Gaze unbroken, the helmsman stared intently at her console as she responded to the conning officer’s directive: “Sir, my rudders are left 30 degrees, no new course given.” As the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) turned to windward in support of flight operations in the North Arabian Sea, I asked the sailor: “Isn’t this amazing? You are driving one of the most powerful warships on Earth and allowing those aircraft to launch safely to protect American lives on the ground.” She responded flatly, “I never really thought about that. I’m getting out after deployment. There are too many other things I want to do.”
Innovative Navy leaders throughout history have established procedures for sustained combat maneuvers at sea. Flight operations, sea-and-anchor detail, and underway replenishment are all “special evolutions” that have preserved U.S. maritime primacy.1 Retaining talented junior sailors, however, has always been a challenge. Today, Navy leaders are confronting a new special evolution—to improve top-performer Gen Z retention.
Quality Over Quantity
Bureau of Personnel (BuPers) statistics indicate the Navy consistently meets or exceeds its Zone A (0–6 years of service) retention goals.2 The issue of top-performer or “blue chip” retention, however, remains a hushed concern. Neither BuPers-34, Military Community Management Metrics and Analytics, nor the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) currently tracks the quality of retained personnel—only the quantity.3 Blue-chip retention projections are further complicated by Generation Z—the Navy demographic cohort ages 18 to 23—who are leaving jobs and shifting career paths at an unprecedented rate.4
Social-trend analysis exposes an acute Gen Z sensitivity to the caliber and character of their superiors and how this leadership perception affects generational retention. While CNA has previously identified the importance of tracking top-performer sailor retention, the most recent formal reviews on enlisted sailors, “Measuring Sailor Performance and Quality” and “The Relationship between Quality and Reenlistment,” were conducted in 2013, while a more recent study on commissioned officer retention, “Improving Navy Officer Retention: Is the Navy Losing its Best and Brightest,” was completed in 2018.5 A 2014 independent retention survey revealed that fewer than 8 percent of surveyed naval officers across all designators rated the quality of their department head leaders as excellent.6
To guide and retain today’s talented enlisted sailors and junior officers—who will become tomorrow’s tactical, operational, and strategic leaders—the Navy should optimize core command programs, promote coaching, encourage a culture of teamwork and personal accountability, and nurture organizational commitment through mentorship. In addition, the Navy should invest in studies to monitor the caliber and character of service leaders from the deckplates to the highest levels.
Back to Brilliant on the Basics
Fifteen years ago, Vice Admiral John Harvey, Chief of Naval Personnel, released “Brilliant on the Basics.” It listed six core command programs designed to buttress every Navy career framework: sponsorship, indoctrination, career development boards (CDBs), mentorship, ombudsman support, and recognition.
Admiral Harvey understood that future sailors and junior officers would cross the quarterdeck with new sets of skills and professional expectations. Gen Z sailors, for instance, can comfortably bridge the divide between space and cyberspace, grew up with increased academic and social structure, and represent the most educated generation to date.7 A culture of high-speed connectivity has fostered an expectation of immediate gratification.
Furthermore, Gen Z has developed elastic concepts of a “career.” The pursuit of rapid professional fulfillment has taken precedence over organizational commitment. Polls from Microsoft, Bankrate, and Adobe reflect this trend and report that up to 77 percent of Gen Z employees are considering leaving their first jobs.8 The Navy cannot spot-commission and spot-assign talented, proven, career-fluid civilian managers directly into active-duty leadership billets. This organizational handicap in top-performer recruitment obligates the Navy to nurture and track the vertical growth of promising junior personnel into future excellent leaders from day one.
Too often, however, competing priorities reduce the core command programs to hurriedly checked boxes on a sailor’s check-in sheet. CDBs devolve into sugar-coated pep talks rather than individually tailored performance critiques; “mentors” are assigned without discerning protégé compatibility and indoctrination atrophies to a series of PowerPoint presentations.9 This trend in command-endorsed professional first impressions fail to instill a sense of individual value in new Gen Z sailors. Desire to efficiently hit administrative wickets leads commands to forget Admiral Harvey’s most important retention takeaway—to coach “one sailor at a time.”
Coaching and Conning
“The approach is a marathon, not a sprint. The ship doesn’t respond like an airplane flying form. You can’t underrun at sea,” said the carrier’s executive officer while the ship closed on the oiler. “After your inputs, evaluate her response. The current, winds, sea state—no two UNREPs are the same.” Across the bridge, I watched a master helmsman whispering to the helm, operations specialists verifying one another’s bearings on the alidades, and wide-eyed ensigns taking furious mental notes after each of the conning officer’s commands. During this special evolution, every sailor on the bridge had a coach at their side.
Coaches are a unique subset of leaders. They do not take the field on game day and score the goals, nor do they provide guidance at the first practice and then check back in at the championship. Instead, coaches run along the sidelines game after game shouting encouragement (and, when necessary, correction). Coaching creates buy-in because players perform in collaboration with their coach.
Coaching demonstrates investment in a subordinate’s professional future and generates productive feedback loops in fewer than ten minutes. This technique proves particularly effective with the most recent influx of sailors and junior officers because “67 percent of Gen Z employees are comfortable with having their manager check in with them, but only for five minutes or less.”10 Private-sector corporations are already heeding this generational data to strengthen workforce synergy. AT&T abandoned its midyear and end-of-year reviews in favor of equipping managers with messaging tools that facilitate more regular coaching sessions.11
In September 2021, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations encouraged Navy leaders to apply for the new Department of Defense Coaching Culture Facilitator Course.12 The fleetwide invitation signals service recognition that coaching enhances readiness and lethality. Even without formal training, however, all leaders should approach coaching as a special evolution. Rather than full-rudder deflections once or twice a year at CDBs or fitness report debriefs, leaders can pull alongside their talented men and women, increase the cadence of feedback, and restrict each professional steer to one-half degree.
Check Yourself, Check Your Team
“Does that say shipwreck?” The quartermasters laughed at my incredulity while I studied the Strait of Malacca on the digital chart. The assistant navigator replied, “The sunk ships are the easy ones. It’s the ships still under power that cause problems. All of us on the bridge trust one another to spot navigation issues and speak up.” Scanning the maze of vessels ahead of the strike group, I recognized the time-sensitive teamwork required by this group of watchstanders. Sea-and-anchor detail is not a one-sailor special evolution.
Effective team leaders understand collaborative groups often are smarter than the smartest people in them because teams aggregate their members’ diverse backgrounds and perspectives.13 Gen Z, however, has matured in a culture that does not endorse a nurtured and implied respect for organizational authority.14 Social activism, media influence, and Siri’s ability to “fact check senior chief” informs the reasoning and perception of today’s junior personnel. Juxtaposed with their self-assuredness, post-Millennials crave leaders who demonstrate integrity and are a dependable source from which to draw inspiration, structure, and purpose.
Personal accountability and professional transparency allow team leaders to establish reputations of character and earn subordinates’ trust. Fleet Master Chief April Beldo once explained:
Junior sailors look up to [leaders], so they have to have integrity and credibility. They can’t say one thing and do another. Every morning, I look in the mirror and ask myself, “Do I have integrity, credibility, humility? Check, check, check.”15
Ships regularly are restricted in their ability to maneuver because of the demands of current requirements or the uncertainty of future operations. To navigate these special evolutions with confidence, team leaders must not forget that they will lose the trust and buy-in of their Gen Z sailors if they try to present only facades of humility and discretion. When faced with uncertainty, effective leaders should remember that Gen Z would rather hear, “I don’t know, but when I find out, you’ll find out,” than experience the disillusionment of receiving inaccurate information or witnessing hypocritical behavior.
Talented junior personnel bring innovative perspectives to existing Navy problems. Harnessing this energy and converting motivation into commitment requires leaders who inspire their teams to “speak up” without fear of reprisal. Failure to do so will only accelerate top-performer departures.
Breakaway to Retain the Best
I glanced at my command duty officer underway replenishment script and prepared to greet the captain. “Good morning, sir, steady on course 270 degrees, 062 RPM indicated and answered for, the alongside combination is 063.” “RPM” he snapped. I looked at him blankly. Before I could fumble for words, he continued, “The alongside combination is 063 RPM.” Echoing the unit of measure, I recognized the gravity of this maneuver and why underway replenishment bears the title “special evolution.” The conning officer shoulders responsibility for the safety of the sailors and ship while driving 180 feet abeam another vessel. The captain, standing alongside, had held me to the same standard of precision he himself champions on the bridge. He was training his replacement.
Instilling recognized personal value and the feeling of inclusion within every new sailor is no easy leadership feat. Entry-level jobs are rarely glamorous or return the dividends of satisfaction achieved over a person’s entire career.16 Leaders, therefore, are beholden to mentor and inculcate in their people into the proud Navy tradition. While strong command climates do not necessarily correlate to strong retention, statistical analysis on the effects of mentorship shows a significant decrease in attrition among individuals paired with at least one mentor.17
To prevent the great exodus of Gen Z talent, Navy leaders must break away from treating mentorship as routine personnel management. The Navy must prioritize humans over hardware and approach top-performer retention and team-building as special evolutions requiring active organizational attention. Modernizing adversaries, social extremism, fiscal constraints, private-sector competition, and a lingering pandemic will continue to test the aptitude, ingenuity, and commitment of the fleet. To meet these retention challenges, Navy leaders must nurture top-performers and optimize career counseling programs for each individual sailor. Victory at sea will depend on it.
1. Department of the Navy, Surface Ship Navigation Department Organization and Regulations 3530.4F, 2018.
2. VADM John B. Nowell, USN, “FY-20 Summary of Retention Behavior, FY-21 Retention Benchmarks and Retention Excellence Award Criteria,” NAVADMIN 337/20 (23 December 2020).
3. David Nelson and Keith Zirkle, email interviews with LT Swain, 6 April, 2022.
4. Kim Parker and Ruth Igielnik, “On the Cusp of Adulthood and Facing an Uncertain Future: What We Know about Gen Z So Far,” Pew Research Center, 2020, 2.
5. Peggy Golfin and Neil Carey, “Measuring Sailor Performance and Quality,” Center for Naval Analyses, DRM-2013-U-005797-Final, November 2013; and Ann Parcell and Elliot Lee with Robert Shuford and Jonathon Mintz, “Improving Navy Officer Retention: Is the Navy Losing its Best and Brightest,” Center for Naval Analyses, DAB-2018-U-017694-Final, May 2018.
6. Guy Snodgrass, Ben Kohlmann, and Chris O’Keefe, “2014 Navy Retention Study” (2014).
7. Snodgrass, Kohlmann, and O’Keefe, “Navy Retention Study,” 3.
8. Ryan Jenkins, “The Most Effective Way to Lead Generation Z,” Inc., 26 September 2017.
9. Interview with NCC Raymond Palanca, USN, 23 September 2021.
10. Jenkins, “The Most Effective Way to Lead.”
11. Jenkins.
12. ADM Michael Gilday, USN, “Call for Applications to Become a Certified Navy Coach,” NAVADMIN 213/21 (28 September 2021).
13. James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Anchor, 2015), xi.
14. Liz Kislik, “Leaders, This Is How to Work with Gen Z,” Forbes, 16 July 2020, 4.
15. Kislik, “Leaders, This Is How to Work with Gen Z.”
16. Parker and Ignielnik, “On the Cusp of Adulthood,” 3.
17. Romalia Singh et al., “What Matters Most? The Relative Role of Mentoring and Career Capital in Career Success,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 75, no. 1 (August 2009): 62.
