Sleek, dark, cramped, and stealth, submarines mystify the average civilian. In the U.S. Navy, submarines are commonplace because of the difficulty in locating and destroying them when deep below the surface of the sea. Tom Bailey, Captain in the U.S Navy, is no stranger to submarines and the sometimes difficult life on a submarine. In fact, the majority of his 23.5 years of active duty have been spent within the confines of a submarine, including commanding the nuclear-powered submarine, USS CHARLOTTE (SSN 766) out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He has also served as the Submarine Operations officer for the admiral on the USS NIMITZ Carrier Strike Group, as well as serving on aircraft carriers. Although Bailey has never been on a submarine that has engaged in direct combat, he’s been involved in very intense situations where mistakes could have easily caused international incidents.
Life on a submarine is notoriously difficult. Sailors live in a space equivalent to a three-bedroom house, but along with 135 other people. Sailors are also cut-off from the rest of civilization for months at a time without sunshine. But commanding a submarine or serving as an officer on a submarine is even more difficult because the leader has responsibility for managing people placed in such uncomfortable and unconventional conditions.
“On a submarine, I have responsibility for their personal life,” said Bailey. “If a Sailor goes out and drinks too much, then the police are calling me and telling me to pick him up. We get to know our people—where they live, who they hang out with, what they do in their off-hours, what their hobbies are, and what their personalities are so we can look out for changes. If one of our Sailors is having financial problems or is a suicide risk, we need to know and anticipate all of these things. When you get a Sailor, you also get his or her family. If a Sailor’s child has a special disability, we have to help our Sailor by working with the local school district so our sailor will be able to concentrate and do his job.”
Oftentimes on a submarine, only one person is trained in a particular role, thus each person on a submarine is a critical piece of an intricate puzzle. Bailey explained: “Because a Sailor might have responsibility for maintaining one of the safety systems such that when the submarine submerges, the water stays out and the air stays inside.”
Despite the many challenges related to serving as a leader on a submarine, leaders could always fall back on the Navy’s “command and control” philosophy that governs all areas of naval warfare. Command and control is what it sounds like—the process of military commanders exercising authority and direction over human and material resources in order to achieve strategic and tactical objectives. Bailey said: “I always knew that I could just order someone to do something and they would have to do what I said, unless they wanted to leave the Navy.”
In fact command and control is exactly how many naval officers functioned on a daily basis, according to Bailey: “The first Commanding Officer that I worked for took care of people, but only to the extent of keeping them functioning. There are still a few leaders like that in the Navy that are very results-driven—where the people don’t really matter, just getting the job done matters. On the other hand, there are also some leaders who are so concerned about the people that they are afraid to push them to get the mission done. Thus the key challenge of developing leaders within the Navy is forming leaders who can not only grow their people, but also still accomplish the mission.”
Despite his granted authority, Bailey had always intuitively valued a type of leadership that differed from the more conventional command and control style. As a leader, Bailey considered himself a “jockey” riding a horse: “I’ve always felt that as a leader, I’m a jockey who provides some guidance, direction, and goal-setting, whereas the actual running of the race would be left to my people. Because a lot of the people in the submarine force are top-notch and quality people with at least some college experience, I wouldn’t tell them what they had to do, but I would ask them how we achieve our goals, and then take a team approach.” Bailey viewed his role as one who “removed roadblocks” so that his Executive Officers, Department Heads, and Chiefs could be successful.
In spite of the military’s command and control culture, Bailey was not only able to successfully exercise his “servant leadership style,” or a style that advocated leaders serve their employees, customers, and community first, but he was also able to prove his leadership style’s effectiveness. On the USS CHARLOTTE, his team received the Battle Efficiency Award or the “Battle E Award,” which is awarded annually to a small number of U.S. Navy ships, submarines, aviation, and other units that win their battle efficiency competition based on overall readiness to carry out wartime tasks. Competition for the award is extremely keen and evaluation lasts an entire year.
Moreover, Bailey’s submarine had the highest retention of personnel of any submarine out of the submarine force when he left as commander in 2003: “I attribute the high retention rate and our really successful Western Pacific deployment to not having done things my way, but always trying to determine the best way to achieve those goals.”
Retention is an important figure in the Navy, which normally has four or six year enlistments—four for a basic sailor and six for a sailor involved in more technical training. At the end of enlistment, sailors have the option of enlisting for two or four more years in the Navy or returning to civilian life. Bailey articulated the differences between various segments of the military and why retention is important in the Navy: “The Navy and Air Force tend to be more technical than the Army or Marines because we deal with such sophisticated equipment. We need people that can fix equipment and keep it running.”
But despite his successes, Bailey always felt that he had much to learn in terms of leadership and became intrigued by the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program (MSEL) at the University of San Diego when Ken Blanchard spoke at a military luncheon. “I liked the fact that the MSEL program wasn’t just a strict business MBA program,” said Bailey. “But one that actually addressed issues of leadership and ethics, areas that I have focused on in my career as a naval officer.”
While attending MSEL, Bailey formally learned how to identify different leadership styles, including his own. Through the “DISCProfile” (given in the first course), a personal assessment test similar to the Myers-Briggs test, Bailey identified his leadership style and learned how to formally identify other leadership styles. Through the assessment and the course, he learned that his leadership style is a “C” or “Task-oriented and reserved” or a style that has characteristics of competence and caution.
The problem for Bailey, was that the admiral that he was working for at the time was a “D” or “Task-oriented and outgoing,” and more dominant and focused on getting a job done. He said: “Because I am a ‘C,’ I would go in and tell my admiral that we had a problem, how my team was going to fix it, what the root cause was, etc. And he would get really frustrated with me. After taking that class, I started just saying, ‘Sir, we had a problem and it’s fixed.’ He was extremely happy after that.”
Bailey was also able to assess other leadership styles readily and adjust his leadership and management style accordingly. He did so when a new admiral with a “C” leadership style came in. Bailey explained: “I was able to assess the new admiral’s personality quickly and to adjust my interactions with him so that our communication was immediately more efficient.”
At MSEL, Bailey also affirmed his philosophy of an ego-less leadership style. “The way I view servant leadership is that it doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done,” he said. “I learned how to put my ego second to the mission. Once I did that, it was easy to remove roadblocks to help the rest of the team get what they needed to get done.”
Bailey was able to exercise this ego-less leadership style when he worked on the USS NIMITZ where his staff was tasked with setting up everything related to a multinational exercise in Hawaii, involving hundreds of airplanes, nine countries, and 18,000 people. Setting up an air operations center posed complicated and difficult challenges and Bailey and his team needed to build an entire air operations center with tents, portable air conditioning, and lap tops.
“I knew my admiral was a ‘D’ so I knew not to provide him with all the details and problems that we were having,” said Bailey. “I also really viewed myself as a servant leader and simply helped all of my people get things done and get credit.” The air operations center ended up being the most successful integration of coalition assets in the history of the exercise, one that has occurred every two years. The admiral was so pleased with the teamwork and effectiveness, he directed that an article be written for a Navy magazine. As part of his servant leadership mentality, Bailey told the admiral to put the name of his deputy on the article instead of his own.
Although Bailey has had a string of successes on submarines, his Navy career has expanded and will continue to expand beyond submarines. Currently, he works in San Diego at the Tactical Training Group Pacific, a school that prepares Navy staffs and students for carrier and expeditionary strike group service and deployments. But his time in San Diego will end in the summer of 2007 since he was selected for “major command” and will serve as Commanding Officer of the Navy’s Nuclear Power Training School in Charleston, South Carolina. Since all of the Navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, his job will be a significant one.
“Everyone who works in our engineering departments in the nuclear power part of our submarines and aircraft carriers need to go through nuclear power school,” explained Bailey. This ranges from the brand new student out of high school that has just gradutated from boot camp, to an aviator who has 27 years of flying F-18s who is selected to command a carrier. Bailey will need all of his prior experience and training to lead the 2,000 students with varying backgrounds, and approximately 600 staff. “The Navy’s nuclear power record is unequaled and there have been no accidents in the past,” he notes. “One of my biggest challenges will be to ensure that the quality of education continues and that our students can get the knowledge to safely operate our reactors so that we can continue to build the trust of the American people.” Armed with all of his rich experiences with submarines and within MSEL, Bailey is ready for the challenge.