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On Leadership Resilience is Commander’s Business RDML John Menoni, USN
Resilience is Commander’s Business What is resilience and why is it important to our Navy?
By RDML John Menoni, USN, Commander, Joint Region Marianas
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In Advantage at Sea, our nation's recently released Tri-Service Maritime Strategy, resilience is defined as, “ability to retain or rapidly recover operational effectiveness during or immediately following a kinetic or non-kinetic attack.” The United States is in the midst of a long-term strategic competition with capable adversaries. The potential for this competition to escalate into conflict highlights the critical need of having a force that can take battle damage and casualties, stay in the fight and win.
History has many examples of superior resilience in pressurized, challenging scenarios. The actions of USS Johnston (DDG 557) and USS Laffey (DD 724) during their service in World War II’s Pacific Theater are prime examples of resilience. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf in operations off of Samar Island on October 25, 1944, CDR Ernest Evans took the initiative, leading Johnston on the initial torpedo attack against the much stronger Japanese Center Force threatening to destroy the beachhead on the island of Leyte. Though his ship was severely damaged after its first torpedo run when it faced off against a heavy cruiser, Evans returned to the fight knowing that additional attacks could lead to the destruction of his ship and crew. Johnston and her sister ships followed their first torpedo runs with a second, receiving significant battle damage. Once all her torpedoes were expended, Johnston continued to attack the superior Japanese force with guns even as she was sinking, allowing most escort carriers of TAFFY 3 to avoid serious damage. During the Okinawa campaign, Laffey, commanded by CDR Frederick Becton, was assigned radar picket ship duty with a primary mission of providing advance raid warning and anti-aircraft fire support against Japanese air forces intent on attacking the Fleet supporting the invasion. On April 16, 1945, the crew of Laffey found themselves in the fight of their lives. Over a span of 80 minutes, Laffey was struck by six kamikaze aircraft and also hit with four bombs. She was credited with no less than eight enemy kills while suffering 32 dead and at least 71 wounded. Following the engagement, Laffey proceeded to Seattle, Washington for repairs under her own power.
There are vital lessons to be learned from these examples. Without question, both Johnston and Laffey’s crews were resilient. Each suffered multiple attacks resulting in significant battle damage. Both crews had to deal with the heartache of lost shipmates, but each stayed in the fight until the mission was complete. Resilience isn’t about who is the strongest, most fearless, most experienced individual or the technologically superior force. Resilience often comes from within, whether it is an individual who is able to weather their own personal storms or a command with a culture that enables it to stay on mission despite having received battle damage and losing shipmates.
So, as leaders, how should we go about developing resilience within our organizations? There are three areas where direct attention by command leadership can help.
Training. Paul Sullivan discusses in his book Clutch how high performers excel under immense pressure. The basic premise is that individuals or organizations that we think of as clutch performers are those that make the extraordinary seem routine during a crisis, pressure-filled moment or in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment.
An example of an individual who has trained themselves to be clutch is a professional golfer who hits 1000 shots on the driving range thereby ensuring that the same shot is achievable despite the pressure cooker of a national television audience and a championship on the line. As to building our commands to be clutch under pressure, we have all heard sayings that describe this hypothesis – “be brilliant on the basics, focus on blocking and tackling, the more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in war,” all of which have a common thread - training. Ensuring that your team’s training is dedicated, repetitive, and realistic will help you make difficult tasking seem routine.
Consider a Naval Aviator landing on the ship at night - the thousands of hours of study, instruction, simulation and flight training that are focused on this one basic evolution. While no night landing is ever truly easy, landing the aircraft is a no fail task that every Naval Aviator must be able to accomplish on a regular basis. We need to train ourselves and our teams to do routine tasks the right way, with little to no deviation, every single time. Our teams need to know it to their core that they can accomplish a series of simple tasks as part of a complex evolution such as an underway replenishment without hesitation, fear or drama because they have practiced and prepared. When we truly believe we have mastered our craft, we will then have extra capacity to deal with any contingency or uncertainty that always exists in our operating environment. Leaders who understand this concept relentlessly train their teams to achieve warfighting excellence. They focus on flawless execution of mundane and routine tasks, objectively debriefing performance with a goal of continuous improvement and becoming world class. These leaders use their collective failures in training as teaching moments to improve performance. They emphasize and reiterate preparing the individual physically and mentally while managing their talent to build their teams. These commanders ensure that no Sailor will ever go into conflict untrained or unprepared. When highly trained commands are presented with a VUCA situation, they are able to rely on muscle memory developed in training to continue to do the basics (aviate, navigate, communicate) while dealing with the uncertainty and volatility of a crisis.
Communication. It is a truism that today’s military is the most educated force our country has ever fielded. A positive consequence of fielding intelligent, educated Sailors is their questioning attitude. They want to know the “why” behind the “what” they are tasked with doing. A leadership attitude where “just do it because I said so” is a common response will not resonate with a mature team of critical thinkers. Your Sailors want to hear from you. They want to understand the “why” behind the mission and they will be willing to wait for the right time to hear your perspective. It is better to over communicate than to allow an information vacuum to exist where uncertainty can metastasize into mistrust and fear. Today, technology offers the use of multiple communications media that can help ensure everyone gets the word. Email is good, but hearing your voice is better. Using the 1MC is a great technique, but some Sailors respond better to one on one discussions. Social media can be a valuable tool for keeping the home front informed, but it is only one tool and your message will be constrained by the necessity to maintain operational and information security. Communicating with your team is necessary when things are calm, but absolutely essential during a crisis. Don’t just tell your crew the good; they know it isn’t always sunshine and unicorns. Make sure you are honest with them and tell them what you know, what you don’t know, and what is an opinion. If your crew knows that you are transparent in your communications, they are less likely to fill in any blank spaces with rumors and will be able to quell their internal fears, allowing them to do their jobs during a crisis. Transparent communications will give you decision space by keeping uncertainty about command issues at a minimum, out of the social media environment and prevent adjudication in the court of public opinion.
Trust. The Department of the Navy spends an enormous amount of its resources working to build and maintain physically safe environments in an effort to avoid the loss of readiness--a loss that could be brought about by hurting our people or breaking our equipment. Within the business community the concept of “psychological safety” is a necessary ingredient in building trust and a requirement for high-performing teams. The term may seem like a new age buzzword to military leaders, but the concept is not new. It is a standard characteristic of high-performing organizations and their leadership. “psychological safety” is the ability to speak your mind without fear of reprisal, to highlight a problem and solution to your ISIC with no concern about a wire-brushing, to make a mistake without experiencing unprofessional ridicule or having your career ruined. A command team that promotes psychological safety alongside personal and material safety has laid the foundation of a command culture which will be built on trust. A truly resilient command is one which fosters a “culture of trust and confidence based on proven character and competence” where individuals have trust in their shipmates and their leadership simultaneously. Teammates feel safe to think about the why, to be authentic to themselves and others, to provide objective feedback, to champion novel solutions, and to make honest mistakes without fear of reprisal. They believe their commanders will employ their talents in a manner for which they have trained and is necessary to successfully accomplish the team’s mission. They understand their operating environment is often uncertain and sometimes dangerous, but they trust that their leadership will not have a cavalier disregard for their safety. They buy into the concept the military has an obligation to put mission first while always looking after the welfare of our service members. A culture of immediate and absolute trust enables these commands to continue to operate successfully as their environment becomes more complex and uncertain, with no margin for error and little time to question orders. A high-performing team, which has a culture where trust is foundational, will often accomplish seemingly impossible tasks where others have failed.
CNO recently published NAVPLAN 2021 with a key objective within the guidance that speaks to our Sailors: Our focus is on developing seasoned naval warriors. Specifically, Admiral Gilday emphasizes the need for “a dominant naval force that can outthink and outfight any adversary.” He states that “our Sailors will remain the best trained and educated force in the world. We will cultivate a culture of warfighting excellence rooted in our core values.” The U.S. is once again focused on strategic competition with its adversaries. The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Team are the country’s “away team” and “911 force” and are most often face-to-face with our adversary’s forces over the horizon at the leading edge of a future conflict. Inherent in strategic competition is the possibility that USN, USMC, and USCG forces will be involved in conflict with peer adversaries. That fight will not be clean nor will it be easy. It will result in significant human suffering, heartache, losses among our friends and foes. To prevail, we will need high-performing resilient teams who display the “gallantry, guts, and gumption” that are hallmarks of the Naval Service. It is up to leaders at all levels to continually self-assess the resiliency of their personnel, their teams and to correct any deficiencies. Building tough, resilient teams who will win in conflict is 100% Commander’s Business.
RDML John Menoni, USN, Commander, Joint Region Marianas, elbow bumps U.S. Army 1st Lt. Courtney Arthur, a medical professional assigned to Task Force 671, after an awards ceremony at Santa Rita Compound.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class MacAdam Kane Weissman.
Bibliography
Morison, S. E. (1986). History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II - Volume 12. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Sullivan, P. (2010). Clutch. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Contributors
Dr. Michael Paulovich, Captain Brett Mietus, Captain Edward Weiler, Commander Thomas Butts, Lieutenant Commander Rick Moore, Command Master Chief Nicholas Messina
