 Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us for Conversation with a Shipmate. I'm MC2 Gray, here at Deterrent Park with the sale of USS Woodrow Wilson behind us, a Naval Base Kitsap Banger in Washington State. Joining us here today is the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Mike Stevens. Good afternoon, and I think everybody needs to know that you can do anything in this Navy of ours, where a person from Cleveland, Ohio can meet with a person from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Browns and the Steelers, and have a civil conversation, we can do anything. And that not only goes for here, but that's worldwide. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, don't forget him. Oh, yes, so good afternoon, and the thing about Montana is we have no professional sports teams. Well, be in August, you know how it is, we're all getting worked up, so anyway. But that's not what we're here to talk about. All right. Well, today I would like to discuss with you leadership. I mean, both of you are the top dogs in the Navy, so we would like to get your thoughts on basically the path to developing leaders, why you think it's important, and why young personnel, both enlisted and officer alike, should be engaged in cultivating these skills early on in their career. So let's get started. You bet. Sir, what is one of the things that you're focused on to build better leaders in the Navy? Well, first of all, the foundation is integrity. We have to believe what anybody tells us, and what I mean by that is if you are standing watch, you tell me something occurred, didn't occur, and we are ready to go, we're not ready to go, I have to fundamentally believe that. That's at the foundation. You can't go to sea with 200, 300 people and not absolutely be able to trust what somebody else to you, integrity. Number two, character. We have to have character with a foundation of good ethical behavior, the understand how we behave and how we will conduct ourselves. It all builds from that. Okay. Mipon, do you have anything to add to that? You know, I will quote one of my favorite authors, John Maxwell. He says, no organization can rise above the capabilities of its leaders. And so if we hope to continue to get better as a Navy, then we have a responsibility to always seek ways to improve leadership and leadership opportunities. Why do you believe that it's so mission critical for a Navy? Well, it's the foundation of the military, and it has been for a time of memorial. I mean, for the, for well over the 200 years of this great Navy of ours, somebody has to lead, has to define the reality to people, their reality, and why they're doing what they're doing, what the mission is, and that they can depend on that individual to be responsible, take care of them and be accountable for the actions of the unit, no matter how big that unit is. So folks have to lead into the future, have to help understand the common good of the organization and bring it forward and lay that out. That is, again, a foundation and a heritage of ours. Now, Mipon, you've talked about how a recruit becomes a leader starting a boot camp. Can you elaborate on how a recruit can be a leader? What I used to tell and still tell my sailors is that where there's two sailors, one's in charge, right? So leadership, to me, has no rank. Leadership is something that everybody is responsible for and must embrace. Sir, why should junior personnel, not necessarily engaged with the leadership position, be concerned with developing these skills early on, and why should E1s and ensigns be part of this process? Well, like the Mipon said, you're a leader. Anytime a group gathers together, look, this is kind of basic psychology, somebody will migrate in charge. It's been said where there's a leadership vacuum, it's filled. So what I'm telling you is I need our E1s, I need our O1s to understand the foundational pieces. Number one, integrity. I said it early on when we talked. They have to understand integrity and understand those basics. How to behave, follow regulations. And follow regulations when somebody's watching, and more importantly, when they're not watching. That will allow them to understand how to hold standards and bring our people forward. We'll develop their communication skills. We'll develop the professional aspects that an E1 needs, that an O1 needs as they come up. And we ask them to take on more responsibility. But they have to have that foundation. Follow the rules, understand the guidelines, tell the truth, and have good character. Again, whenever, well, let's put it another way. If your mother would be proud of what you just said or did, that's a good way to think about it. I think my mother's always proud of what I say. Well then you've got a good foundation, Gray. At least I like to think so. Anyway, Mipon, so as you're traveling the fleet, you've been discussing the importance of petty officer leadership courses. And I was just curious to know what some of the feedback from the petty officers have been and whether or not they believe that they're important. Well, this is just something we've started to champion. The feedback so far has been positive. We owe it to our sailors. I often say this. We must set the conditions and provide the opportunity that allow our sailors to be successful. And that's a big part of leadership is providing them with those opportunities. So I've felt that over the last several years, we haven't placed the focus that's necessary on young petty officer leadership development. We moved it out of the schoolhouses and we brought it into the commands. We've asked the commands to provide the leadership. And by and large, we're doing it. But I believe we can do it much better. We've got to get the right people in front of the audience with the right training to deliver this leadership development training that we should be doing. And we need to let our petty officers know that we're serious about it so that they treat it seriously. And so I've asked the chiefs to champion this. And they're doing that right now and we're hoping that we'll see good results. But so far, the feedback has been positive. Sir, so you often speak of increasing the quality of service throughout your time in the Navy. How does leadership really tie into that? Well, I think there are two aspects that we provide our sails. It's about enabling our people. That that's the kind of the topic, if you will. One is the quality of life of our sailors. And what that means is the basic necessities of life. Are we providing that good compensation for the work they do, health care, educational opportunities, housing, child care, things of that nature, their life is appropriate. But they want to do well where they work. What is the quality that it would be, the environment, the enabling factors of the service that they do, the workplace? Do they have spare parts? Is their supervisor man? Is the supervisor a good leader? Do they have a clear way ahead, some predictability to what they're doing? That's the part where I'm comfortable. In fact, I'm comfortable because our people tell us, I'm good with my quality of life. I live reasonably well and I think I'm being compensated. But when I cross the pier and I go into the ship and I go to do work, do my plan maintenance, see my, well, I don't have a very good schedule because I got a gap billet above me where my supervisor, where are the spare parts? What's the schedule? We need to do better at that. And so a lot of what I'm looking to do is to fix that part of it, get that balance better between the quality of life and the quality of service, enable them to be the sailor and the leader that they want to do. We've got to get that foundation in there. Absolutely. I'd say one thing that I think could increase that is, you know, just switching state rooms for all, all hands. You do. Absolutely. You do. Well, you've got to... That's increased cleaning. You've got to clean those state rooms, too. That's fine with me. I'll take it. So, McPott, CPO 365 has been viewed as a controversial topic. So how do you view it and how's it going? Any time there's change, there's controversy, right? Especially when you're talking about the cheese mess, I would have expected nothing less. I'd have been disappointed if I hadn't had some controversy. Good tradition here. Clear heritage. That's right. So, I want to first say, give a shout out to the chiefs that are out there. They've taken CPO 365 once they got off over the initial shock. They've embraced it and they've turned it into a great program. First and foremost, it's about providing our first-class petty officers with an opportunity to continue to learn and develop and doing it in an environment where we treat one another with dignity and respect. I never asked for it to be easy. I want it to be hard. I want it to be challenging. I want it to be testing. But I believe we can accomplish all that while still treating one another with the dignity and respect that I often talk about. So CPO 365 is off and running. It's meeting its intended purpose and beyond. And just since I've been on this trip, I've had the chance to talk with our newly selected chief petty officers and they've come up to me and have said, McPawn, thank you for CPO 365. And I said, don't thank me. Thank the chiefs, they're the ones that are making it work. It sounds like it's going great so far. So do you foresee any upcoming changes to the CPO 365 program? To say there'll be no changes, I think would be wrong because you always have to look for ways to improve and get better. But I'm not inclined at this point to make any significant changes. Too much change, too fast, isn't always good. It's too much churn and I think I've created enough churn with this program. So I want it to settle. I want people to get used to it, but I certainly want to look for ways that we can make minor adjustments to make it better. There's a fine line between cutting edge and chaos. We've got to stay on the right line with that. Absolutely. Now, speaking of the chiefs mess, sir, from an officer's standpoint, what do you believe the value is of having a strong leadership sense in the enlisted force? Well, number one, as the mcpond said, that's what will lead the vast majority of our Navy, the foundation of it, and that is our sailors. And make sure that we are nurturing and building those leaders to come behind them. But when I think of the officer corps, I think of Chief Glenn Miller, my first chief. I think of Chief Bill Schellhammer, who taught me how to be a good engineering officer to watch. Fire-controlled Chief Valchar, Joe Valchar, who taught me how to suck it up whenever I got chewed up by the captain for not doing a good job as the officer of the deck. And how to communicate and bring a watch team together. They're going to train our officers. They're going to take the junior officer, put their arm around and say, kiddo, this is how it works. This is how you lead our sailors, my sailors, too. And they'll take care of our Navy. I'm not making this up. This is the tradition. I don't sit here in front of you without those three guys I just talked about. And that goes all around there. You can put any officer in this chair, and they will tell you somebody sat them down, some senior enlisted, an NCO, and took care of them and nurtured them, brought them along. So that's why it's important. Take care of the officer corps, but also lead our Navy, the vast majority, those people that get the work done day in and day out. So, Mick Pond, can you tell me about the changes that are coming up for the senior enlisted Academy requirements? Sure. So think about this, Petty Officer Gray. You make Chief Petty Officer at the 10-year mark, which is not uncommon. Then you make Senior Chief and Master Chief, so you're able to do 30 years of naval service. So there's a 20-year window that if you're not going into the Command Master Chief or Chief of the Boat Program, there is this 20-year window where potentially you do not get one more day of professional leadership training because it's not a requirement. It's only a requirement for our COBS and for our CMCs and our Command Senior Chiefs. So because it's not a requirement, we don't fund it. And if we don't fund it, then there's not opportunities to send a lot of people. So we have to put all this together, right? So we took a look at it and we said, if we're going to provide all of our senior chiefs, about 1,300 a year, an opportunity to go to the senior enlisted Academy, then we've got to make it a requirement so we can resource it and fund it. So the requirement is going to be around 2020 timeframe, maybe 2019. If you are selected for senior chief in, let's say, 2016, you'll have to have graduated from the senior enlisted Academy to be eligible for E9 by 2020. We haven't figured out the date just yet. It's going to be 19 or 20. The first class is going to start in December. The first class will consist of nine weeks of blackboard distance learning, and they'll have a facilitator and a Master Chief at the school that will mentor them through this distance learning. And then they show up for three weeks of residency because the budget's tight and we have to do all this with about the same amount of money that we're doing it now. It's not the perfect situation, but it's the best situation given the resources available. So what we've done now, because really we're out of money now for the Academy, but thanks to the CNO, providing some money through the Navy's N8 organization, our bankers, right? We were able to insert a few more dollars in there, and we now have a class going through the Academy right now with over 100 students in it, where we would have had only about maybe 20 or 30 students in that class. So we recognize the seriousness of it. We've changed some things to provide the funding capability and also to make it a requirement so that we can get long-term funding through the Palm cycle. Now, I have one more question, and this is for the both of you. Do you believe leaders are born or are they bred? I think some people are born with a unique communication skill. They can just relate to people. Now, I don't know that I would really say born, but they grew up and that kind of became part of their personality, and then they joined our service, let's say. So they communicate well. But I think then we need to embed in them that foundation of the importance of integrity here. There is no such thing as the little white lie. It's lives depend on every aspect of that. And in the character development, so you take that combination of somebody that can communicate huge, huge aspect, and then you give them a foundation of character and understanding of integrity, teach them a professional skill, and you've got a nice mixture of a great leader. Yeah, I like to use the analogy, take an athlete. Some people have an inherent ability to run and jump high and fast. And then others develop that ability to run and jump high and fast. So some people come to us with this kind of an inherent ability. They just have this natural charisma, this reverence about them. People tend to flock to them for whatever reason. I can't put my finger on it. It just is what it is. And then other people may not have that ability, but we provide them with the time, tools, and education and help them to develop that. Now what I like is you take that leader that's kind of natural born, so to speak, and then you also give them the training on top of that. They're the ones that become kind of your Michael Jordan's, your LeBron James's of the leadership world, right? Because they've taken a gift and they've built upon it. But that's not to say that you can't be a great athlete or you can't be a great leader if you train really, really hard and we provide them with the opportunities. So I think I've said what the CNO said. I just kind of used a little bit of an analogy. What I liked about what you said is you give somebody a chance. You give them the skills. They may not have that inherent that you described. They work their way up and they become, and how many athletes, we just turn into an athletic show. That's not the point. But the same opportunity exists, that same hard worker. And that's a lot of what we were talking about is we have to put in place those opportunities. Because through time, that's what's made our Navy what it is today. Giving people an opportunity and they grab it. I was watching ESPN special the other day, back to sports. And they were talking about knuckleball pitchers. So they're not great athletes, but they develop great skills and they become great pitchers. And so you can say the same thing about leadership. They may not think they're great leaders, but they can acquire those skills and they can be just as effective and rise to the same level as anybody else in the Navy. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, gentlemen, for your time here today. Is there anything else that you would like to add or just say about leadership in general or even about the Navy? Well, if I may add, again, the great leader, the one that does the right thing when nobody is watching, the one that treats that shipmate with dignity and respect and looks out for the common good. As a McPon said, they say, hey, I'm just, you hear it all the time. I was just doing my job, saying, yeah, but you do it well and you do it with humility and you understand that your function is to take care of people, not be just treated in some sort of awe. So thanks to the sailors out there who are doing that every single day, deploying and take care of us so we can have this interview. I appreciate that and their families. Well, sir, I appreciate you and McPon, I appreciate you coming out here and sharing your thoughts on the path of developing leaders. You wanna close up? I'll give it a shot. I thought that was pretty good, so you know. What I wanna share with our forces, I hope it's no secret, but developing leaders has been and will continue to be my number one priority because as I stated earlier, no organization rises above the capabilities of its leaders. We are the lid to the sailors that we're responsible for and if we want our sailors to rise to greatness, then we have to develop leaders that can rise to greatness. So I'll continue, there's many areas of focus and a lot that we're working on, but I will continue to focus on developing leaders because for the CNO, for our Navy, I believe that's where I can help us achieve the most bang for the buck is in developing leaders. Wow, couldn't have said it better myself. All right, hey, good luck to the brownies this year. All right, and to the Steelers? Question mark, I want it. Come on, it's a sincerity. Good luck to the Steelers, all right, I'll give it to you, sir. Hey, thank you, Big Phan. Thank you, thank you. And thank you for sharing your thoughts on leadership in the path to developing leaders. Like, you both touch base on it's, there's no, any well-functioning organization can really produce any product or have any outcome without leadership behind the helm. So I'd like to thank you again. And thank you for joining us for another edition of Conversation with a Shipmate. Be sure to stay on top of the entire series at the CNO's leadership page on Navy.mil and the Navy's official YouTube channel. Thanks for tuning in. I'm MC2 Gray, and we'll see you next time on Conversation with a Shipmate.