Advice for a Department Head

Leadership advice from Ian.

Shipmate!

Thanks for reaching out, and I’m glad to help. Sounds like that department head tour was a pretty tough situation. It’s always an incredible challenge going to a ship that just changed homeports, but the challenge is much harder on one that just returned from a homeport overseas. 

In your case, with your ship returning from Yokosuka, chances are the ship prioritized the mission above all else and, while the sailors probably did their best to keep up maintenance and training, those programs likely needed a lot of help. 

Culture change is hard. It must have taken a long time to help them understand it’s not ok to use bubble gum and duct tape to get the ship underway for an important mission.

So now you’re off to be a Principal Assistant in a carrier Reactor Department. A much different job indeed. I appreciate you giving me the chance to reflect on the questions you asked and to give you some advice. But I will throw in a disclaimer that I haven’t set foot on a ship in over five years, so I’m a bit rusty.

On your first question, yes, I think it is always a good game plan to be in observation mode and note common themes for a time after you arrive aboard. The “nuke mindset” – identify problems, determine root causes, implement short-term and long-term corrective actions – is a real asset in cases like this. Shifting to a new plan on day one without understanding the problems is often counterproductive (I've seen this far too many times in the last thirty years). 

Regarding a “Junior Officer think tank,” no, I don’t think you need one – but you do need buy-in. I think you already know what is important, so you don't need a committee to decide on your values. However, you can take your values to your officers and Chiefs and have them develop ideas about how best to take action. And when they feel like they are part of the solution – when they have a hand in developing the actions they will then carry out – then you are already starting from a position of ownership.

So, I would shy away from asking them to develop values or a mission statement. But I would definitely get their help in determining actions. As you say, your new shipmates might be a cynical bunch. And yet, everyone wants good leadership and everyone wants to feel like they are a part of the team. You might even chip away at their cynicism.

Regarding young officers who are not living up to their full potential? Yes, I saw the same things. And yes, just like you, I also enabled their shortcomings to some extent. I pleaded, held hands, stayed late, and (more often that I would like to admit) just did it myself. I barely got away with doing this as the Operations Officer on a frigate. But when I tried this as a Reactor Department Principal Assistant on a carrier – as both the Reactor Electrical Assistant and Propulsion Plant Drill Team leader – I simply did not have the time or energy to do it all on my own. This is where I learned the art of delegation and accountability.

You mentioned that to "be like Ian Bracken" you should not provide answers for the risk of losing ownership. This is not true. That's what you remember because I never had a problem with you doing what you needed to do. I never had to provide you answers because I knew you would find an answer that worked. 

So I can’t blame you for thinking I treated everyone that way. I did give everyone the same opportunity, but not all of them took me up on it. You never saw my interactions with one particular Principal Assistant which were, to put it mildly, much more directive. It's great to give people the space to do what they need to do because this can foster ownership. However, when someone has proven again and again they can't be trusted with that space, you must take it from them and hold them to account. 

When informal counseling and even formal counseling do not help, I have had great success with Non-Punitive Letters of Caution (NPLOC) and Letters of Instruction (LOI). Now, as a department head, you can write these letters, but they won't have any teeth. In order to have teeth, the Captain needs to sign them. A NPLOC is a warning. An LOI is a lawful order, and failure to follow it is a violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Then they can go to Captain’s Mast. 

When people hear you hold non-players accountable, they will trust you. They will see you are willing to make hard decisions to live by your mission and values. 

It also helps to have allies. Who are the division officers you can trust? And more importantly, who are the Chiefs? Even if they are not in your department, who are your allies? Use them to help you. In command, I leaned hard on my Command Master Chief to slowly transform an ineffective Chief’s Mess into the envy of the waterfront. Most of them got onboard – but I did transfer a few early and send one to Captain’s Mast. I did the same on Midway. Our Reactor Department Master Chief held the line in the Mess while the Reactor Mechanical Assistant and Reactor Training Assistant did it in the Wardroom, each of them playing key roles in our department's turnaround. I could not have done it without them. 

On your question about transferring your one hard-charging junior officer to another department to help them out: Only you know whether you did the right thing. In my opinion, you had another way, but not necessarily a "right way." And for the record, I would not have done what I am about to tell you when I was a department head because, being buried under the pressures of the job every day I would not have seen it as an option.

In keeping with my point above about allies and delegation, I would have kept her as your biggest ally among the junior officers. You were the Operations Officer, and that’s a special kind of department head because it is really two jobs. As OPS you are (1) the ship's operations officer and (2) the operations department head. Both very different. The first one is concerned about schedules and liaison with other commands, and OPTASKS and messages, and planning, and … well, damn near everything. The second is concerned about the training program, maintenance, leave approval, special request chits, evaluations, ... all the administrative department head stuff. I think I would have kept this officer as your Assistant OPS, letting her effectively be the operations department head to allow you to fully concentrate on being the ship's operations officer.

But again, my department-head-self would have never thought of this. I only see this as an option in hindsight after having been an XO and Captain. You did nothing at all wrong with the path you chose, and it sounds like the other department really benefited from her leadership.

Overall on this topic, I think you are being too hard on yourself. You have very high standards and sometimes you fail to meet them. You are in good company, so welcome to the club.

On your last question … listen, when things are hard, there will be emotions. I have let my officers blow up on me, especially as the Executive Officer on Johnston, because that was a particularly hard time in the ship's life. We were trying to turn things around after a searing command investigation where the Captain fired several senior people. That, and our CO (the guy I would eventually relieve) had a tendency to exact unrealistic – often inhumane – expectations. I spent a lot of time talking him off the ledge from doing something that would send us back into a tailspin. 

Anyway, yes, I let them blow up on me but never in public. If they blew up on me in public, I gave them one opportunity to stop and correct themselves before I dropped the hammer. Only had to do it once. But behind closed doors they were free to let me have it using any expletive they felt the need to use. I would calmy listen and, usually handing them a box of tissues after all the emotions released, we would talk it out.

This is a way to take care of your people, and they learn to trust you. You both have to always treat each other with respect in public, but the gloves are allowed to come off behind closed doors – except yours. You are allowed to tell hard truths and teach hard lessons. But never punch down, even if they have spent thirty minutes punching up.

Accountability was, for me, the hardest thing to learn. It is not easy to look someone in the eye and tell them they are not doing a good job, or that they failed. Yet if you can do it with the honest intention of making them better – not the intention of exacting punishment – then you are more likely to live your values and help them become better while maintaining their dignity. 

People need to know when they are poisoning the well because they often don't realize they're doing it. I had that conversation with the Combat Systems Officer on Johnston when I was XO. Had to tell him his bitter sarcasm, especially coming from a Lieutenant Commander and the senior department head, was destroying the ships culture. He didn't want to hear it but, when he realized what he was doing, he stopped doing it. 

A couple other notes. You said something about your leadership flaws being a result of your introversion. This is patently false. Introversion has nothing to do with it, and don't let anyone make you believe otherwise. I am the vice president of the introvert club and, oddly enough, most military leaders are the personality type INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs test – the "I" being Introvert (if you believe those tests). 

You have leadership failures because you are human. You will continue to have them because the circumstances calling for leadership will become more challenging as you progress in your career. Sometimes you will get it right. Sometimes you will not, but you will learn from it.

As for being a fraud, you are not. I spent 18 months as the Captain of a ship feeling like I was the wrong person for the job, petrified that one day people would find out exactly who I was and realize the Navy made a mistake, or that my ineptitude would result in someone's child being killed. I spent twenty-four months as the Reactor Officer feeling wholly inadequate for the challenges we faced on Midway, certain I would be the next in a line of failed RO's.

The fact is there is no one on Earth who could flawlessly do the jobs the Navy demands of us. No one who can do everything on their own. No one who is completely ready. As I often told the sailors on Johnston and Midway, there is not a single one of us who is perfect, but if we work together we are pretty damn close.

Despite the challenges, it sounds like you had a lot of great success as a department head. And I'm certain it will be the same as a Principal Assistant. There will be mornings when you wake up and question your life's choices but there will be others when you can't imagine doing anything else. You will win and you will lose (sometimes you will lose big). But after all is said and done, if you have lived your values and led your people well, treating them all with dignity and respect, then you will be a success.

Take care, and feel free to reach out any time. Good luck out there!

Best,

Ian 

This is a work of fiction based on actual events.

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