The U.S. Naval Institute on Mentorship: U.S. Naval Institute Wheel Book

INTRODUCTION

Reaching the top of the mast, the young sailor realized just how high he was. There was not a cloud above him, nor land in sight. The dark blue ocean met the light blue sky on the horizon line, and the wind was blowing just enough to make his footing perilous and his stomach churn. His normally able hands, meant to remove the gaskets in front of him to let the sail unfurl, had suddenly stopped working. Knowing that the eyes of his shipmates—on the wood deck so very far below—were on him at this moment did nothing to help the situation. He was frozen in place. His vision blurred and he felt dizzy.

How can the others do this? he wondered. How can experienced sailors make it look so easy and do it so quickly? Alone so high up, his hands sweating and his grip loosening, he was certain he was not going to live long enough to ask his questions.

Here, let me show you how to do it.

If he had not been so drained of energy by his fear, the young sailor would have jumped at the sound of another voice. He looked around and saw the officer who had ordered him up the mast holding on easily and starting to work the ropes.

It’s easy. Just do what I’m doing here.

His vision clearing and dizziness receding, the sailor started to act. He remembered his training and what he had been taught to do. His pulse calmed and his abilities picked up. Following the example of the leader next to him—who had seen the sailor lost and frozen and quickly stepped in to show him the way—he completed his assignment and started back down to the deck.

It had been his first time that high up at sea, and thanks to the help from the officer, it would not be his last. But what was it, exactly, that the officer had done?

For most of history, the great naval leaders never spoke of mentoring the junior officers and sailors under their command. It was not because they neglected the development of their sailors. After all, the sea services, perhaps more than the Army or Air Force, have always been apprenticed services in which the more experienced passed down their lessons and guidance, even to the less-experienced officers who outranked them. They led by example and worked side by side with their men and women to help them grow and develop their skills and capabilities.

But the term mentoring was not in common use until relatively recently, and to paraphrase U.S. Naval Institute author B. J. Armstrong, mentoring was not something the great naval leaders discussed or wrote about—it was just something they did, and they considered it part of their responsibilities as a leader.

Hopefully, you do too.

The Act of Mentoring, Its Benefits, and Its Challenges

In the Greek epic Odyssey, Mentor was a wise old man whom Odysseus entrusted with the education and development of his son, Telemachus, while he was away fighting in the Trojan War. To fulfill his responsibilities, Mentor, in the words of writer John Carruthers, had to be a father figure, a teacher, a role model, an approachable counsellor, a trusted adviser, a challenger, an encourager.

Similar descriptions are used to define the role and responsibility of a mentor in organizations today. Mentoring, as defined in this book’s first article, Does Mentoring Foster Success?, is a personal relationship in which a more experienced individual acts as a guide, role model, and sponsor to a less-experienced junior in the field. Mentors usually provide knowledge, advice, challenge, and counsel in support of the junior’s pursuit of full membership in the naval profession. You will note that the term less-experienced, not lower-ranked, is used. Woe to the junior officer who does not think he has much to learn from his chiefs.

The benefits of mentoring are plentiful for all concerned—the mentee, the mentor, and the overall organization. Mentees report benefitting from the advice and guidance of a more experienced individual, gaining support and recommendations for key assignments and roles, having access to an impartial voice of reason and support, and having the ability to see, up close, a successful role model demonstrating desirable behaviors and traits.

Not surprisingly, mentors report satisfaction with helping junior personnel grow and thrive, seeing them take on new challenges and responsibilities, and watching them become the most successful individuals—and sailors—they can be. Strong mentors never lose sight of the fact that they are investing their time and energy into developing our most valuable asset—[our] reliefs, our future, and our legacy, in the words of Christopher Michel in the essay Mentoring Your Airman Smith.

As RADM J. K. Taussig wrote in 1916, Historically, good men with poor ships are better than poor men with good ships. Mentoring is one way leaders can ensure they are creating those good men.

Of course, despite all its benefits, mentoring isn’t always perfect, or welcomed. Doctrine Man, the online comic popular with service members across the military, ran a cartoon strip on military jargon in early 2016. The word presented in the strip was tormentoring, defined as the act of ‘forced mentoring’ by a toxic leader, in which a poor soul is subjected to bad career advice from someone suffering from delusion of grandeur and an inflated sense of self-worth. Too many of us have been that poor soul at one time or another in our careers.

While we may have something that we can learn from everyone we encounter in life, that does not mean that everyone we encounter will give us good advice on career assignments or be a role model we should emulate. It doesn’t even mean they should be willing to be a mentor to us. Finding the right mentor for where we are in our careers, and what we are hoping to accomplish in the future, is critical.

Thoughtful Writing on a Critical Leadership Topic

This book is comprised of twenty-seven essays, articles, and other documents, some nearly one hundred years old and others just recently published. The authors—from the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard as well as outside the military—have focused their writing on topics as diverse as the individual activities necessary to successfully mentor someone, the role of the junior officer as a mentor, how senior leaders can create cultures that encourage mentoring, and the failures some leaders have faced when they should have mentored someone and did not.

Two of these essays examine the places and methods used to first train many of our future leaders. In "Leadership Development On Board the Eagle," LCDR Jeff Janaro, USCG, takes us to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s training ship Eagle and shows how the academy takes cadets to sea to teach them to be leaders, followers, and mentors to their fellow shipmates. Kenneth Harbaugh writes in Learning to Lead the DI Way about the evolving relationship he and his fellow officer candidates had with their drill instructor. What started as none of us liked the man evolved into recognizing him as a role model and mentor, someone who worked to earn the respect of his candidates and helped them grow and mature, leading them by example.

At Camp Pendleton, on the other side of the country from the Coast Guard Academy and the Navy’s Officer Candidate School, Capt. James Donovan, USMC, found himself struggling in an assignment he did not want and with being in California at a time when his fellow Marines were in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan (To say my attitude was poor would be a tremendous understatement). In Be an Unselfish Leader, Donovan writes about how he wrestled with his duty until a peer began mentoring him and helped him understand the importance of his assignment and how he could strive to do the best job possible, even in a job he did not want.

Several articles in this collection examine the impact senior leaders can have on others. In Leading Outside Command, LCDR Jason Shell examines the impact of Fox Conner, a retired Army general who mentored George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton before and during World War II. Connor’s development of these three great leaders is a model for military mentorship and a window into the value required of a leader outside command. LT Jeffrey Macris writes in ‘Hey, Loop’: Learning Leadership from the Masters about the leadership lessons he learned from his daily interactions with a fleet commander while serving as his aide-de-camp. As Macris notes, One great way to gain [leadership] insights and skills is to observe someone who has led successfully. We are surrounded by such opportunities every day.

Both Fox Connor and Macris’ fleet commander understood something that FTCS John Snell writes about in Leave a Legacy: military leaders, who often find themselves leading men and women barely out of high school, are as much in the business of developing young adults as [they] are in developing young warriors. The military will train and educate them to do their jobs, but it is through their interactions and relationships with senior enlisted personnel and officers that they will learn the really important life lessons that come from serving in the armed forces.

These essays are here to help you start your mentoring journey. Whether you are a young enlisted sailor looking for guidance, a junior officer trying to find your place as a mentor for the first time, or a senior leader looking to build or enhance your command’s culture, you will find articles here to help you on your journey.

As one officer in this book is quoted as saying, I believe it behooves heads of departments, [executive officers, and commanding officers] to take budding young [junior officers] under their wings and help them to a point where they are not afraid to seek you and discuss situations and issues. Every commanding officer has, as a profound duty, the responsibility to mentor those officers and chief petty officers within his or her command. Urge young officers to seek mentors from their first tours but also teach them to take on the mentor role when possible.

May this book help you on your way.

1DOES MENTORING FOSTER SUCCESS?

W. Brad Johnson, Jennifer M. Huwe, and Anne M. Fallow; LCDR Rakesh Lall and CAPT Elizabeth K. Holmes, Medical Service Corps, USN; and William Hall

It is fitting that this article appears early in this collection, not only because the question it asks—Does mentoring foster success?—is likely on your mind as you start to read this book but also because the authors provide an answer, with extensive data to back it up.

The authors worked with the Navy’s Bureau of Personnel to survey all living, retired Navy flag officers in 1996 to ask them about their experiences of being mentored while in the Navy. More than half responded, and the information they provided sheds light on the value of mentoring in the military. They spoke of a mentor’s role in terms of giving advice, providing recommendations for key assignments, expressing confidence in the mentee’s leadership abilities, and simply serving as a role model to be observed and studied. They overwhelmingly recommended not only finding a mentor but also being one. In the words of one retired admiral, Every commanding officer has, as a profound duty, the responsibility to mentor those officers and chief petty officers within his or her command.

The data clearly show how important that can be.

DOES MENTORING FOSTER SUCCESS?

By W. Brad Johnson, Jennifer M. Huwe, and Anne M. Fallow; LCDR Rakesh Lall and CAPT Elizabeth K. Holmes, Medical Service Corps, USN; and William Hall, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (December 1999): 44–46.

The concept of mentoring has a rich tradition. In The Odyssey, Homer describes how Ulysses, prior to fighting the Trojan War, entrusted his son’s well-being and education to the care of a wise, older man named Mentor. In this role, Mentor guided his young charge to an understanding of human nature, honesty, wisdom, and commitment to serving others. Modern interest in mentoring was rekindled by Daniel Levinson’s now classic work, The Seasons of a Man’s Life. Studying the lives of 40 adult men, Levinson concluded that finding a mentor is one of the most significant tasks facing a young man.

But how about mentoring in the Navy? We know strong leaders often mentor junior officers, but mentoring seldom has been studied in the Navy community. In a recent survey, junior officers in the surface warfare community ranked access to mentoring as one of the strongest factors influencing professional development and retention. The only other assessment of the effects of mentoring in the Navy was a study of Medical Service Corps officers, which found that those who were mentored by a superior had higher job satisfaction ratings and reported greater intent to remain on active duty. We wondered if the Navy’s most successful officers, those who make read admiral and above, had benefited from mentors along the way.

Flag Officer Survey on Mentoring

With assistance from the Navy’s Bureau of Personnel, we obtained a list for all Navy flag officers retired from active duty by 1996. Among the 1,479 officers identified, 20% were rear admirals (lower half), 64% were read admirals (upper half), 12% were vice admirals, and 4% were admirals at the time of retirement. Of the 1,350 Mentor Experience Surveys delivered, 691 were completed and returned. Respondents were nearly exclusively male (99.4%), with only four women responding. Their average age was 71 and most were Caucasian (96%) and graduates of the Naval Academy (58%).

The survey defined mentoring as a personal relationship in which a more experienced individual acts as a guide, role model, and sponsor to a less-experienced junior in the field. Mentors usually provide knowledge, advice, challenge, and counsel in support of the junior’s pursuit of full membership in the naval profession.

Major Findings

When asked whether they had been mentored during their naval careers, 67% of the respondents said yes. They also reported having an average of three significant mentors during their careers. When asked about the primary or most important mentor, they typically described this person as a male military officer in their direct chain of command. In more than half the cases, the primary mentor was the person’s commanding officer. Our survey showed that officers from all communities and commissioning sources are about equally likely to be mentored.

One interesting finding was that younger admirals were more likely to have been mentored than their older counterparts. This may suggest that mentoring increased during the time these men were in the Navy, or that mentoring is a relatively new concept and more familiar to those who recently retired.

Who initiated these important relationships? More than 40% of those mentored said that the relationship was mutually initiated, and another 39% said the mentor took the first step. Surprisingly, only 2% said they had initiated the relationship. These findings clearly suggest that if senior officers do not take the initiative, mentoring will not happen. Most frequently, our respondents said the mentoring relationship began when a senior officer in their chain of command took a personal interest in them and began providing advice, counsel, and encouragement:

My mentor taught me, helped me, and supported me for 26 years. He seemed to have total confidence in me. His wisdom and advice were probably more responsible for my success than any other factor. He was the wise, helpful father figure I never otherwise had. I never felt unprepared for any operational job because of the hours and experiences my mentor passed on to me. The relationship was almost as close as father to son or older brother. I doubt one can seek this kind of mentor. He has to come to the junior because he wants to do so.

When was the mentor relationship most important? In descending order of significance, mentoring mattered most to our respondents during the division officer tour (18%), the department head tour (16%), command tour (15%), and the major command tour (13%). Another 25% noted that the relationship was critical at more than one point.

We asked these admirals how and why the primary mentor relationship ended. Most agreed that they had benefited from their mentors’ guidance long after they were reassigned to another command or their mentors retired, sometimes until their mentors’ death.

The mentor relationship lasted far into retirement, and ended when he died a year ago. I was devastated. It continued throughout my Navy career—even after my mentor retired—and our friendship was equally strong until his death. The mentor relationship ended when he died, yet perhaps not, because I still tried to do the things he would have done.

We also asked what specific behaviors on the part of the mentor were most helpful and important to the admirals’ personal and professional development as naval officers. In descending order of importance, the most highly endorsed mentor activities were: (1) Offering me acceptance and encouragement; (2) Enhancing my military career development; (3) Increasing my self-esteem; (4) Increasing my visibility within the Navy; (5) Advocating on my behalf; (6) Assisting me in establishing professional networks; and (7) Providing timely and firm correction when needed.

We asked the admirals for examples of how they had most benefited from being mentored. The most frequent responses fell into four categories:

Having benefitted from the mentor’s advice

Before sub preference card meetings, [my mentor] would advise me about the options. Before accepting billets, he would advise me concerning them. My primary mentor trained and observed me in a very tough operational assignment. He showed no favoritism to anyone, but due to our working relationship, I was able to speak privately and openly with him. It was clear that he appreciated my capabilities. In later years, his advice and intervention on my behalf were critical in my career advancement.

Having been recommended for key assignments

Because I believed that BuPers detailers were the best advisers on formulating a career pattern, I sought and obtained advice through my career from my mentor. We also exchanged many letters on naval force planning and directions we believed the service should move toward. He had a series of very key jobs throughout his career and took many opportunities to introduce me to key officers and leaders who took an interest in me and helped me to get similar key assignments.

Having the mentor express confidence in one’s leadership ability

He gave me a long-term perspective on my skills and how they could (would) lead to a successful career. His dispassionate point of view opened my eyes and gave me a new feeling for my skills, ability, and probability of success. My mentor kept telling me I had a chance to make flag. He encouraged me to stay on active duty and never lost faith in me. He made sure that I remained visible—bringing me to meetings with senior Navy officers, giving me credit for accomplishments that others might have claimed for themselves. In his quiet way, he made me a flag officer. I will forever be in his debt.

Benefiting from observing the mentor

My mentor taught me by example. He taught me how to focus intensively for 12 hours without respite, how to apply oneself to the important issues while