Cuttermen—as the saying goes, and sometimes with pride—“eat their own.” Unfortunately, this statement is all too true and indicative of the service’s struggle to retain afloat officers. As a Coast Guard lieutenant with eight years of service, I spent a long time deciding whether to return to sea. Reflecting on my time in the Coast Guard and reaching out to my peers for advice, I learned that most members’ decisions to stay afloat were determined by one major factor: leadership. Those who told me they had decided not to pursue afloat opportunities as junior officers overwhelmingly cited a toxic leader in their chain of command.
Toxic leaders are those who use positional power to disadvantage subordinates and cause destructive effects on individuals or the unit.1 Historically, a toxic leader has been recognized as someone who mentally or physically harasses and abuses crew members and looks out for themselves above all else. In today’s Coast Guard, reporting systems make it difficult for an overtly cruel or discriminatory individual to serve in leadership positions. Despite the weeding out of explicitly abusive leaders, toxic leaders still exist in the Coast Guard ranks—they are just harder to identify.
Passive Toxicity Remains
Today’s toxic leaders are not screaming obscenities at ensigns but instead are exhibiting more passive behavior. Among these are gatekeeping qualifications and career opportunities, not providing constructive feedback to junior officers, behaving unpredictability, or treating subordinates unfairly in the face of mistakes.
The problem now is a less visible, yet still corrosive, style of toxic leadership undermining junior officers’ incentives to stay in service. Most people appreciate that going afloat keeps nearly every career door open in the Coast Guard; it also makes them competitive for advanced education opportunities and special assignments. Outside the service, employers respect afloat experience—especially managing departments and divisions—as evidence of invaluable, intangible skills. Shared experiences of drug interdictions, facing down hurricanes to rescue overconfident sailors, and traveling to parts of the world unvisited by most of the population fuel camaraderie among cuttermen. It is one of the strongest ties in the Coast Guard and the catalyst for many lifelong friendships.
The afloat community, of course, has other challenges that keep motivated, capable service members from a continued afloat career path, such as the frequency of geographic moves, family planning, career progression, maintaining physical and mental health, and even sea sickness. However, the Coast Guard has created policies to combat many of these issues: Assignment officers are instructed to consider geographic stability; pregnancies and family planning are more feasible and, per written policy, will not affect a member’s evaluation or promotability; cuttermen are competitive for advanced education and able to expand their expertise to other fields while still maintaining their afloat specialty; and so on. There are even sizable afloat bonuses for department head positions at the O-3 and O-4 levels. Despite all this, there is still a decline of capable, motivated junior officers for the afloat career path.
Bad command climate, as studied by cadets at the Coast Guard Academy and future command cadre at the Leadership Development Center, also can be a key factor in mishaps. Studying history is vital, but the Coast Guard must also identify new barriers to attaining an empowered workforce in the operational fleet. Today’s toxic leaders negatively affect individuals, teams, and organizational performance in a different way by wasting time, financial resources, and human capital.2
Train Out Toxicity
One example increased my understanding of toxic leadership and caused me to think harder about how junior-level leaders and the organization should combat it. After my time afloat—when I returned to the Coast Guard Academy as an instructor—I sought opportunities to connect with cadets, ensigns, peers, mentors, prospective commanders, and cuttermen attending training and command conferences.
One such connection led me to mentor an ensign struggling to qualify as deck watch officer (DWO), a foundational achievement for a junior officer and a necessary step for high marks and career progression. With no constructive performance feedback or guidance toward improvement, the young officer was not able to become DWO certified. Instead of mentoring and helping this member succeed, the command neglected its responsibilities and allowed this once-motivated junior officer to fail, consequently destroying both the officer’s desire and ability to go back to sea.
The Coast Guard does not provide enough tools to correct these issues. Ensigns assigned to afloat units begin working toward foundational qualifications while also managing three to five personnel in a division. The only mandatory management training for afloat officers after commissioning is a prospective command afloat school, which focuses on bridge resource management and organizational workplace policies. The most effective leadership lessons come from on-the-job training, and when toxic leaders facilitate that training, everyone suffers. Those who thrive are rewarded—they learn how the system works, gain qualifications and recommendations, and sometimes go on to emulate toxic behavior in future leadership positions. When this happens, the afloat community becomes caught in a revolving door of uninspiring and damaging leaders. To produce leaders who build mission-successful crews that thrive in an inclusive and teamwork-based environment, the Coast Guard needs better leadership training.
Hold Commands Accountable
For nearly a decade, Coast Guard Commandants have emphasized inclusivity, empowerment, and teamwork from Admiral Paul Zukunft’s call to “trust and empower your people” to Admiral Karl Schultz’s goal to “encourage individual opportunity and growth.” Even today’s Commandant Admiral Fagan has pronounced that the Coast Guard “will build an inclusive culture that gives everyone a sense of belonging, empowering all to deliver their personal best while serving as part of the world’s best Coast Guard.”3 Senior leaders have sent a clear message that the service needs leaders who invest in and inspire their people.
Not enough leaders, however, are buying into that message and encouraging this vision. Leaders who fail to do this are toxic to the service. Coast Guard leaders can emphasize these concepts and push expectations to leaders, but real change occurs only when deckplate operators also buy into this idea and set the tone for their units and personnel to follow suit.
A unit can surpass expectations and boast high rates of mission statistics, but that should not be the only indicator of success, nor the sole gauge of the command’s performance. A toxic leader can still achieve results while running subordinates into the ground and diminishing their desire for follow-on afloat assignments. Alternatively, an inspiring leader can achieve the same successful mission results while instilling a sense of belonging.
When the ensign I mentored failed to attain a DWO qualification, I took steps to identify barriers preventing them from succeeding, the first being to call my own mentors. If I can offer any advice to junior members—especially to those struggling to earn qualifications—it is to find mentors who can objectively analyze the situation and offer valuable guidance. After we discussed the situation, it became a team effort. I helped the ensign with technical aspects of the qualification, found ways to expand the scope of training offered, and strengthened the ensign’s communication skills to elicit feedback from the command. My mentors, in turn, used their network of officers to hold the command accountable.
Holding the command accountable does not equate to relieving a commanding officer. It means scrutinizing the next level in the chain of command responsible for the ensign’s development and determining how they could provide more effective training and mentorship. Senior leaders need to acknowledge the need for continual mentorship and leadership training, even for commands. If every senior leader evaluating commanding officers took a personal interest in the progress of junior members, they could minimize the effects of toxic leaders. If not all a command’s new members are qualified, dig deeper and assist that command in finding ways to help their subordinates succeed. If a command is exhibiting toxic behaviors, step in and bring attention to it. In this case, we were able to help the command train the ensign and feel comfortable qualifying them and allowing them to stand watch.
Invest In People
After qualifying, the ensign expressed how enriching it was to contribute to the unit as a watchstander, and they could understand why people enjoyed being at sea. This was both satisfying and frustrating, as the ensign had already applied for future billets thinking afloat was not an option. The command contributed to the loss of a capable, motivated junior officer who, once mentored properly, proved to be a successful DWO.
If the Coast Guard can incentivize commands to invest in people, toxic leaders may reevaluate their actions when held accountable. Using formal and informal methods to address this, notably through officer evaluation reports and defense organizational climate surveys (DEOCSs), is an essential step toward progress. If the Coast Guard aligns grading descriptions with organizational goals, and demands action to address deficiencies identified in DEOCSs, someone who was once a toxic leader can change. There is a plethora of articles, studies, and programs that dive into additional solutions and provide great tools for continued training and methods of leadership evaluation.4
The Coast Guard must combine training, command responsibility, and incentives to eliminate toxic leadership for good. Only then can the service build the empowered and diverse workforce the nation requires. In addition to grassroot efforts at the operational level, the Coast Guard needs mandatory, formal training at every level to build inclusive, empowered teams. Optional training is not enough to prevent toxic leaders from diminishing the organization. To reverse the decline in officers choosing afloat billets, every Coast Guardsman must learn to recognize and eschew toxic leadership practices (both passive and aggressive), so they can inspire motivated, competent cuttermen for the future.
1. Abbas and Ghazi Ben Said, “An Empirical Investigation of Toxic Leadership Traits’ Impacts on Workplace Climate and Harassment,” Talent Development & Excellence 12, no. 3 (June 2020): 2, 317–33.
2. Kenneth R. Williams, “Toxic Leadership in Defense and Federal Workplaces: Sabotaging the Mission and Innovation,” International Journal of Public Leadership 14, no. 3 (June 2022): 179–98.
3. ADM Linda Fagan, USCG, Commandant’s Intent, 1 June 2022.
4. LCDR Courtney Callaghan, USN, “Eliminate Toxic Leadership,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 5 (May 2022).
