S5:E95🎙️ LIVE with Rear Admiral Sinclair M. Harris, US Navy (Ret.)

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Hello everyone, this is Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris, United States Navy retired, a former award winner. Thank you, Battleship Iowa. Thank you, National Museum of the Surface Navy. You can see the award here over my shoulder, Samuel L. Gravely Leadership Award winner. And this is a retired naval officer. I still work today for a government firm that supports government and do a lot of different activities in support of sailors, Marines, and their families in different capacities. I want to spend a minute talking to you all, a few minutes talking to you all about Black History Month. And, and while I'll be focused on Black History Month, it really has to do with all the different history months— Women's History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian Pacific Islander— list goes on and on— and why they're important. And I want to do that somewhat highlighting in particular the life of a man, a gentleman who was my North Star. I'm very honored to get an award in his name, and that's Samuel L. Gravely, America's first African American admiral. And when I look at these different months, and this is Black History Month, I think about it in the context of why does it matter? Why do these different celebrations make a difference? Are they things that divide us? Are they things that we should embrace regardless of our race, color, creed, orientation, or what have you? And I take it that it's saying that we should embrace. And I do that because I think of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And when you think about our yesterdays, our yesterdays, America's yesterdays, Uh, we need to honor the legacy of our past, learn those lessons that have come over time. Blood and treasure has been spilt time and again for this nation to be free and become freer, to live up to the aspirations of the Constitution even more than the framers may have initially intended, but to keep America strong. We need to honor—

All right, everybody, we have a very, very special, special, uh, edition of the Leadership and Success Podcast today. Uh, in the green room is a giant, definitely somebody whose shoulder I proudly, proudly stand on. And, uh, like you've heard in the introduction clip, uh, this is part of the history, the reason why, uh, we do celebrate Black History Month every day here on the Leadership and Success Podcast. We do need to honor our past. Some people have bled and died and for the opportunity for people like us to have the opportunity we have today. So we definitely want to honor the past. Having said that, as you know, our custom here is to take just a moment to be grateful every time we meet. And today, I am so, so, so very, very grateful. Again, I stand on the shoulders of giants, people who came before me, they probably didn't even know me or had any idea about who I would be. But Without them, there is absolutely no way that Bob Fabien Zinga would be a commander, a senior officer in the most powerful Navy in the world. That would just not be possible. And I am so grateful for that. All right. Let me see if I can properly introduce our guest today. He has accomplished so much. It will take me even an hour or more to do that. But let me try to keep this short. Basically, today I am going to be first asking a question: What does leadership look like when the stakes are real, when lives, mission, and outcomes hang in the balance. Admiral Sinclair Harris is a warfighter, a strategist, a servant leader who commanded at every level, from the deck plate to leading US Fourth Fleet and Naval Forces Southern Command. With over 34 years of active service, he has led in combat operation, humanitarian mission, strategic role at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, multinational and interagency environment. And through it all, he has lived one powerful principle: mission first, people always. And I believe today we are going to learn how to lead when there is no time to think, only time to decide. So without any further ado, please help me welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast Admiral Sinclair Harris. Good morning, Admiral. How are you doing today, sir?

Good morning.

Let me see if I can— I don't know why I see you on the side. Let me see if I can change the direction of your camera. Just a moment, sir. Huh, that's exactly why I like to try. Let's see. Huh, no, that's not working. I'm very sorry, sir. Is there a way you can change the direction of your Camera?

Not really.

Okay, it, huh, it was working just fine. I'm not gonna know how to edit this. Let me try a different view. No, uh, I really love technology. This is, uh, incredible. Okay, let's, let's try this. I am going to, uh, take you off for just a second, sir, and let's see if we can bring you back on. This is just going to take a second.

Let's see.

All right, everyone, just one moment. I'm going to make sure we can see the Admiral properly on the screen. Here we go. All right, yeah, that's been fixed. Thank you, thank you, sir. And I'm going to edit this before I put it on all of the other podcast platform. All right, so good morning, Admiral Sinclair Harris. How are you doing today, sir?

I'm doing great.

Fantastic. Is there anything you are grateful for today, Admiral?

I'm grateful every day. I'm grateful. I consider myself a man of faith. I'm grateful for my Lord. I'm grateful for my wife and my family. I'm grateful for my friends. I'm grateful to be a citizen in this great country. Um, for many, many, many things.

Yes, indeed. I believe America is still the greatest country in the world. We need to be that light that shines in the darkness for sure. I guess President Reagan, right, was the one who said America was the city upon the hill. And it's something you said in the introduction, sir. I believe it was, I think his last name was Admiral Graham. I think the first one I heard say that, but our Constitution is really about what it aspired to be. Now, of course, we know America didn't start right with slavery and all of that, but in the Constitution, what they wrote in the founding document, all men are created equal. And since then, we've been trying to make it true for everybody who lives in this great country. And that is really something I hope for, I stand on, and it's probably one of the best, I guess, thoughts I believe in all of human history, because prior to that, there's always been servant and noble and slave and all of that. But this is really the first country where we say everybody is equal and we're just trying to live it out today and in the future. And that is so, so powerful. That gives me so much hope for my children and future generations.

Absolutely.

And so is there something about you that most people may not know when they first meet you? Anything you want to share?

Well, a lot of people think that I went to either the Naval Academy or ROTC, and so a lot of them are surprised that I matriculated through Officer Candidate School. And as I would tell anybody, I'm proof that God has a sense of humor, that a kid from Deanwood in Anacostia, Washington without that background would have a chance to not only serve in the Navy, but to make Rear Admiral.

That's amazing. Wow. Like I always say, you know, only in America. Now, even when I look at my life being born in Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo in Africa, and today again, being a commander in the most powerful Navy in the world, that would not have been possible anywhere else, in the United States of America. So grateful for that. And when you reflect on your 34-year career, sir, from ensign to commanding the Fourth Fleet, what moment most shaped who you became as a leader?

So that's a hard question because there are many moments that I believe shape everyone as a leader. And I don't think my story would be anything out of the ordinary or anything rare. There were times as an ensign when I got my deck division and they were in pretty bad shape. They were, the previous division officer was having real struggles with discipline with them. Didn't have a chief petty officer, had a first class petty officer that told me, about every other day, sir, the judge gave me two options. Okay. And he was a character. It was a bunch of seamen and bosun mates. But there were times, you know, when I had to try to get their morale up and fight for, quite frankly, the most junior sailors on USS Long Beach. When I'd gone on to department head, I received a letter of instruction, which is not a good thing, as chief engineer, first tour department head in, during the war. And I received it from a guy, God rest his soul, Bill Snyder, who was a great, great, great CO. But he understood what tough love was like. And more lessons I learned from him than, than anyone as a first tour chief engineer during the war. Wow. On to command several times, there were challenges including losing control of my starboard shaft. After 9/11, heading to the war and seeing the rest of the ARG heading off in heading off to the war while I could get a max speed of 5 knots until we could get our system working again. So it happens time and time again, these different things that shape you, I believe.

Yes, sir, definitely 9/11 is something that definitely shaped members of my generation. One of the primary reasons why I wanted to join the fight. During that time, sir, what did that moment kind of teach you that, you know, leadership book could?

I think that, uh, it probably is in one leadership book or the other, but, uh, the, the main things that we were trying to do was we didn't know where we were going to go initially. We were in Darwin, Australia with, uh, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, embarked on board Constellation, part of the Peleliu ARG, and, uh, you know My wife calls and tells me on the phone, "Hey, people are flying planes into New York City," and this and another thing. And I have no television, so I've got no idea this is going on. It's nightfall. I got the commander of our tanks that are embarked on board the ship knocking on my door, coming and say, "America's under attack." And you know, so there was, what's going on here? Trying to figure it out. Hey, I asked my wife, "Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm okay." She's in San Diego. "Hey, is the family okay?" They're back in DC. Okay. And then reacting to that, walking down the brow because I want to go talk to the Commodore, Bill Jasurski, a great, great leader. And to the new commander, then Colonel Waldheiser, retired as a 4-star Marine general, General Waldheiser. As I'm walking down, they're walking toward me and say, we're getting underway at 4 o'clock in the morning. That's all they can tell me. Okay. I said, roger that. And, you know, you go back, you get everybody together and—

Wow.

Quickly suss out, you know, what's— what you know. And you're honest with everybody with what you know and what you don't know.

Yes.

Okay.

I know we're getting underway at 4:00 in the morning. I know there are a bunch of sailors and Marines out in town getting their last night of liberty wherever, and we need to get them back on board in whatever state they are.

And we need to safely get underway.

At, you know, 0400 in the morning. Well, of course, you realize quickly there are a lot of shipmates that have got family like I do in Washington, in New York, wherever, and they're concerned. So we don't have great connectivity at that time on the ship. We had like 3 phones on board the ship, all right? And so I took my phone, the XO took his phone, CO took his phone, We just had sailor and Marine one after another come up to the group and call home to see if people are okay. And fortunately everybody, the one person had an aunt who was in the Pentagon, but she was okay, but she was in the Pentagon when they got hit. And we finished at about 3:30 in the morning and got underway at 0400. For parts at that time unknown.

That is really amazing. And I know one of your leadership mantras, sir, doing the research, I've seen it over and over again, is mission first, people always. So you've definitely proven you really truly care about the people, which was one of my leadership mantra as well when I got a chance to be a CEO. And my second one was one team, one fight. And it seems like, sir, just to be truthful, it looks like we borrowed those from the Army. It looks like the Army is the one who came up with those. But anyway, it works in the Navy just as well. Just fine. But talking about what is happening, I guess it's the fog of war during 9/11. We don't really know what is happening and we do need to defend our country. So the stakes are very, very high and there is not a lot of time to really make a decision. I guess my question for you, sir, how did you make your decision when you didn't have enough information, didn't really know what was happening, but you knew the stakes were very high and you didn't have much, much time to decide?

So again, this happens quite frequently in all of us in different levels of leadership, including command. One of the things that I made sure to do was listen, to listen. One of my favorite books is The Seven Habits, and one of the habits is seek first to understand than to be understood. And if you even have 2 minutes, you know, if you can spend a minute and a half of those 2 minutes trying to understand the situation, understand, you know, what others are thinking or feeling, understand, and then try to be understood after you've had a chance to bring all that information together.

That's right.

Synergize it., you'll probably make a better decision than just going, you know, off the cuff. And I found that to be true in every situation that I recall. And then of course, you know, being as transparent as you can. Now, a lot of times you can't do that, especially in diplomacy, or sometimes when you're working in Washington, you can't be as transparent as you would want to be with everybody. But generally speaking, Transparency, transparency, being authentic, being your best self.

Yes.

And your real self. Sailors can always spot a phony at midnight in a hurricane. Glass blows. All right. You'll get the most out of them. And another great book you probably have in your shelf somewhere, Starting with Why. And long before that book came out, I began to understand the importance of understanding why and translating that why to everybody, because the rest of my shipmates would have good ideas too.

Yes.

And a lot of times better ideas than me. So bringing all that together is how I approached it. I tried to approach it through my my career. And I do that today in the job I'm doing now.

Well, I guess a follow-up, so, would be, okay, 9/11 just happened. I'm sure people are very scared. They're worried about their family, not just you, your own, but like you say, members of your crew as well. How, I guess, how did you manage fear, your own and your team's?

So again, our bandwidth was very limited on Comstock. We didn't have Starlink like they have nowadays, and everybody's, you know, be able to use their phone, you know, from, you know, their rack or whatever. Um, so as I got information, I tried to share that information. I try to make sure everybody understood as much as I could share of what I knew and what I didn't know on a daily basis and ongoing basis, so that I believe everybody felt that they were bought in, they were part of the team. Yes, sure, there was fear of the unknown. Um, I give a lot of credit to the Marines who end up going into Afghanistan, going into Camp Rhino, and they did not have a lot of information, I believe, on Afghanistan. And they were hitting it in the wintertime, and in a deployment that did not have Afghanistan on the bingo card of places to go to. So their equipment was not all that it could have been. The joint force was good. Um, we had an Air Force, uh, uh, a Marine captain who told me the Air Force brought them socks and gloves, and he loves the Air Force forever because they didn't have a lot of the foul weather and winter weather gear to operate in the hills of Afghanistan. Joint force came together very quickly. And our allies came together. But again, being transparent, sharing information, gathering more thoughts from others, critical.

Yes, sir. And as a commanding officer, especially in times like that too, I must imagine you do receive a lot of information and some of it you do have to ignore and then you have to prioritize other. How I guess, which, which process do you use, sir, to decide which information to prioritize and which one to ignore? Again, you don't have enough time, you have very high stakes, and you have to make those decisions pretty quickly.

Well, you know, a lot of, a lot of leadership is followship, and we don't talk about followship enough. Um, so I'm commanding officer, great. I'm also following the guidance of my Commodore, Bill Jasirski, He's working with the M.U.T.E. commander, General Waldheiser, Colonel Waldheiser. They're all reporting to another great man, General Mattis. Okay, who is bringing the group from the other side of the world and meeting up with them. So I have to give them credit for having probably more information than I. So their priorities tend to become my priorities. And their guidance, their information has a pretty high stake in everything. And of course, you know, you're listening to the triad, your executive officer, your command master chief, listening to the CO troops if you have a ship that's got Marines on board. And we didn't have the problem of having to listen listen to CNN or Fox News or anything else, you know, on the, uh, on the television because we didn't have satellite communications. So most of my information came, uh, came across, uh, on radio or teletypers or messages that, uh, we were able to use to disseminate to the crew and, and again let our families know we were okay. What we're going to learn because they sometimes would have even less information.

Yes.

Wow.

That's kind of how you, for me, I prioritized during that time. And, you know, give your leadership a little credit for having the right things in mind and having thought through the process. You know, we all have and drive by GPS these days, right?

Yes.

And there's any number of times when somebody says to themself, oh, I know this better. I know a better route to get here. Happened to me yesterday. I was with somebody. And I said, well, you know, every time I've gone against this lady on my phone, the GPS lady, I have ended up taking more time. But she's got more information than I do.

Yes, indeed.

And that's the idea of the leadership. They may have more information than you do. So you need to listen to them.

Absolutely. And talking about Black History Month in the introduction, you do mention that GPS was actually created mostly by a Black woman too, which most people do not realize. So it's just amazing how everything just comes around. Well, so—

A Navy civilian too.

Yes. Yes. It's incredible. So you have led in combat, in crisis response, and humanitarian mission, pretty much where the stakes are very high and lives are on the line. How does leadership change in those situations, sir?

It changes and it doesn't change. Okay. In humanitarian operations, I had the chance to work with, or worked for, Admiral Kilkenny. He was our commander for humanitarian operations from the Navy side. We had Thad Allen. He was the Coast Guard, the senior civilian for most of that. And then we had General Russell Vianney. Okay, so you couldn't get a more diverse group of people to be leading you than those three. But they provided us with the right priorities and the right sense of priorities. Honore, for example, told them, "No, we're not going to go in with guns. We're not going to go. I know we're soldiers, not going to go in with guns." Okay. Admiral Allen was always looking at the bigger picture and what's next and the restoration of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Admiral Kilkenny was keeping everybody involved, keep everybody informed and moving forward. And so the leadership there showed a lot of engagement, a lot of focus on the character of the conflict that we're in. It's against nature, it's against human nature because people act strange in disasters. I found that to be true in the United States and in Pakistan later on when I was out there for humanitarian operations. In wartime, a lot of times it's more immediate, okay? And I think that the young sailors and airmen and those fighting, Marines, those fighting in the Middle East and the Red Sea a year or so ago with the drones, they've got seconds. They've got seconds to decide weapons free and firing. And so they've got even less time today than he had. But the— in, in wartime, the time factor presses you to depend on your training. Yes, even more, uh, to make decisions, uh, faster and maybe without clear or more clear information. You could always ask for more information, but you don't have time, and the time factor becomes important, and that prioritizes how you're doing things. So there's a difference between those, and then, you know, believe it or not, there's pressure in the Pentagon when you're going around the budget. And I've done 6 tours in Washington, 5 in the Pentagon, 3 in the Navy staff, 2 in the Joint Staff, and believe me, there are pressure-packed times there as you're trying to build a budget, you're trying to build a strategy, you're trying to look out in this OPNAV example for the future of the Navy. And the Joint Staff, it seemed like every Friday at 1600, something would break apart, whether it be undocumented children, Syrian chemical weapons, the ISIS crisis. It just always seemed to happen at 4 in the afternoon on a Friday.. And the news reporters would— they knew that I was the Vice Director of Operations. They would come up to me, uh, one of them, uh, Barbara Starr, uh, and she would ask me, Admiral, am I working this weekend? And I couldn't tell her anything, but I did tell her this, ma'am, I'm working this weekend, so you're probably working this weekend too.

Yes. Wow, that is really amazing. And I want to get back to, uh, one thing you said earlier, sir. So I, I guess as a commanding officer, you are responsible for the mission. There's a reason why your unit is there. You have command, you do have to accomplish a mission, but at the same time you also have to take care of your people. Like I said earlier, one of your leadership mantras, mission first, people always. But how do you operationalize when the mission and the people and when there is tension between the two? If you, for example, you took care of your people, it might negatively impact the mission. What do you do?

Well, again, it depends on the circumstance situation. And quite frankly, you're in preparation for the mission, for the deployment, you're doing everything you can to make sure that the crew is trained that they are mentally fit and ready, that their families have gotten all the information that they need and they're secure so they don't have to worry as much and they know the resources they can deal with. So you're doing a lot of the people stuff in support of the mission to make sure that the mission goes well no matter what happens, because you really don't know what's going to happen once you get out there.

There.

And then there are circumstances where you, you do have that challenge. And I'll give you one. I had an executive officer who had a family crisis the day before we deployed. And I said, you know what, you go home and take care of this. And meet us in Hawaii.

Wow.

We'll make it to Hawaii, okay? Okay. That was the first stop for the Apelu Arc. We'll make it to Hawaii, okay? And you can meet us there, all right? Because right now, um, I think that given what we plan to do en route from San Diego to Hawaii, we can do and let the XO take care of the family issue that he's got to take care of. All right.

Oh, wow.

And so that's, that's kind of— but that, that was that circumstance. Would I say the same thing if we were in, uh, 9/11 had happened and we were heading to Afghanistan? Probably not.

Yes, probably not. Well, but, but, um, there are a few commanding officers, very, very few in my career, that didn't really care much about the people. It's mission, mission, mission, mission. Which at times I understand, especially if it's times of war and bullets are flying. Okay, that is fine. But why do you think so? Why do you care so much about your people as an individual? Because not every CEO would have said, okay, you really are going through a lot, you need to take care of your family now, we just see you in a way. Not every CEO would have done that. Why do you think you care so much about your people as individuals?

Oh, it's not— if your people can't function, you're not going to be able to accomplish a mission. It's as simple as that. So you need to spend some time thinking about the people. And I had a CO, the same one I mentioned, Bill Snyder, and we're talking, and he got me qualified as lieutenant for command at sea, which was not rare at that time, but you know, certainly great for me. And we were talking about what it takes to command. And he, he said any lieutenant, or most lieutenants, will know enough technically to command a warship, but it takes another 10 to 15 years to learn how to lead people.

Wow.

That's the key. Yes, because I must tell you, sir, when you find commanding officers like that, you are willing to follow them to the end of the earth if you have to, because it is just so rare to see. I have a couple that come to mind, and I'm very, very thankful I learned from them how to take care of the sailors. And it— and like, like you say, sailors can sniff it out. They know if you are for real, if you're just, uh, no, checking the boxes and pretending to care about, about them. But when they know that you truly do, they would go 110%. It's really incredible to see. Wow, man. And one thing I wanted to mention here, so because we do talk a lot about successes here, and I call it leadership and success, but I feel like one of my best keepers— where is that coin? She gave me a coin that says success on one side, leadership on the other side of the coin. So basically two sides of the same coin. If it's okay, sir, I would like to talk about a couple of your command losses and kind of how did you carry the weight of responsibility when things didn't go the way you had planned. From my understanding, sir, during your early days in command of the USS Comstock, you experienced two deeply impactful events within just the first three days. Sailors' injury. That was one. And then also, I believe you had 6 sailors that had to go to Captain's Mast for misconduct ashore, which is quite terrible, especially when you first take command. I mean, that is a lot. Knock on wood, I didn't have to deal with it. I guess the question I really have for you, sir, is How do leaders avoid becoming defensive in those moments? And most importantly, how did you carry the weight of responsibility when things just didn't go your way?

So when those incidents happened, they were a bit of a shock. They were more than disappointing. But as another previous CEO of mine, Captain Naibi, retired, that he passed away unfortunately, would talk about on, on U.S. Coronado when things did not go well, was that there's nothing you can do about what happened 10 seconds ago. Yes. You got to be moving forward. And in that moving forward, you don't forget what happened. Lessons learned, not relearned. But you move forward, you know, based on whatever that philosophy is that you have for your Command, you move forward based on the best resources and use of those and intelligence and, and the wisdom of others that you're working with. And so for the, the low-pressure steam leak that put 3 of my sailors in the hospital, that was based on, quite frankly, how the ship was built and the type of piping that was used. We spent every chance we had replacing that low-pressure piping on the ship, which of course impacted the quality of life of the sailors living on board the ship. So we had to deal with that until we got it all fixed, or fixed as best we can to make the ship safe while preparing for deployment, while going through all the drills, the ref trays, the testas, and all the different inspections that are part of preparing for deployment. On the sailors that I had to discipline, they had, you know, various forms of malfeasance. Talking to the Chief's Mess early on, and what's going on here, you know, what is the state of morale, what is the issue? And it was one of holding people accountable. So that's the biggest problem, people were not being held accountable. And and said, well, okay, we got to turn that, that boat around. And how are we mentoring? How are we training them? Okay, how are we accountable at every level, you know, before they get up to the captain? Because if you bring up the captain, you probably want somebody to lose some time or lose some money. All right. And I know these sailors don't have a lot of time and they certainly don't have a lot of money. And it doesn't help me at all to take either one of my way, but we got to hold people accountable. So that's that. So we moved forward in that, and we did not have a lot of mass cases, I would have to say, after we got people on board. We got the chief's mess, the wardroom, the first class mess all working together, okay, understanding, hey, this is what it means, okay, on board Comstock. Comstock's motto is teamwork, drive, and courage. That was my command philosophy. Didn't have to make something up, all right? And how do we move forward with that type of command philosophy, that type of background? And I think we were pretty successful overall.

Well, I think the command philosophy is definitely a cornerstone. Sometimes I was even— when I think back, as I was preparing for command, why it was so important for each one of us to actually come up with our own command philosophy, because I feel like it's really something you can stand on. Can you please highlight some of the tenets of your command philosophy back then, sir?

Say that again.

Can you please highlight some of the tenets of your command philosophy during those times?

So, um, going through Command Leadership School we all had to write our command philosophy, right?

Sir, yes.

And I had been on ships where the commanding officers had tomes, you know, 40 pages, you know, that went down to very minute detail of what their expectation was in all these different situations and what have you and all that. And I always thought to myself, if the command philosophy was meant for every single sailor on board to understand, there's no way in Hades that he was going to understand, or she was going to understand this tone. Okay, I'm having a hard enough time making sure they understand their PQS and doing the PMS card correctly and using the tech manuals. So just so you know, we're all kind of trying to figure out, you know, and some guys are smarter than me, they had figured out what their command philosophy was. And I thought about something, said, you know what, the motto of the ship is teamwork, drive, and courage. Hank Howe, Captain Hank Howe, Commodore Hank Howe, he came up with that when he commissioned Comstock way back when. And I said, you know what, that's my command philosophy. It's on the ball cap, it's on the bulkheads around the ship. Yes, it's on every edition of the plan of the day. I don't have to keep repeating it because it's right there. And quite frankly, That, that suits me fine as a command philosophy. And what I would tell each of the sailors or ask them, uh, to think about is what does those three words mean to you?

Yes.

So that's what's most important. I can tell you what I think they mean, but I want you to think about what they mean to you. And if you can embrace that, if you can understand that, if you can apply that, you know, with your mess cooking, you're down in the GP5 pump room, up here standing bridge, okay, or any place in between. If you can get that under your— in your skin, okay, and in your mind, that's more than enough for me.

Wow, that is powerful. Yes, that is powerful. That's really one thing I love about the Navy, just our heritage, from our core value to our Sailor's Creed and everything else that goes with it. It's, uh, I don't know, it's, it's almost like— I remember when I went to boot camp 21 years ago, it's almost like you get in as a civilian who has absolutely no knowledge, but every time you get out on the other side, you are a U.S. sailor, and you really get the experience that pretty much every sailor has had since the beginning of our Navy. And I believe that is quite powerful, just to be reminded of who you are, what your values are, and, uh, what is expected of you. Well, If I may ask, sir, again, all— I wouldn't call it command failure, but definitely challenges on board that ship for when you took command. How did you process that emotionally as a new commanding officer?

So I think that what the command— what your command is looking for, um, out of its leader, out of its CO, out of its Commodore, out of its Admiral, is someone who, uh, understands the inverted pyramid of leadership. And the inverted pyramid of leadership, you know, people think of leadership like this where you got a bunch of seamen down here and Admiral up here on top, but really it's an inverted V. Yes. Where if you are a junior officer at the bottom of that inverted V, you got limited responsibility, limited scope, limited control. Okay. As you get more senior, you have a wider span of responsibility and more diverse types of people and mission and parts of the mission that you're responsible and on and up. And that you have that in mind, that you're even more of a servant leader when you are an admiral than you were when you were an ensign.

Yes.

Okay. And keeping that in mind, and I go to my favorite leadership verse in the Bible, and I don't mean to be preachy here, but I'm going to say it anyway. And other people have said it before too, and it comes from the Old Testament, the Book of Micah. And Micah 6:8, and what does it say? Uh, what does the Lord require but to act justly?

Yes.

To love mercy and to walk humbly with thy Lord. And you can think of justice, mercy, and humility as the three cornerstones of your leadership as a servant leader. At least it worked for me to keep me well-focused no matter what the situation was at whatever different leadership level that I was in.

Wow, that is so powerful. And also, you wouldn't know, sir, for this season of the Leadership and Success podcast, actually, the Maxwell Leadership Bible is is part of the curriculum, not as a religious book, but just on the leadership principle from an ancient book that is still relevant today in 2026, which is quite amazing. Our leadership really doesn't change at all and always impactful.

The technology changes, the people change, but a lot of the core elements of leadership— and that's one thing I appreciated about your podcast. I watched a couple of the other folks and honored to be part of the group that you are spending time with, but you hear leadership traits that do not change and characteristics that don't change.

That is true. And you are truly a people person. So as a leader, when you have to, how do you balance accountability with empathy, right? Because when people go to Captain Master's, yeah, we do have to hold them accountable. And to me, it's almost like a form of love too. Discipline is, whether you are a parent and a commanding officer, sometimes you have to do things you don't really want to do, but you have to for the good of the Navy, but also for the good of your sailor. How do you balance that, sir?

That's quite frankly not that hard for me, because to me, to be truly empathetic for my sailors, for the Marines that are embarked on my ships, for the Coast Guardsmen that I'm working with to be truly empathetic. I want to make sure they are prepared for a difficult world. I want to make sure they're prepared in case a fire breaks out, which happened on, on ships that were under my command. Uh, I want to make sure they're prepared if an engineering casualty happens. Okay, I want to make sure they're prepared if they go into the weapons engagement zone and they're fired on. And today they're getting fired upon more than any other time that I could think of in recent history at sea. So if you're truly empathetic, you're holding yourself and your shipmates to be accountable for their training, for their preparation, for their equipment, because they're not going into an easy place.

Yes.

They're not going into an easy place to work and to serve. And you want to do what? You want to do the mission. And part of the mission is to bring them home alive, all fingers and toes. You want to bring them home alive. And that means that you have to be tough and you have to hold people accountable, including yourself.

Hmm, that is quite powerful. And going back to Micah 6:8, which you mentioned, sir, "And doth the Lord require to do justly, and that's justice, and you do have to do it in addition to mercy and humility. But wow, that is powerful. Thank you for sharing that, sir. And maybe a follow-up question I have for you, sir. I mean, I don't know, I have so many questions right now. I know we only have about 10, 10 minutes left, but let me ask you this. What is the biggest leadership gap you see today, sir, in the military or in the industry?

I don't know that I see a lot of gaps. I think they've done a lot to improve the leadership and training of the officers and enlisted. You know, we've got the, of course, a lot of Navy leadership schools schools for officers. We've got the Senior Academy for the Command Master Chiefs and the Chief Petty Officers. I think we've got— I don't know if we have a lot of gaps. I would tell you the biggest concern I have is to make sure that we stay apolitical, and I think that the current leadership is doing that. But in these times where the nation seems to be straining at this on both sides, importance of the— those who serve, who swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States, to stay apolitical.

Yeah.

Okay. Is, is so important. I tell people, look, I voted for every party except for the Communist Party, okay, over my 67 years of life since I learned I was able to vote. Okay, and so, you know, I don't want to hear any bad-mouthing or bashing, or you won't hear it out of my mouth about anyone. Okay, but I think you ought to vote, and I think you gotta think about your vote, but that's about all you're going to get out of Senator Kamala Harris. Right, apolitical.

Yes, actually, I know a couple of my commanding officers in the past, they wouldn't even vote for president just because they wanted to be absolutely independent and apolitical.

So, so let me, let me jump in here.

Yes, sir.

Too many people, Black and white, have died so that Black people have the right to vote, so that women have the right to vote. So I'm voting.

Yes, sir. That's exactly why I always do. Blood and treasure. Now, there was one, and I also love to vote in in person, not by mail or anything, except one time I had to because I was being deployed during the election. So I couldn't vote in person. So in California, you can vote 1 or 2 weeks prior. I still did it in person, but not on the day of. But I really love to vote on the day of because of the sacrifice, the blood and the treasure that was spilled for my ability to do so. We're definitely in line with that. I think this is something that's very important about leadership. Something that you've said before is you said the most rewarding part of command was seeing sailors advance. So when it comes to sailors' development, you've led thousands of sailors. How did you identify and develop your next generation of leaders? And me too, when I was a CEO, that was probably the most fun I ever had, just seeing people advance. Promoted and get awards, but how do you identify and develop the next generation of leaders in your command?

Well, you challenge them, and you challenge them in many different ways to find out how far they can go, how deep they want to go, and how fast they want to get there. I would tell, I would look throughout the chain of command and ask each of the leaders and myself, what am I doing to build depth on the bench? What are you going to do when Sailor X, for whatever reason, is no longer available? I was chief engineer on the frigate Jarrett, again under Bill Schneider. And actually, at this time, Gino Gianotti was the CO. I had 3 different COs, and he was He was the one who brought me on board. And I had a first-class petty officer, my oil king, which is an important job in engineering, pop positive for drugs. Hmm.

Wow.

A week before OPPE, my major engineering exam, which we were told if next CO and chief engineer that fails OPPE, we're going to fire. Okay.

We already told that.

All right. So, so I had Getting past that exam was important. So anyway, he pops positive. The captain calls me down to the helo hangar and says, "Hey, I gotta take Petty Officer so-and-so to Mass. I'm kicking him out of the Navy. This is the second or third time he's popped positive or whatever and gotta do it." And I said, "Can't you demote him and let him stay until I get through OPPI? 'Cause you know, the guy behind him, I'm not sure about.", but he says, "Gotta do it. You gotta do it now." And that was, that was a stressful time. But it showed it again, demonstrated to me the importance of having depth on the bench. Like I mentioned, when I deployed and I left my XO behind to take care of a family issue, "Hey, Chief Engineer, guess what? You're going to be acting XO." Okay. And again, you're building depth on the bench, because you got to do that. You got to do that at every level all the way up. Um, because that's what's— that's part of the mission of the Navy, quite frankly, is to be ready 24/7 for all sorts of different contingencies, no matter— playing with the deck that you've got, okay, the best that you have, and, and understanding that things happen, people have issues. Do you have the depth on the bench for the next person to step up? You see it in professional sports, right? How many times you seen the star player go down, but the teams that have depth on the bench are able to weather it through until that guy gets back, or in spite of him being gone?

Yes. Wow. That is a powerful lesson. In that case, let me ask you one more. Again, you've commanded at every level from ensign all the way up to, to star admiral. What would you say to all of the junior officers who are listening in right now if they had to get only one lesson from your experience, sir? As a young officer, they have dreams. One day they would like to command and maybe become a senior officer commander or above, what would you advise them to as they step into leadership? Well, I'm gonna give you 3.

Yes, sir. Um, the first one is, is kind of a life philosophy, and that is faith, family, friends. Again, I didn't make this up. I got it again from an Army general. I heard, heard it, and it made a lot of sense to me then. It still makes sense to me now. Uh, But, and then one of my favorite books as a kid was "I Am Third" by Gayle Sayers. You know, "My God is first, my family's second, and I am third." Wow. And it's that life philosophy that takes you through no matter what you're doing, in my view. Number 2 is perseverance. Yes. You're gonna take a licking. You gotta keep on ticking, as the old Timex commercial would say, all right? You're gonna get knocked down. How fast do you get up? Again, I'm gonna give another Bill Snyder shout out. When he, and I was to a point of depression as his chief engineer. I didn't know I could do anything right. And I said, "How come you keep riding me, Captain, and not these other guys?" He says, "Because I don't beat dead horses." I said, so as long as you keep beating me, I'm doing okay. That's right. And he said, because it was— that's tough love. Uh, but, um, perseverance, being able to withstand the pressure, the pain, the challenge comes up there. And the last thing, and I had a young man who's getting ready to go join a ship in Norfolk, uh, reach out to me. Uh, he's a first-class midshipman graduating from school, heading to BSR, and he asked me a similar question. And I say, Shipmate, the key is to stay hungry and humble. Hungry, always going after your next qualification. There's so much to learn. You get SWO qualified, that's the beginning of learning. That's the beginning of learning. Okay. You keep on going and learning other skills, qualifying in other areas. Deepening your knowledge in the warfare areas that have to do with the surface Navy, and then now look beyond that. Okay, stay hungry and stay humble. You can always learn from those above, beside, and below you in rank. That is powerful. Hungry and humble is what I told him.

Yes, I believe I first heard that from Les Brown, but yes, that is so Powerful. And the book you just mentioned is this one, right, sir? I Am Sir. That's it. That's powerful. Well, uh, one thing you, you said just about, uh, resilience and really pouring so much into somebody you see so much potential in. I don't know if it's ever happened to you in your career, sir, where you try to help a seller, you go above and beyond because you really see that potential in them, but for whatever reason they never step up to their full potential. And then it happened to me once and I felt like, did I just waste all of my time and my energy trying to really develop this seller? Or I guess the question is, is it okay to have any regret about doing what you believe is the right thing for the future of a seller, but then for whatever reason they just do not step up to the occasion?

Hey, you know, Mentoring goes both ways. You got to be mentorable, um, to the people that are mentoring you. And I'm the same way. And, you know, not everything is 100%, uh, so, you know, you just keep on doing the right thing, and more times than not, I believe it'll work out. And sure, you're going to have your disappointments, sure, sure. But, uh, if you are humble enough to realize that you are not God Okay, you do not, you know, have the path for them. Uh, you can just help as best you can. You can pray, you can work with them, but it's not wasted time, uh, quite frankly. Uh, but as long as you are spending time with others, um, it's, it's not— it's just, it's part of life. Yes, indeed.

Well, thank you so much, and I know you talked about followership too, and I don't think we talk much about that when we talk about leadership, but really, to be a leader, you do have to be a good follower as well.

And being a good follower means being honest with your seniors and giving them time so they can make a decision. If I always tell people, there are two things every commanding officer has in common: they love initiative and they hate surprises.

Yes. Wow. Okay, uh, we are already out of time, you know. I'm not gonna keep you a minute more. So as we are getting toward the answer, what can my audience do to add value back to you?

Hey, reach out if you feel like, happy to talk, happy to chat. Keep doing the right thing even when nobody else is looking. Okay. And embrace civility. One thing we lack a lot of in this world today is civility. And we need to embrace civility. I think it was one of the tenets that George Washington espoused for officers, and George was a smart guy, all right? Yes. Smart man. Let's embrace civility with each other.

Powerful. Well, sir, was there a question I was supposed to ask you or that I didn't get a chance to ask, sir? Anything else you wanted to share? No, sir.

And actually, I got to go to my day job right now.

Thank you so much, sir. I really, really appreciate your time. Admiral Sinclair Harris, thank you, sir.

I appreciate it. Thank you. God bless.

All right, everybody, this was Mentorship with the Admiral. I really hope you've got a lot out of, out of this. But I think one of the greatest lessons I have learned today is leadership is not easy, and there is a price to pay for leadership. And sometimes you have to do things you don't really want to do, but you have to do it because it's the right thing to do. I think if you don't get anything else out of the discussion today, I really love when the Admiral mentioned Micah 6:8, right? What does the Lord require of thee? To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. And I believe the number one lesson I've learned when I had the privilege and really the honor of my life to be a commanding officer for the Global Network Operations Security Center in Suffolk, Virginia, it was to lead with humility. I think there is no greater lesson than that. As a leader, you still need to be humble. You need to be humble enough to listen to your senior executive team, your XO, your SEL, really, really listen. Because you don't have all of the answers, but also listen to your department head, even listen all the way down to the white hats, because sometimes, you know, wisdom doesn't respect rank. Wisdom doesn't care about race or gender. And you may get the answer of what you are looking for by listening to others. Again, the books that the Admiral has recommended today, the first one was US Navy First Black Admiral Trailblazer. I think everybody should get a copy of this. This is just a very inspirational book. We also talked about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Start with Why by Simon Sinek. Those who watch the show should already be familiar with this book. It's been recommended at least half a dozen times. And also the last book today, I Am Third. All right. I'm going to be adding all of those books to the digital bookshelf of the podcast. So that's all we have for today. Today, later today, I am going to be speaking with Colonel Octavia Scott, U.S. Army, and you do not want to miss this. We're going to be talking about leading with strength and purpose, the Colonel Octavia Scott story. And she's also the bestselling author of a novel, A Table for One. And later this afternoon, I will be speaking to Lieutenant Colonel Axelrod, U.S. Army retired. He's actually also an actor. I didn't know that until yesterday. We're going to be speaking about, uh, for those called to lead, listen from war, cyber, and life. And especially Lieutenant Colonel Axelrod is going to be a great fit for the two audiences I have, both the military and also those who are in tech or cyber security, since that is what is doing this day. All right, that's what I have planned for the rest of today. I hope to see you there. And thank you so much for watching and see you later today, I hope. Bye for now.

Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century? Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.