In the light of the leadership principles being preached in the Navy today, this article can be construed as heresy and could be considered by some as being mutinous in nature.
However, it is intended as neither, but rather as an article emphasizing practical leadership, which attempts to stimulate discussion of this most vital aspect of naval life.
Today, there is an ever increasing awareness of the problems of leadership, and steps are being taken at all levels to stimulate and develop it. Officers and civilians are offering their views on the leadership problem, and a few of these are also submitting concrete suggestions for the improvement of leadership training. Textbooks on the subject have become required reading, leadership schools have sprung into being, and the psychology of leadership is being explored. Unfortunately, many people today have either lost sight of the basic fundamentals of military leadership, or are purposely ignoring them.
There is one school of thought that runs:
Leadership is a trait that is instilled at birth. An individual either has it or he hasn’t, and nothing can be done to change that fact. All great leaders in history survived and rose to prominence because of this predominate trait. A man is born a leader or a follower.
Some officers who consider themselves as “good” to “outstanding” leaders buy this idea. However, they feel that their efforts to improve the morale, material fitness, and operational readiness of their section, division, ship, or squadron are frustrated by lack of leadership in their junior officers and senior petty officers. These officers debunk General Order 21, sneer at leadership seminars, and talk longingly of the good old days.
At the other extreme is the individual who believes with equal conviction:
Give me an individual, any individual, and with sufficient time, and the proper application of acceptable psychological procedures and principles by trained educators, I can mold that individual into a great leader.
This school is a civilian institution, typified by the article in Comment and Discussion in the February 1961, Proceedings by Mr. John A. Geddes. In it he outlines a leadership curriculum ranging from Freud to a study of the biological components of behavior. This article goes so far as to state that selection of leadership instructors should be made on the basis of skill in teaching rather than on the basis of leadership by example.
In practice, neither school is entirely correct, and the proper answer lies somewhere in between these extremes. There are such things as born leaders, but these are rare. And certainly it cannot be denied that any degree of inherent leadership can be affected to a certain extent by an awareness or understanding of the principles of psychology and human behavior. But blind acceptance of either philosophy is wrong.
The current trend is toward the civilian school, and the Navy is slowly but inevitably being warped by civilian trained leaders. The civilian professional educator type has gained a stranglehold on the training and personnel research divisions of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. He is reaching tentative feelers toward other sections. It is coincidental that the leadership problem has varied directly with this civilian rise to power, while the reenlistment and retention rates have varied inversely? I submit that the problem should be studied more closely in this light by the CNO and the Chief of Naval Personnel.
What formal leadership training existed prior to 1941? How many naval officers of that era studied Freud? Very few, if any, but when the chips were down in 1941, the officer corps was able to whip millions of raw civilians into a fine fighting machine. The victory in 1945 was the end product of good leadership, and, incidently, the beginning of the decline of really effective practical leadership.
With the mass exodus of millions of war trained civilians, came a rapid decline in effective practical leadership. Most of the officers remaining in the service had known only the fighting Navy, with its sun-bleached khakis and dungarees, its ample supply of war trained personnel all self-motivated by the knowledge of a war to be fought and won. There always seemed to be enough supplies, enough paint, enough spare parts to keep the ships going.
By the late 1940’s, many of these officers had never learned to accept the austerity of the peacetime Navy, while most of the remainder were so busy keeping abreast of the rapid technological advances occurring during this period that the fundamental principles and practice of leadership were allowed to stagnate for years. War weary ships deteriorated. A new generation of young men entered the service and were allowed to mature without the benefit of proper leadership and guidance, and the decline in leadership gained momentum.
Concurrent with this decline came the rumblings of many veterans organizations, now swollen with World War II vets who by now had found time to think back over their military “careers.” As vet talked to vet, swapping sea stories, each trying to top the other’s yarn, minor incidents were inflated in importance. They were retold in books, magazines, and newspapers until the fantastically distorted stories were accepted as fact by those who had not been involved. People began to protest the apparent inefficiency, improper discipline, and undemocratic autocracy that existed in the Armed Services.
Armed with this ammunition, the Congress, to insure the support of the veterans, began to meddle with the officer corps. The Uniform Code of Military Justice was forced upon us, and as sea lawyers learned the loopholes, as legal specialists grew in power, and as the commanding officer lost effective control of the discipline in his ship, morale skidded. The pay system was revised, until it became possible for subordinates to make more money than their superiors without necessarily accepting more responsibility.
Uniforms were juggled until everyone had to maintain a wardrobe of assorted styles and colors that served only to swell the coffers of the uniform dealers and to make everyone on board look alike, whereupon it became popular to prescribe optional uniforms of the day.
Proficiency pay was implemented, establishing a caste system among enlisted personnel. Military personnel were brought under Social Security, negating in part the concurrent cost of living pay increase and opening the door to ultimate Congressional elimination of retirement pay in favor of Social Security benefits. The situation went from bad to worse.
Finally, having created a hydra-headed monster, the Congress looked about for a scapegoat, and the cry of “Leadership” rang out. Lack of inspiring leadership was given as the reason why so many people quit the service, poor leadership was the cause of so many young men going astray while in the service. The Navy scrambled about frantically and came up with Career Appraisal Teams and leadership seminars.
Command attention directives were passed down the line as fast as they could be written. Civilian educators were hired to assist in the program, and soon became bedded solidly in the Bureau of Personnel where they serve only to add to the confusion and to prove the truth of Parkinson’s first law. Leadership got away from being a practical tool of the officer and became a course in theory at the Ph.D. level. In the midst of this confusion, General Order 21 was promulgated, but its effect was lost when most officers merely read it as another Navy Department directive and failed to take the time to study it carefully.
As the Navy cried for leadership and bemoaned the loss of trained officers and petty officers, it cast about frantically for a crutch and swallowed the first panacea offered—money. In line with the present national view that cash is the only status symbol of any importance, the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Personnel began pouring dollars out to the military in the form of bribes, knowing as they did so that they could not hope to compete dollarwise with civilian industry. With money as the only lure, the really smart men quit at the end of their first cruise and accepted the call of civilian life. The military was left with only the second- raters, the civilian rejects, many of whom lacked the ability and/or the ambition to compete in the world outside.
No one can deny that the military can use more money, but this money, if available, should be applied in the right places and for the right purposes. For example, the Bureau of Personnel has under consideration a plan to get junior officers to extend by offering them a bonus of $2,000 a year for up to eight years. If, however, they apply for and are accepted in the regular Navy, these bonus payments cease. This is small inducement for a young Lieutenant(jg) to ship into the regular Navy for a career. This money should go instead to the career officers to help make their position more attractive to outsiders.
As another example of the improper emphasis on money, I offer two quotations. The first is from a civilian, Joseph Conrad, and the second is from a senior naval officer, the Chief of Naval Personnel as quoted in the Navy Times.
(1) The Prestige, Privilege, and Burden of Command.
Only a seaman realizes to what great extent an entire ship reflects the personality and ability of one individual, her commanding officer. To a landsman this is not understandable and sometimes it is difficult for us to comprehend—but it is so.
A ship at sea is a distinct world in herself and in consideration of the protracted and distant operations of the fleet units, the Navy must place great power, responsibility, and trust in the hands of those leaders chosen for command.
In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire, and morale of his ship. He is the commanding officer. He is the ship.
This is the most difficult and demanding assignment in the Navy. There is not an instant during his tour as commanding officer that he can escape the grasp of command responsibility. His privileges in view of his obligations are almost ludicrously small; nevertheless command is the spur which has given the Navy its great leaders.
It is a duty which most richly deserves the highest, time honored title of the seafaring world—Captain.
(2) More Pay Sought for Ship, Unit Commanding Officers.
I am out to make the position of Commanding Officer of a fighting fleet or aircraft unit the most sought after job in the Navy. *Added money will make the commanding officers jobs more popular. The most important weapons system in the world today is people. The man in charge of operational units doing an operational job is the one I’m interested in.
The first statement is, I believe, a masterpiece of prose, one of the finest descriptions of a commanding officer’s position I have ever seen. Conrad points to command as a goal to be sought by every naval officer worth his salt in spite of the many responsibilities which the billet entails. Reading this, I get the same tingling sensation that I still get when the band plays “Anchors Aweigh.”
The second statement may have been quoted out of context by the paper in which it appeared. In reading it, however, I get the impression that officers are no longer interested in accepting a command and that command has a stigma attached which only money can erase. Having always believed that every line officer looks forward eagerly to his first command and, when assigned, accepts it proudly, I am now led to believe that command without command pay is not popular, is not the most sought after job in the Navy. By a poor choice of words, the dollar sign has been substituted for patriotism, pride, and tradition in pointing junior officers up the ladder of a naval career. Is this good leadership?
Another high-ranking naval officer, Vice Admiral Rickover, has been quoted as saying in a speech on 8 January 1961:
Let me repeat. Today a nation’s strength depends more on the scientific and technical competence of those who conceive, design, and build military equipment and who devise new strategies for their optimum use than on the men who operate these new weapons.
This is a difficult pill for line officers to swallow, and it shows how practical leadership has been de-emphasized during the past decade. Both Admiral Rickover and civilian industry have done much for the Navy, but no one should ever publicly, or privately, subordinate the operator to the technician, or the commanding officer to the Bureau of Weapons design experts. As a Commander in 1916, Rear Admiral J. K. Taussig wrote:
Historically, good men with poor ships are better than poor men with good ships.
These words are none the less true today, in spite of technological advances. Machinery and equipment require men to maintain and to operate them, and to have good men, you must have good leadership. Mere technical knowledge will never substitute for leadership, though it is an important adjunct of it. Men, not machinery, are the backbone of the Navy, and manpower requires leadership to coordinate and supervise its energy.
In order to have effective leadership, changes must be made throughout the entire command structure, from the Congress to the recruit, and even beyond. In order to lay a solid foundation, leadership training must begin in the schools with added emphasis on patriotism and discipline. Starting from the cradle, children must again be taught that the nation depends on the people, and is the people. The current socialistic trend wherein the people are coming to rely on the government must be reversed. Plain, old-fashioned patriotism must be preached. The stigma attached to military service must be removed.
By stigma, I refer to the reluctance with which the average young American male looks forward to a period of military service, and to the eagerness with which the new “six-month deal” is grasped by those young men trying to fulfill their obligation with the least inconvenience to themselves. Military service, rather than being a proud period in a man’s life, is considered a stumbling block, an obstacle to be overcome or, preferably, by-passed.
Implementing leadership by means of directives alone will not work, because such directives can seldom be made specific enough. Studied word for word, General Order 21 is a very vague directive, containing no specific guidance, no check list for the individual in the field. Paragraph 4 of Part I of that order states:
By Naval leadership is meant the art of accomplishing the Navy’s mission through people. It is the sum of those qualities of intellect, of human understanding, and of moral character that enable a man to inspire and to manage a group of people successfully. Effective leadership, therefore, is based on personal example, good management practices, and moral responsibility.
Paragraph 5 goes on to say:
The key to successful leadership is personal attention and supervision based on moral responsibility.
Part III, the Action section, says little more than “there shall be leadership,” and reaffirms procedures which have been in effect, though not effectively, for years.
As can be seen above, the words used are very general, and are subject to interpretation by the individual. This is an example of practical leadership in itself. It is the spirit of General Order 21 that is the heart of the directive, and the key words are moral responsibility, moral because it cannot be forced. It must be self induced, self generated. To have the proper kind of moral responsibility an officer must be motivated by something deeper than money or textbook guidance. He must have a deep devotion to his country and an intense pride in his organization. He must have faith in his superiors, his subordinates, and himself. He must have an opportunity to study himself and to practice his own theories of leadership. To do this, he needs assistance.
Within the Navy, the following steps can and should be taken to assist in the development of effective leadership.
1. Give the officers a chance to lead. Almost daily directives are received from higher authority directing command attention to some matter which is considered important at that time. Even General Order 21 causes these words. Exercises and special operations are promulgated and controlled by as many as a dozen operation orders, all cross-referenced and usually duplicated, all attempting to clarify the operation but serving only to confuse the picture and to limit a commander’s initiative. The mass of directives descending on a ship today virtually reduces an officer to the status of a clerk, requiring him to read reams of material in order to determine that he is or is not required to take certain action. The officer is forced to become a follower of his superiors instead of a leader of his subordinates. Evidence of this is the six-foot shelf of instructions and notices stowed in every ship’s office in the Fleet. In the late 1940’s, directives were promulgated as needed, but were periodically compiled in Navy Department Bulletins. The entire file of effective instructions rarely took up more than a foot of space, and consisted of a series of paperbound booklets The present looseleaf system is admittedly more efficient, but the system has gotten out of hand. As another example, note the sudden increase in multi-addressed, highly classified, high precedence message traffic emanating from shore-based commanders whenever a fleet unit becomes involved in some operation that is not routine in nature.
2. Reduce the administrative burden still further by reducing or eliminating the multitudinous collateral duties required of officers by administrative inspection teams. Voting Officer, Savings Bond Officer, Public Information Officer, Insurance Officer, Recreation Officer, all contribute little to the fighting efficiency of a ship, all are given only lip service by the ships, yet all require periodic reports which are submitted up the chain of command for checkoff and filing.
3. Urge revision or replacement of the emasculated Uniform Code of Military Justice in order to restore disciplinary authority to the commanding officer. Any military legal system should be a simple basic tool for use by officers in the field and not a complex system that requires a legal background to understand and to operate effectively. Time and again a case tried by ship’s officers and successfully forwarded through the type commander has been found faulty by legal specialists at the Judge Advocate General level and returned for retrial. Punishment of any significance can only be assigned by a special court martial which effectively ties up the wardroom and ship’s office of small ships for days. The complexity of the present system is evidenced by the growth of the legal specialists in the Navy and the current talk of establishing “circuit-riding courts martial” and special incentive pay for legal specialists.
4. Reduce the number of civilian educators in the Bureau of Personnel to a minimum and let the military take back control of the training of its officers and men. Only officers who have worked with men and equipment at sea can have an understanding of the nature of training required by those men. Civilian control of the military is acceptable at the Secretary of the Navy level, but civilian control of the training and operations of fleet personnel and units is dangerous.
5. Shift the incentive for personnel performance from financial to moral. The only acceptable standard should be performance of duty to the limit of ones ability, and the small monetary incentives offered by the military cannot hope to induce such a standard. A man should put forth maximum effort because of a moral obligation to himself and pride in his organization, not for hope of financial gain.
6. Most important of all, revert to leadership by example. This is a tangible facet of leadership, one that can be spelled out in black and white, and one that can be implemented at all levels immediately. Military posture; military courtesy; clean, well fitted and properly worn uniforms with clean braid and ribbons; shined shoes; proper conduct ashore; taut watches on board. These basic aspects of leadership are too often ignored by all officers today. A brief period in hack used to be an effective tool for shaping junior officers who were slow in meeting accepted standards. Yet how often is this tool used today on cocky ensigns who insist on wearing run-down sea boots and misshapen caps? In his famous article “Special Trust and Confidence” in the May 1956 Proceedings, Colonel Heinl pointed out many instances wherein the prerogatives and privileges of officers have been usurped by petty officials without protest by, and often because of the laxity of, the officers themselves. This article should be reread annually by all officers with a view toward improving their own status.
In summary, let me re-emphasize the urgent need for revitalization of, and the return to practical leadership. General “Chesty” Puller once said:
Esprit de corps is love for one’s military legion, in my case the U. S. Marine Corps. It means more than self preservation, religion, or patriotism. I have also learned that this loyalty to one’s corps travels both ways, up and down.
Esprit de corps is what keeps men in the service, not money, and esprit de corps and good leadership are so interrelated that one cannot exist without the other. Each officer in the Navy should read General Order 21 carefully, and should review his own performance in the light of his own ability. He should take stock of his personal appearance, his knowledge of naval customs and traditions, and his relationships with his subordinates and his superiors. The Navy and its officers will never suffer by a thoughtful adherence to standards of conduct and performance that have been tested for hundreds of years. Look out for your men and the men will look out for the ship. This principle applies to the CNO and to the third- class petty officer as well as it does to the commanding officer.
The art or trick of leadership is not just rational action, but articulation of it in ways that reach the heart as well as the mind.
Doris Fleeson
(From Time magazine)
Lieutenant Commander Kiernan graduated with the Naval Academy Class of 1945, and has served in battleships, carriers, submarines, and destroyers. He has been an instructor at the Naval Academy and at the Penn State University NROTC Unit. Prior to present duty on Staff, Commander Antisubmarine Force, U. S. Atlantic Fleet, he served as Executive Officer, USS Barton (DD-722).
* Italics added.