC) program, and I eagerly signed up. The formal class title was Aerospace Science. Two retired Air Force instructors taught it. One, a Lieutenant Colonel, spent his military career in nuclear missile silos and was also the mayor of our town. The other was a retired Chief Master Sergeant (the highest enlisted rank in the Air Force) who served as a tail gunner on a B-52 Stratofortress and saw combat in the Korean War.
The Colonel was diplomatic and led with a soft touch. He was very approachable. He shook hands with people constantly and took the time to learn personal details about all his students and how they were doing. The Chief was also easy to talk to, but he had a gruff demeanor and was quick to correct you if you wore a uniform item improperly or could not answer a question you should have studied before one of his lectures. He was as quick to compliment a student on things they did well as he was to correct them, and made his praise feel earned and noteworthy. Both were a pleasure to know and were loved by nearly all students. From them, I learned that good leadership is not defined by personality types and is multifaceted.
Storming
I joined the Coast Guard immediately after high school and was assigned to a patrol boat in Morro Bay, California. I reported for duty four days after turning 18 while on leave after boot camp. We went out to sea the following morning so our group commander (our Captain’s boss) could test the crew on emergency drills. Since I was completely untrained, I was told to stay out of the way and watch what everyone was doing.
After the first couple of drills, one of the supervisors handed me a binder full of regulations and procedures and told me to sit in the galley below decks to read through it. He was playing a mean joke on me. The boat was famous for riding roughly, and the Pacific Ocean in our area was nearly always choppy. In a matter of minutes, I was running back to the main deck so I could vomit over the side. When I finished, the whole crew was chuckling among themselves, and they ignored me until we got back to port.
Eventually, we all started getting along, and I became a fully qualified crew member. However, the boat’s supervisors made a game of treating the lowest-ranking crew members poorly. Although we did our jobs well, none of the junior crew were happy, and we all fantasized about the day we would get to transfer off the boat. I learned what I never wanted to become as a leader.
Norming
I joined the Coast Guard to fly on airplanes and work on their avionics systems. After almost two years on the boat, I was at the top of the waiting list for training and transferred to Elizabeth City, NC to train for my dream job. School was difficult but fair. Upon graduation, I was transferred to Air Station Sacramento, CA to fly on the C-130 Hercules. I reported for duty and was warmly greeted by everyone I met. There was a crew of around 120 people, all eager to share knowledge and to start me on the path to becoming a Navigator.
The contrast between the boat and my new duty station was astounding. I learned in a strictly regimented environment like a boat, yet I was treated with respect. Mistakes were corrected swiftly, and slacking was not tolerated, but people were happy and had a healthy work-life balance. The culture at the Air Station encouraged everyone to question the reasons why we were doing things. My Captain told me he needed my “new guy eyes” to find any flaws in the way we were doing things, because people can become resigned to “that’s the way we’ve always done it” and stop innovating and improving.
Performing
After 18 years of serving as an Aircrewman, flying through terrifying storms, visiting exotic places, and seeing people at their best and worst, I had worked for leaders who inspired me to run things from the top levels of the enlisted ranks. As a newly promoted Senior Chief, I reported for duty at Air Station Detroit, Michigan, where I was put in charge of the enlisted aviation engineering workforce as the Leading Chief Petty Officer. I was responsible for ensuring that every mechanic, avionics technician, and survival technician had the training, tools, and working conditions they needed to do their jobs at the highest level. It was the greatest privilege of my entire career. However, it was not free of problems. A few weeks after reporting, I became aware of a mechanic who was very good at working on the airplane but was arrogant and disrespectful toward his peers and supervisors. His peers often complained about him. My team of six Chief Petty Officers and the Master Chief at the Air Station convened what we called a Chiefs’ Council to address this young man’s attitude problems.
As sometimes happens in the military, we explained that we knew he was a great mechanic and flight crewman, but that he was failing miserably at the rest of his job. For around half an hour, we painted a vivid verbal picture of his attitude issues with accompanying examples, and he was visibly shaken. He had clearly never realized that just being a good mechanic did not give him the license to act the way he did. We then explained that we would give him a clearly defined path to redemption. He expressed concern that his career would be permanently tarnished if he were placed on a documented performance improvement plan.
I explained to him that although we weren’t happy with his attitude, the Chief’s greatest accomplishment is turning a problem child into a rock star. I told him that he was close to ruining his career, but that he was being granted an opportunity to make things right. I then told him to go home for the day, relax, and find me first thing in the morning to talk about how we were going to fix things. I made sure he knew that the “dressing down” was over and that we were now teammates in making him successful.
The next morning, he came to my office, and we talked about how his evening went. He said he was shocked by the reality of how he was perceived by leadership. He explained that being dressed down by the Chiefs caught him completely off guard, but that it was probably exactly what he needed. He was given a performance improvement plan with biweekly follow-up visits to meet with me and discuss his progress. He was also mentored closely by the Chiefs (his immediate supervisors). I am proud to say he became one of the best people I ever served with. For his very next assignment, he was chosen from a pool of dozens of applicants to serve on the Commandant’s Gulfstream jet, flying our four-star Admiral and other high-ranking government officials all over the world.
My leadership philosophy is most concisely summarized as: Take care of your people so they can take care of the things you need them to do. I believe everyone wants to be good at their job, but they don’t always know how. A good leader provides guidance and encouragement to help people excel in their jobs. However, they are not afraid to point out their flaws and help correct them. Most of the time, this should be done calmly and constructively. Sometimes, in the military, this is done in ways that may be shocking to some, but the stakes are literally life and death. People can, and do, die if one member of an air crew doesn’t have the discipline to do their job right in difficult conditions. Discipline doesn’t come easily to everyone, and it takes a caring leader willing to nurture their development to inspire it. Use of shock-and-awe tactics should be heavily scrutinized before use and never delivered out of anger, but as part of a thoughtfully developed plan. In the civilian world, shock-and-awe is not as much of an option, and the stakes are generally lower, so careful consideration of methods used to develop good workers and future leaders is necessary.