Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Vice Admiral Sandy Stosz on How to Become a Leader of Moral Courage EP 158

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Vice Admiral Sandy Stosz shares why the world needs leaders with the moral courage to stand strong and steady. Leaders who are capable of uniting people in support of a shared purpose. Leaders who want to make a difference by helping people become their best. Admiral Sandy Stosz served for 40 years in the US Coast Guard, including 12 years at sea. Her career was filled with leadership lessons gleaned while breaking ice and breaking glass as the first woman to command an icebreaker on the Great Lakes and to lead a US armed forces service academy. She has lectured widely on leadership and has been featured on CSPAN and other media outlets. In 2012, Newsweek’s “The Daily Beast” named Sandy to their list of 150 Women who Shake the World. She is the author of Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters. Purchase a copy of Admiral Sandy Stosz' book Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Unchartered Waters. --► Get the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/admiral-sandy-stosz-leader-with-moral-courage/  --► Subscribe to My Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles --► Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/passion-struck-with-john-r-miles/id1553279283 *Our Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/passionstruck. What I discuss with Admiral Sandy Stosz in this episode of the Passion Struck Podcast Admiral Sandy Stosz joins us to discuss her simple but powerful set of leadership principles. These are ideas that if studied diligently, can become the very foundation of your core values and a sounding board to assess performance and behavior throughout one's life. Admiral Stosz provides a structural framework for success that everyone can learn from.  0:00 Announcements 3:01 Introducing Sandy Stosz 4:49 Lessons learned from Track and Field 7:28 First class of women at a service academy 13:58 Admiral Linda Fagan 17:20 Superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy 23:11 Wearing my heart on my sleeve 28:11 Be a leader of moral courage 31:31 Overcoming being an introvert 36:37 Commitment to lifelong learning 42:11 The importance of self-awareness 45:33 The three P's of power 50:02 Kung Fu Panda 1:01:39 Why it's so difficult for people to change 1:13:29 Wrap-Up and Synthesis Where you can find Admiral Sandy Stosz: * Website: https://sandrastosz.com/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sandy.stosz * Twitter: https://twitter.com/SandraStosz * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-stosz-584a652b/ Links from the show * My interview with Admiral James Stavridis: https://passionstruck.com/admiral-james-stavridis-to-risk-it-all/  * My interview with Vice Admiral Ted Carter, President of the University of Nebraska: https://passionstruck.com/the-key-to-personal-growth-ted-carter/ * My interview with former NASA astronaut Captain Wendy Lawrence: https://passionstruck.com/how-to-dream-the-dream-you-want/ * My interview with Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, the former Undersecretary of Transportation: https://passionstruck.com/tim-gallaudet-leading-in-turbulent-times/ * My interview with former Navy Seal and NASA Astronaut Captain Chris Cassidy: https://passionstruck.com/vital-importance-in-life-of-being-present/ * My solo episode on why micro choices matter: https://passionstruck.com/why-your-micro-choices-determine-your-life/ * My solo episode on why you must feel to heal: https://passionstruck.com/why-you-must-feel-to-find-emotional-healing/   -- Welcome to Passion Struck podcast, a show where you get to join me in exploring the mindset and philosophy of the world's most inspiring everyday heroes to learn their lessons to living intentionally. Passion Struck aspires to speak to the humanity of people in a way that makes them want to live better, be better and impact. Learn more about me: https://johnrmiles.com. Stay tuned for my latest project, my upcoming book, which will be published in summer 2022. ===== FOLLOW JOHN ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/ * Blog: https://johnrmiles.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast      

coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. I came to believe while I was a cadet that yeah, there were challenges being a woman, one of the first women at the Coast Guard Academy, but if I pulled myself back and looked at it objectively, a lot of people had a hard time depending on circumstances and you could choose to let what those people said do you get to you or you could choose to prove them wrong. Maybe it's the German in me, but I choose to prove them wrong and to show that I could make it there. And all it did when somebody would tell me, hey, you're a woman, it's going to be harder for you here. I would just say, hey, to myself, that's just another incentive for me to try harder and

to persevere. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice

and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 158 of PassionStruck. Recently ranked by Apple is one of the top 10 alternative health podcasts in the world.

And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. If you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce this to family and friends, we now have episodes starter packs, both on Spotify and on the PassionStruck website, and these are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize into topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed my episodes from last week they included my interview with Dr. Katie Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, co-director of the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative, and host of the popular Charles Swabs

Behavioral Economics Podcast, Choiceology. And she and I discuss all things behavioral change and the science behind how you go from where you are to where you want to be. I also interviewed Elise Michaels, who's a men's mental health coach, and we focus on the four pillars of men's peak performance.

Please check them all out, and if you love any of those episodes we're today's, we would so appreciate you forting this to your friends and family members, and also giving us a five-star rating and review. Those go such a long way to help in the popularity of the show. Now let's talk about today's guests. Vice Admiral Sandy Stowe's spent over 40 years serving in the US. Now, let's talk about today's guests. Vice Admiral Sandy Stowe's spent over 40 years serving in the US Coast Guard, including 12 years at sea. Her career was filled with leadership lessons, blamed while breaking ice and breaking glass, as the first woman to command an icebreaker

on the Great Lakes and to lead a US Armed Forces service academy. She finished her career as the first woman assigned as Deputy Commodant for Mission Support directing one of the Coast Guard's largest enterprises. She has lectured widely on leadership and has been featured on C-SPAN and other media outlets. In 2012, Newsweeks, The Daily Beast, named Sandy to their list of 150 women who shake the world. She is the author of Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass, leading in Uncharted

Waters. In our interview, we discuss how she developed her drive through becoming a state champion track and field athlete, overcoming the odds to be one of the first females who ever graduated from the US Coast Guard Academy, as well as years later becoming its first female superintendent. Her life lessons from 12 years at sea, the three-piece of power, what she learned from the Kung Fu Panda, the difference between a person of character and a leader of character, her advice on behavioral change, and so much more. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey

to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. [♪ Music the Passion Struck Podcast. Welcome, Sandy. Well, thank you very much, John, for having me. I'm delighted to be here. I am delighted for you to be here as well. And after reading your incredible book, and I'm gonna just put it up here for the audience so that they can see it, I found we had

a tremendous amount of similarities. And I wanted to start out with one. So you and I both entered track and field in unexpected ways. I was a long distance runner, but if you would have asked my friends who went to elementary and middle school with me, they would have probably never told you

that they thought I would be a long distance runner, but I ended up similar to you winning the state championship. So what I wanted to ask is, what did you learn from Track and Field that has carried forward throughout your life as a life lesson? That's an interesting question, John, and no one's ever asked me that.

I've asked, I've been asked questions about how sports influenced me, but not specifically track and field. So I'm going to or upstairs in the high school, our high school was like three or four levels. And our track coach would assign us a workout that was going up and down hills outside or going up and down the stairs. And it was brutally hard. And you had to do the hard work to be able to perform at the level required to do the hard work to be able to perform

at the level required to beat the competition. And I think it was there on the stairs, double timing up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs until your legs were like, jello and it really hurt and it was really hard and it would have been easy to quit. And who's going to be looking at you? You're in the stairwell.

Nobody else is watching you because your coach can't be everywhere. You're assigned to go and do this with a small group of people in your competitive area. And I was a thrower. I threw the shot, put in discus. And I think that was a huge lesson learned that it's painful to do the hard work, repetitive hard work that looks like it's not getting you anywhere except up and down stairs,

but it eventually gets you to stand in the winner's circle of a track and field event, or if you want to translate that to life, it helps you to achieve the goals you set for yourself, even if you might not think you can get there. Yeah, I think that's tremendous advice. And I think there's so much I learned, both from my high school experience and then running Division one when I was at the Naval Academy.

There's so many lessons you can learn from mental toughness to being a teammate, to overcoming failure, to overcoming your inner demons, to establishing mental toughness. So I'm a huge advocate of sports and how they affect you long term. Well speaking of the Naval Academy, you passed up the opportunity to go to my alumnus to attend the Coast Guard Academy. And I actually knew a number of Coast Guard cadets that were of my class because I went to NAPS with them. And one thing that always struck me

about the Coast Guard Academy, and if the listeners aren't familiar with this, is your attrition rate. My class probably had a 66% attrition rate, maybe a little bit higher than that, and that was really looked down upon at that time from the Naval Academy because they wanted a much higher one. And when I interviewed Vice Admiral Ted Carter, he told me it's now in the lower 90s, amazingly. But when you went and you graduated in the third group of females who went to the academy,

there was a 50% attrition rate and for the females, a 66% attrition rate. I can't even imagine going through the hazing I did would have been like for you and being in one of those first classes of women. So can you talk about that experience at all because to make it through and be one of 10 women who graduated from your class is sure an accomplishment? That's another good question.

And I'll start by seeing why I chose the Coast Guard Academy instead of the Naval Academy because being born and raised in Ellicott City, Maryland, I had looked at the Naval Academy right next door to NAPA-LIS and started through the nomination process, which is politically oriented. You've got to get a congressional nomination to get into the process for appointment at the Naval Academy and the other DOD service academies, but the Coast Guard being still part of the Armed Forces, but with a different title of law governing us, our Academy didn't have a congressional nomination process at Coast Guard. It was directed mid.

So I applied to the Coast Guard Academy as a backup, but got accepted right away because it was directed direct admit. And I thought, you know, I'm still slogging through this nomination process of the Naval Academy. I'm going to say yes to a college that wants me for what I know, not who I know. So it was merit-based. Direct admission.

Didn't matter if your mother knew a politician that could put a good word in for you was Senator Sarabin's who was the senator I was applying to in my day. So that's why I chose the Coast Guard Academy and I'm thankful I did. But yes, it was really hard being one of the first women. I was in the third class of women and the attrition rate in New York day, John in my day, was a lot higher. So our attrition rate was 50% overall for many, many years at Coast Guard Academy. Now it's only about 10%. I'm just guessing, so don't quote me on that.

But as Ted Carter said about Naval Academy, Coast Guard Academy's retention rate is probably close to 90% right now. But when I was going through 50% retention for men and only about one third retention for women. So it was hard. And I think though that there's a lot more reasons that women left because it was hard for the men too. So yeah, there was one class of men, the class of 1979. I came in in 1778. and those guys graduated a year later the last class without women and they were very proud of that for whatever reason.

We girls were still new and they would tell us, you're not real girls if you're here at our academy. So there was some factors that made it hard with some of the attitudes of some of the men. But you know what, it wasn't all of them. And quite frankly, some of the women in the senior classes that were two classes ahead of us were harder on, not stand the men were, because maybe they were trying to prove that they weren't being easy on the women coming in. But I always felt that women were harder on, not stand the men were, which is kind of weird. And then there were a lot of men who supported us. And there were a lot of men who had a hard time because they came from a different part of the country. Maybe they came from down south and they got picked on for their accent or something.

So I came to believe while I was a cadet that yeah, there were challenges being a woman, one of the first women at the Coast Guard Academy, but if I pulled myself back and looked at it objectively, a lot of people had a hard time depending on circumstances and you could choose to let what those people said to you get to you or you could choose to prove them wrong. Maybe it's the German in me, but I choose to prove them wrong and to show that I could make it there. And all it did when somebody would tell me, hey, you're a woman, it's gonna be harder for you here. I would just say, hey, to myself,

that's just another incentive for me to pry harder and to persevere like those steps going up in Mount Hebron High School for track training, I was not going to give up just because somebody told me it was going to be hard and it's harder for women and you maybe you won't make it. So I found it to be motivating to some extent. But yeah, we still had a high attrition rate. So you had the persevere and when I saw people falling out so to speak around me and quitting, they and I don't mean quitting in a pejorative sense, but leaving the institution not persevering. There were reasons for it. It made me desire even more intensely to stay because I didn't want to get sucked into that vortex of seeing other people around you quit,

so you quit too. So I think there's a lot of mental engagement that a person can bring to adjust their circumstances, but it's easier said than done. And that's why I love podcasts like this where you ask these questions, John, to help people like me give back a little by showing how I was able to do that. And maybe help somebody else to persevere and hang in there through a tough time.

Well, when I think back about those first three or four graduating classes of women at the academies. Just some stellar examples jump out, such as Admiral Michelle Howard. My personal friend, astronaut Wendy Lawrence, you also had astronaut Catherine Hire yourself. West Point had a road scholar actually as their first graduate, Andrea Lee Holland. And then a few years behind you was Admiral Linda Fagan. And I was hoping if the audience isn't aware of who she is or why this is significant, why is Admiral Fagan going to have a tremendous impact on the Coast Guard in her next job?

Hey, not just the Coast Guard, John. Admiral Linda Fagan will be the first of any of the armed forces in America to be the service chief for one of those armed forces. So she's going to be the Coast Guard commentant coming up in June and she's going to be the first woman to hold that role to be the same thing as the seeing and knowing the Navy or the chief of staff of the Army or Air Force. So, or Marine Corps, the common Marine Corps. So she's going to have that top position. So she's not going to only influence the Coast Guard. She's going to be sitting in the Pentagon in a room called the Tanks, the decision room in the Pentagon, looking at global solutions to conflict

and strife. And I'm really, really proud of her. Linda's a friend of mine. She's a year group, 85 at the Coast Guard Academy. I was 82. I served with Linda and she's a rock star. She's gonna do a great job and be a great role model. And the Coast Guard, I just have to give the Coast Guard so much credit because speaking back to me, since you're interviewing me, I was the first woman of any of the services

to be service superintendent of one of the Armed Forces Service Academies. So the Coast Guard has led the way in women being first. And when we brought women into the Coast Guard back in 1976, when all the academies had to open the doors to women, our common dot said, hey, if we're going to open the doors to women at the academy, they're going to be able to serve anywhere.

Any ship we have, and at the time we had the 78-foot small, with the Coast Guard Cutters small frigate-sized ships that points in time were armed with Harpoon and SeaWiz weapon systems, and we were able to serve as women on those front pointy end of the spear units, helicopters, airplanes, ships. We weren't excluded by combat exclusion laws, which the other services quickly laid down to make sure that all the women were forced by the Congress to go to the academies to be admitted, the services weren't gonna let them serve in combat.

And they put those exclusion laws in. We never had those exclusion laws. So I was able to serve equally with my male counterparts. Therefore, in my mind, didn't face nearly the discrimination or whatever you call it, adverse workplace environments that women might have experienced in the other services, where they weren't given equal opportunity to serve. So to no great surprise, the men might have resented them or thought, hey, you know, you're not equal to us. You're not going out there serving on the front end. You're serving back and support jobs. So I really quit at the Coast Guard and now Linda Fagan being the first,

Admiral Linda Fagan, the first service chief of any of the Armed Forces is just awesome. Definitely a trailblazer. And I was going to hit you being the superintendent later on in the interview, but since you brought it up promotions, you have to hit that cycle just right to get into that billet. And in your case, you didn't think it was gonna be a reality because you were in a position, had just been extended for a year, when out of the blue, you get a call that you've been selected

to be the superintendent. Looking back, when you graduated, did you ever in your wildest dreams think that you would become the superintendent? John in my wildest dreams, I was hoping that I would graduate from the Coast Guard Academy and that I would graduate in four years, not five. I don't know about it, the Naval Academy, but we had at the Coast Guard five year person program where if you couldn't graduate in four years, you might be allowed another year to catch up and make your grades. And I'm like, please don't let me be a five-year man in those days is what it was called. And so that was what I was dreaming is graduating. It was hard for me. And it wasn't hard necessarily because I was a woman. it was hard because I wasn't gifted academically, nor was I prepared with calculus in high school, so that made it all the harder.

And no way in that I was a shy, less than fully confident young woman. And sports really helped me to develop my confidence, but yet my nature was shy and somewhat unconfident. So no, I was never going to be voted by my classmates, most likely to ever make admiral out of our class. Nor was I ever going to have the self-confidence at that young age to think that I could ever rise to be an admiral.

And you know what, John? Nor was I interested in that because I just wanted to do a good job where I was planted, where I was assigned. And I didn't want to be so bold or brazen as to project ahead to success that may or may not come because the pathway of life, the road of life, the journey is very bumpy. I wasn't going to presume I was going to make it to the top or that I was better than other people. I just tried to do the best job I could where I was at the time. And I think that's important because so many people do get pushed to be looking beyond that and setting goals so far out. And where are you going to be in 20 years?

And to some extent that puts a lot of undue pressure on people they might not be ready for. So I was successful by doing the best job I could, where I was, and persevering. I never quit. I come up against resistance like those stairs at Mount Hebron High School and I would keep on going. And I love the jobs the Coast Guard gave me, the opportunities that were presented. I kept staying until I found myself in that position, what you said, I had made Admiral. I was director of the Coast Guard Reserve. And I love the reserve component of any of the services. And I've met a number of reservists from not just the Coast Guard, but other services.

And I served with all the reserve component chiefs, even though I'm an activity officer, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard have active duty officers who are in charge of the reserve component. And I served with General Kelly and the Marine Corps as my peer reserveist at the time. That was fun. So I was in a two-year job with a Coast Guard reserve and I'd done one year when the rotations for admirals come up every year. And so I was told you're going to do your full two year tour with the Coast Guard Reserve. And then a few weeks later, I got a call from my assignment officer who's the vice comment on the Coast Guard telling me, hey, we've changed our minds. There's something's come up.

We're going to send you to the Coast Guard Academy, a superintendent instead of staying in the reserve. Academy is superintendent instead of staying in the reserve. I was speechless because you're right. That's a four-year job for all the services. It's a four-year job at the Academy. And I'm like, the timing has to be exactly right. And it was just another lesson, John, on how regardless of how competent and capable you are, a successful humble leader needs to admit the role

that luck, fate, or God's plan, however you choose it, plays in your success. So none of us are masters of our own fate. We'd like to think we are. And I talk a big talk about going internal to your internal locus of control, to create your own fate. But a lot of your success depends on external forces over which you have no control. Your network, somebody putting in a good word for you, an opportunity falling from the sky that you don't even seize it in this case, it just came to me and I a part of your success has to do with how

your own internal motivation. A lot of it has to do with factors you can't control, so that should keep us humbles we get more senior in rank. You have a topic like today's that you would like to see us cover. You can reach us at Momentum Friday at passionstruck.com. Keep your emails concise. Use a descriptive subject line. That keeps things easy for us. Reach out to us if there's a topic you're interested in learning about. There's something that maybe you're going through, any big decision that you're wrestling with, or perhaps you just want a new perspective on work, love, or life. Whatever's got you staying up at night, hit us up at Momentum Friday at passionstruck.com. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous now back to passionstruck.

For the listener who's out there and they don't understand what it means to be a flag, they can think of this as being a senior executive, kind of like a sea level and a fortune 500 company. But in the military, only about 1% of people make it all the way from the lowest rank, which would be an ensign in the Navier Coast Guard or a second lieutenant in the Air Force or Marine Corps Army to a flag officer. And then once you start getting above that to your rank,

it's about 0.05% if I have my math correct. So amazing accomplishment. Sandy, I wanted to now take this and explore your book a bit more, but I wanted to do it by first asking you this question. We all face moments in life that define us. Can you tell me about a moment they've shaped you and how? I'm going to go to the first thing that comes into my head again, because I've just been successful my entire career with where am I hard on my sleeve and the first thing that comes to mind. So an inflection point in my career was I walked off the 210 foot cutter that I commanded and kidgery main. That marked 12 years at C for me, which is a long time

by anybody's measurement, and two commands at C. And I went to a short job after that. And then the time came for me to have my next command opportunity and the military you go back and forth from seat ashore or back and forth from command to staff. And so it came up for the next command opportunity. And the next logical thing for me would be to go back to see again to command the Coast Guard's largest ship because the ship I come off, the 210 foot cutter and kidry main was the one step below that. And I just thought there's something here that defining moment in my life is I get ready to put in that assignment

to request for where I wanted to be stationed. You can ask. You very seldom get what you ask for, but you're allowed to ask the detailer, assignment officer, for your first top choices. I thought, well, I'm not sure I want to go back to see for another two-year tour. It's kind of more of the same, and I feel like I need another opportunity to achieve my full potential that I'm starting to think about instead of just cruising along, no pun intended on this st-going career. And I thought, what is it that I love about being at sea? I thought maybe it's a sunrises and the excitement of the mission, the adventure, all those things come to mind. And I'm like something's missing out of that. That's all the tactical stuff back in my past. It's really in port when you're the captain of a ship

and you're looking over the bridge wing, the top of the ship there. You can see on the pier a new recruit from boot camp, walking up in his full dress uniform, getting ready to report a board is first unit ever. He or she, and they know they're supposed to salute one end of the boat, the ship. The stern is know they're supposed to salute one end of the boat the ship the

stern is where you're supposed to salute with the flag but they forget in the time that they've only been in the Coast Guard six weeks seven weeks getting their training so they has to tentatively salute the bow of the ship and they're yelled at the first time they come aboard and so they're unconfident and and then two weeks later you see that same recruit. And now the young person is wearing uniform and they're pulling on a line and they're singing out with confidence and they have transformed into this person who is capable of so much more than they were before they came into the Coast Guard. And I'm like, okay, my passion and my purpose is going to be to go and train the next generation

of young leaders of character. And I put my name in the hat for commanding the Coast Guard's boot camp, which was not even in my specialty area as a sailor, cuterman. And I don't know where I got the job. It was the hardest thing I ever did to write a letter to my assignment officer saying, I do not want to screen for command of a ship, but please screen me for command of the boot camp. And I got that command and it transformed my life. From there, I did that job.

And from there, I was able to lead the Coast Guard Reserve as an admiral and then I led the Coast Guard Academy. So developing and training the enlisted workforce, the reserve workforce and the officer workforce was my passion in the second half of my career and the real inflection point and moment of truth for me as to where I really needed to make an impact as I got more senior. That's pretty incredible. You got to do those three jobs back to back. What would the odds be? Probably very low. Well, I had a plan. Throughout the book, you talk about character. What is the difference between a person of character and a leader of character? Now you're asking tricky questions, John. Oh my gosh, a leader of character to me

is somebody who can analyze risks, way options and make sound decisions that are good decisions, that are the right decisions for the individuals and the organization. And it's all about decision making when it comes to leading with character. And the reason there's some character element to decision making is because it takes moral courage to make a lot of these tough trade-off decisions that are only going to get to your level

if they are really hard. So when I was a vice-ad one on the Coast Guard, there weren't any easy decisions coming my way. May and what should we serve for breakfast did this conference we're having? No, I wasn't getting those. I was getting significant tough trade-off decisions that put the organization at risk potentially, or that required me to make trade-offs between programs

for there were winners and losers. Understandably, you have to sometimes cut one to fund the other and nobody wants to make those decisions. Or you've got to sit down and look somebody in the eyes and tell them they're not performing at the level expected. And I'm sorry, but I'm not going to recommend you for the next promotion. People don't want to say that.

I had that happen to me once. I was a senior officer and I had written a performance report on a subordinate who was also a pretty senior and I wrote the first part of the performance report and my supervisor had to sign off the second line. I did all the writing and all the marks and everything, the evaluations, but somebody else had to review it and sign off on it.

And he said to me, the person reviewing it, couldn't she just soften this up a little bit and make the marks a little higher and make the words a little softer. And I'm like, respectfully know, I mean, if I don't tell it like it is, the promotion board is going to look at this and say, well, Admiral Sandy Stowe thinks this person has got what it takes to move up. And I'm like, that's not my brand. My brand is where your heart is leaving, you tell it as you see it, you're straightforward, you're fair and firm, and everybody knows that. And I'm not going to have a fitness report and evaluation report signed by me that has made things squishy so that

the person reading it doesn't have to feel like they didn't meet mustard. No, I'm going to sit down and tell that person, you're a great person, but at this level, you're falling short in these areas and therefore I'm not going to recommend you for the next level. And that's nothing personal about that. It's just all about performance. So you have to be honest with people. And I'm giving that as an example, because where I see the lack of moral courage and leaders of character most often is they don't make those tough decisions to confront somebody, they walk past these violations, is standard to walk past as a standard you accept, right? You can tell I have passion about this. So that's the difference in a leader of character and a person of character is can they with courage make the decisions they have to make

that they're getting paid to make? I wanted to go into another topic you and I have in common. We are both introverts. I personally didn't realize I was even hiding it so much until I read a decade ago, Susan Keynes' book, Quiet, which as I was reading it, I was like, oh my Lord. But for both of us coming up in the military in a very type a extrovert dominated culture

for me then having to go into big four consulting and then the Fortune 50, where everything was about group think I remember having to pretend at times. I was an extrovert to the point that people would think I was an extrovert, but when I would get home from work most days I was just completely and utterly drained of all energy and emotion. And I was wondering, did you ever feel like that and how were you able to work through it for someone who might be listening, who themselves as an introvert? Thank you for the opportunity to validate what you experienced and to share my experience that validates your experience. And I read Susan Keynes' book, Quiet, I just happened to pick it up.

And I'm trying to think of why I picked it up. But I picked it up just before I wrote my book. And it was another one of those life-changing moments for me because I had realized I was an introvert. I had understood that from, I don't know if the Myers-Briggs really tells you that or not. They kind of give you some hints, but I didn't really realize that an introvert, the definition, the classic definition of an introvert

is that you derive your energy from your downtime and the time with other people drains you. Whereas an extrovert, they're stressed and frustrated with their downtime and they want to be in that group, they want to go out. So my analogy is if you're the introvert and you go to the required bank, what you've got to go to is a senior person, a function you're at, it's an evening function, you get through the bank, but you're like, oh, you just want to go home and melt. The extrovert's like, where's the after party? Because they want to keep the energy going

whereas my energy's gone. So for all those who are introverts out there who've ever felt like that that's okay your symptoms are normal for you. But what I would say is just listen to me, people listening in would think oh she's she's lying she's an extrovert I can tell by the way she's speaking. No, I became the person I needed to become to achieve the goals and to achieve the passions and purpose I set for myself in life. And to achieve those goals, become the person I wanted to become, I had to adapt to the circumstances. And that wasn't bad. That helped me to become the best leader I could be. So it was another test,

and it wasn't being untrue to myself by reaching in and finding ways to bring that energy forward and to not only endure but thrive in those situations of party situations or groups where you had to be on with your energy. I feel that I got the strength because of the passion I had to become my best, the best leader I could be. So it's definitely possible. It becomes something you learn to work with. I believe you probably could vouch for that, John. And as long as I can get my downtime, I'm okay and I found that hard at times in my life to get that downtime, but you've got to make time for it or else you're going to fall into the exhaustion mode because you're not going to be at a recover and renew and refresh yourself and that's important. Well, I agree and I think over my career what I learned the most from it is people are productive

in different ways. And so you throw me into a group-thin environment. You are never going to get my best ideas because other people are going to shout over me, express their ideas. You'd be much better giving me assignment, letting me go off and think about it for a little bit, and then coming back once I've researched it and had time to digest it, and then present it. I mean, I think that's a key difference. So for me as a leader, I tried to look at the people who worked for me and adjust the way I worked with them based on their personality,

tell you've been, and their strengths and weaknesses. And speaking of that, and Susan Cain, if you have not checked out her new book, Bittersweet, I had her on the podcast about a month ago and she just has such a way of taking complex topics and making them digestible. So I'd highly encourage that for you or the audience. Well, in chapter four, you discuss one of the most important aspects of learning to lead is a commitment to lifelong learning.

Why is that so important and what would your advice be for listeners? I've been asked in my career, how did you persevere to never quit? That's a common question I get. But then of all people, my mother-in-law, out of the blue one day, a couple years ago, asked me, so Sandy, what motivated you to stay in the Coast Guard? So that's a different question than why you didn't quit. Just persevering, you know, putting your head down and grinding along. What motivated you. And yeah, just plain old perseverance might exhaust you and wear you out. But the motivation came from

the continuing education, the continuing opportunities, the lifelong learning the co-scarber's giving me. The co-scarber gave me little opportunities to go to one or two week trainings like a mentor training course. They put me through graduate school at Kellogg Business School, completely covered by the Coast Guard. They sent me to the National War College. They encouraged me, my supervisors encouraged me to read. I had bosses give me books.

I remember a boss of mine when I was a lieutenant gave me a copy of the one-minute manager by Blanchard, Dane, turned to think of the first name. And that was an awesome book for me. It's a young leader. And so the lifelong learning motivated me, and I in turn copy that example down and try to use lifelong learning to motivate people

under my command, try to encourage them to read. I always motivate people under my command. Try to encourage them to read. I always encourage people to read the classics of literature, so they could derive their own leadership lessons instead of being prescribed them by a lot of the famous leadership books that are the seven ways you can do something or the three ways to succeed. That's prescribing ways that you can get ahead.

That's fine, but I'd rather derive leadership lessons. I find it more intellectually challenging to read a good piece of classic literature and look for the leadership lessons in that. A book club is a great way to have those intellectual discussions where you're talking with other people who are interested in finding the leadership nuggets like in an old novel that you come across, like, Cain Muton is one of my favorite ones for looking at leadership lessons. There's a C-bag full of them in there. Out of that, can I ask you what did Seaman Mike Y-Rach teach you?

It's coincides with that Cain Muton. Yeah. So I had my first command, what John's talking about is my first command ever was a small ice breaker, 140 foot ice breaker on Lake Superior up in the Great Lakes. We broke ice for great big or carriers coming across Lake Superior down the St. Mary's River. And I was a lieutenant.

So in 03, I was about 29 years old, and I had to prove about 15 men, all men. And I had not that long ago, maybe two years earlier, read that book, the One Minute Manager, about empowering your people, looking for the good and people, and that positive debt plate leadership, where you get out and walk around and catch people doing something good.

And so we had this helmsman and usually in a Navy or a Coast Guard ship, a maritime ship, the captain or the person in charge of running the watch, the ship, standing in the duty, will direct all the movements of the ship, the engine order, telegraph and the helm. So come right five degrees,

come left. And working in the river all day, he had a master helmsman like Seaman Y-Roc, like John mentioned. And I, when I got comfortable with him after just a short time on the ship, I said, look, we're going to have a small crew here. We believe in trusting each other. We've built that trust amongst each other. Seaman Y Rock has built, earned that trust by his mastery of being a houseman, his experience, and his demeanor. I'm going to let him steer the ship down the middle of the channel. And there's ranges, which you're audience might not know what they are, but there's guidelines on how you can stay in the middle of the channel on these narrow waterways.

They're put in by the Army Corps of Engineers. So believe me, you do not want to get out of them. No, you don't. And it's easier for a good houseman to steer himself or herself. It was a him in this case down those ranges and make the turn themselves instead of an officer to act trying to give a rudder command. And see the wire up when I told him, and the crew was kind of surprised, he was like, oh man, this prior captain's had never done that. I'm like, well, I'm going to empower

Cena Wyrock to steer the ship. Oh my gosh, the man stood taller, who was already about six foot, too. And he was kind of a little bit different person after that. And the whole ship, the morale, you could see it. I mean, there was a better sense of trust. So it wasn't just Simon Wyruc that got a kudo and got empowered that day. It was, hey, this captain. And I was the only woman, the first woman ever assigned to the ship. People were testing me and wondering what was the light to work for a woman. So I found that this was a way I could earn the trust of the crew by trusting them. And in turn, they would trust me. So the morale on the ship was good.

And people knew that I was going to be firm but fair. I was going to trust them to do their jobs and power them when I could and was willing to take the risk of looking at a little maybe unconventional way to do business that would help my people to achieve their full potential and not be held back by artificial constraints. I love that story and I love to have throughout the entire book you do storytelling and I think it makes the whole flow of the book so much more digestible because you're able to refer to those and really understand

and take the lessons internally because of your experiences. And one of the things I discovered and you've already quoted a couple books is that you're an avid reader like me. And one of my favorite authors is Gretchen Ruben, who was just on the podcast this week. And when I was interviewing her, I asked her, what is the most pinnacle thing for us to try to achieve in our life? And she said, it is the ultimate quest to know yourself.

And through that lens, I wanted to ask you, what did you learn from reading Shakespeare and Sophocles about the importance of self-awareness? Oh my gosh, so you're playing right into my, a part of my book where I talk about when I was a cadet at the Coast Guard Academy, I took a class in humanities on the tragic hero and literature. and humanities, the tragic hero and literature. And Shakespeare plays frequently, have a tragic hero, somebody who is prominent, a king often in his plays. And yet, they fall in the end because of a tragic flaw. And it's always either absolutely hubris or related to hubris.

So they can't see past the force for the trees. They get caught up in the power and the struggle. And they fall victim to this hubris, which is thinking too much of themselves. I know some people don't understand what hubris means. It's the opposite of humility. And boy that I learned from that, I'm like, wow, you've got to be so careful because these plays, these ancient plays

would show how a hero would just keep on losing sight of reality. And the reader is like, hey, you know, seeing this, but the tragic hero themselves is the only one blind. And most people who are listening will have recognized a leader, either in society or in their personal workplace, who they've seen this in. Somebody who gets more and more senior, more and more up

and the chain of command, whatever that might be. And they start to lose track of reality and they start to see themselves as taking privileges or treating people differently because they're so senior and they start to expect a different kind of treatment. And sometimes they do it all self-on-aware. It's not like they're deliberately looking to become a toxic leader and they wake up one day and they are one and they're the only one who doesn't know it. That's what happened in these plays is the tragic hero often dies and these ancient plays. In more modern literature, you see a lot of takes on the ancient plays like Sophocles and Shakespeare. And it's just an old story made new with modern day heroes that fall.

And it's a pattern that repeats every history. So people can avoid that. And I've got a little, can I talk about my three piece of power? In chapter six, which I think you're referring to, is that when you were talking about the quote from Abraham Lincoln, about how if you want to test a person's character, give them power. Right, exactly. And out of that, you had a lesson, I think, if I'm correct, it was Lieutenant Dale Thompson taught you about these three P's of power.

And I thought it was one of the, for me, one of my favorite chapters in the book. Those lessons, that lesson resonates with a lot of people. So I was a Ensign, so an 01, that was 22 years old, reporting to my first ship, just out of the academy, I was still unconfident and I'm shy and here I am on a great big icebreaker and we deployed to Antarctica.

I've got lots of duties. I've got a primary duty of qualifying as the Underway Officer of the Deck. I've got collateral duties. And I've got a primary duty of qualifying as the Underway Officer of the Deck. I've got collateral duties. And one day I went to my boss, who was the operations officer, Lieutenant Dale Thompson, and I said to him, I'm having a hard time motivating a person

that I'm supervising to do his best work. And of course, once again, I was one of the only women on the ship of 220 people. There were about 20 of us women though, because the Coast Guard was trying to give a critical mass of women on the few ships that we had enough women to sail on to disperse women to. He said to me, Sandy, there are three kinds of power and you've got to learn them if you're going to succeed.

There's personal power, professional power, and position power. And if you're going to succeed, you need to lean on the first two, the personal power and professional power and use the third, the position power only is the last resort. And so the personal power is how well you motivate people, your empathy, emotional intelligence, those kind of qualities that make you somebody that people can relate to. I'm a said like, but I'm careful with that word. So that there needs to be respect there for who you are. And then professional power. That's how you present yourself, what you know, how good you are at your job, how hard you work, what you wear. Is it uniform or you're clothing appropriate and squared away. know how good you are at your job, how hard you work, what you wear, is your uniform, or

you're clothing appropriate and squared away. And then there's the position power. That's what's on your rank, whether you're the vice president to a private sector company or an ad role on the coast guard or whatever your rank is. And a lot of people, as they get more senior and get back to that that tragic hero in hubris, they'll start to lean more and more on the position power. They'll walk into a room and then the arrow and everybody stands up or they're the vice president, everybody defers to them. But I tried because of what Deltompson taught me my entire career to master my personal and professional powers and to lead with them. And so every single day, I tried to build trust and earn respect,

regardless of how senior I was through my personal and professional power. And I'm not saying I succeeded. You could ask some of the people who work for me and they would say, what? I tried really hard to lean on my personal professional power and you have to try hard because otherwise you will slip into the easy mode of just hey I've can really, what you want is people who follow you because they want to, not because they have to. If you use personal power and professional power, they'll follow you because they want to. If you rely on position power, they'll follow you because they have to.

I call this people lead with their feet because people watch your actions far more than they listen to your words. But the company or an organization is doing well. It's easy to use your position to bark out directions. But when things get tough and you're in that foxhole, the people want to be with the person that they trust feels that they have their back and is leading through their core values and inspiring that team to move forward. So I completely agree with you. Now, I can't jump from those three

peas without having you discuss what you learned from the Kung Fu Panda. I got a whole leadership little talk on the 10 leadership lessons from the Kung Fu Panda. And I know that's an old movie now, but when I was a superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy from 2011 to 15, I would ask the cadets who knows the Kung Fu Panda movie they'd mostly seen it. And there's a lot of leadership lessons in there. You've got this big fat panda bear. He's the main character. His name is Poe and he works in his father's noodle shop. Well his father's a duck,

so it's a cartoon animated film. And this panda dreams at night of becoming a Kung Fu warrior, which is ludicrous. He's big and fat. He's funny and he's not serious. So anti-Kung Fu warrior to what you think was a squirt away serious focused warrior, a Kung Fu warrior to protect the village from this bad invader, this big snow leopard, another animated character who's really what you'd think of as a Kung Fu warrior because he's got all the looks of a tough guy. And so this panda is selected through the some kind of magic from heaven. The panda is too fat to really be effective. Nobody likes the panda. They all shun him. All the other Kung Fu trainees. The training master is exasperated with this Kung Fu warrior that he can't do anything with. These two fat, the train, he's not serious enough.

So in the end, they're getting ready to have to defend the village against this invader. And they're like, OK, we've done our best to train this big fat pan that would be the kung fu warrior. We don't think it's going to work. We're going to go for the scroll, the dragon warrior scroll at the top of the palace. And they take it down, whether they go in the ladders and they get this scroll

and you're supposed to, the only the Kung Fu warrior can look at it, but it's supposed to give that warrior the secret recipe for success against the enemy. And so Kung Fu Panda undoes the scroll. Everybody's watching with excitement. And he screams and jumps back. And all it is

is a mirrored reflection. Like mirrored paper, his own fat face is looking back at him. And everybody's mortified because they're not going to be able to defeat this enemy with this big fat panda who can't really do any kung fu. But, and there's a lot more to the story, you got to watch the movie. In the end, the enemy invades and the Kung Fu Panda uses all the things that people have picked on him about. He was too fat. Well, when the enemy tried to electrocute him instead of making him pass that on the ground and freeze,

all it did was tickle him. And then being so fat, he just bounced on top of the bad guy and crushed him. And the bad guy couldn't get up. And so all of the things that were bad attributes that people had thought were substandard qualities ended up becoming the strengths that were needed to overcome this particular adversary.

And so it was kind of a lesson in as a leader, you've got to look for the hidden qualities in your people and find a way to bring those out. And they might not look like what you've been told they should look like. They might look like weaknesses, but they could be secret strengths. And the other lesson is there is no secret ingredient in a scroll somewhere. It's within. So the panda in the end had to look within and believe in himself and be himself. And it gets back to that word from Gretchen Rubin when you asked her what she thought was a moment for her and it was something about the passion. I think you've got to learn to believe in yourself and be yourself.

If you're going to be a real leader because otherwise you can't lead other people. And so that's a long answer. I'm sorry if I took up too much time, but I encourage people to watch the Kung Fu Panda. There's a lot of life lessons and leadership lessons in that movie. So I think that is a great jumping off point to talk about mentorship. And in the book, you discuss how mentorship is an art,

not a science. What are some of the misconceptions that you've identified about mentorship? Oh my goodness. So it's in my book and there's three mentoring myths that I tell and I'll be careful that I don't go into a long-winded answer again, because there is a lot to talk about,

which I think is beautiful because leadership is a great big space, there's lots to discuss. Mentoring miss. The mentor has to be senior to you. The mentor doesn't. The mentor can be somebody junior and I've got a great story about that that I won't go into, but I've had a number of junior people mentor me. There's all different kinds of ways to look at mentoring. And I know there's definitions, there's coaching, there's being an ally, there's mentoring, and there's a little nuances to each of those. But the idea being that people of different levels in an organization can help enrich each other, forward and be there for each other in a meaningful way.

So people who were senior need to look down to their more junior people for tidbits on how they can be better leaders because sometimes age diversity is in my mind the least respected or understood kind of diversity there is. It is so powerful because there's such a difference in the generation. So my military aids who served me when I was an admiral, I had maybe five or six of them, they came from all walks of life,

all different races, genders, and orientations and all that. But what I got out of them was none of that demographic stuff. It was their way of thinking as younger people. So mentors don't have to be senior to you. You can look appear mentoring, look down for somebody who's more knowledgeable or got a better view of something. Second, mentors don't need to look like you and you don't need to be a if you're just say a minority person, you don't need to find somebody else

who looks just like you who's a little senior to you to mentor you. In fact, why wouldn't you want to have somebody who looks exactly opposite of you to mentor you to open up your opportunities? So if you're just going to be mentored in the same small thread of whatever ethnic diversity you happen to be in, you're not going to have the richness of somebody else's network that might be someone who looks different from you. The third mentoring myth is that mentors are going to carry you to the next to success. And I even heard at one of these gripping mentoring sessions

once some senior person at the table next to me was counseling the young people around him, we each had a mentoring table. And I heard him say, all you need to do is find a successful mentor, senior to you and get in the elevator and write it up with them. And I'm like, oh my gosh. How wrong and how disingenuous to those young people listening hanging on this guy's every word. be able to help a mentee to discover their power, their passion, their purpose, help them set goals, and then encourage them to achieve those goals, encourage them to keep persevering when they want to quit. Finally, help ways to help motivate them. The role of the mentor is not to make somebody

successful or to promote somebody or get them the plum job. No. It's to help them to find their way to become the best they can be. Okay, and this is going to lead me to another question on this topic. And for the listeners who don't understand this, most of the armed services fall under the Secretary of Defense, but in the Coast Guard's case, they fall under the Secretary of Transportation. And you had, I guess the honor, probably didn't feel like it when you were first being put into that job of working for,

basically the person who's the boss of your boss, the common honor. So what was it about Secretary of Transportation, Sam Skinner that made him such an invaluable mentor for you? Sam, worthless, speechless, struck speechless by thinking about Secretary Sam Skinner, my lifetime mentor. So in the 1980s and 90s, well, the Coast Guard started out in the Department of Treasury under our founding father, Alexander Hamilton, back during the Reverend to Cutter Service,

we went into transportation for a couple of decades and now we're in Homeland Security, post 9-11. But when I was a young lieutenant, we were in transportation and I was working for Secretary Skinner and he believed in me. So here I am a lowly lieutenant working for the service secretary and he took me to every meeting he had. The only meetings he couldn't take me to were the cabinet meetings where he didn't have the say on who came in and they were at the White House and only the principals could come into those meetings. But any

meeting that he had a say in that he was running, I was often the only personal out in on these personal one-on-one meetings where the CEO of a transportation mode or whatever the case might have been, he took me up to meet with senators and congressmen and see the ins and outs of government. And he wanted to do that so that he could set me up, to teach me everything he could, empower me to them maximum so that I had the best opportunity to achieve my goals in life. He did it by empowering me and believing in me

and nobody else until that time had done that to that degree where he would ask my opinion, you're writing in a car or the service secretary, you're only a lieutenant, you barely break Welch in the China command and he turns to you and says, Sandy, what do you think about this issue that we're going to go talk about with Senator Kennedy? And you're like, oh, and so I'd give him my young person's perspective. And in those days, that was very rare. We're talking 1989 here. Nowadays, it's become 40, 35 years later. It's become more common for senior people to recognize the value of reaching down to the younger generation. Like I was kind of just saying during the mentoring talk,

we had to ask advice of a different generation to get a different perspective, but it was unheard of in those days. So Secretary Skinner earned my und undying, loyalty and respect by believing in me and empowering me. So, we've been talking a lot about personal leadership journeys today, and yesterday, I interviewed Dr. Katie Milkman, and if you're not familiar with Katie, she is a tenured professor at Wharton. And she co-founded the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative with Angela Duckworth, which is a great organization that they've enlisted the support of about 150 behavioral researchers

and scientists across all the major universities and their collaborating instead of competing. But in our discussion, we were talking about her book, How to Change, and in it, she gave this startling number that was hard for me to digest. She discovered that 40% of the fatalities that we have in the world today are preventable by doing behavioral change.

And so as a leader like you have been and led many people, given them guidance, why do you think it's so difficult for people to change? Oh, that's a really insightful question. And I've never been asked that question because really insightful question. And I've never been asked that question because it is hard to change. I've been asked about why change is hard, but not in that context of a person's behavior and they're failure to accept evidence of the need to change. Because most people who smoke,

know that there's a lot of health risks associated with it. Most people who speed realize there's a consequence they might pay, but yet they refuse to change their behavior. Likewise, even if presented with a change that's gonna benefit an organization, people will choose the status quo because it's comfortable, it's not gonna surprise them.

It's the devil they know, they'd rather accept the opportunity that might come that they don't understand yet. And I think it's human nature. If you had somebody who was a neuropsychologist on, they could give you a much better answer than I can. But I have seen, even though I'm not that, that doctored person, I have seen by personal lifetime

experience over 40 years, that people would often rather stick with the known that's not that good, then go for something glistening and better over the horizon that involves a journey with risks along the way. And I don't know what that stems from, but it is a human behavior that leaders need to understand because they might think it is a human behavior that leaders need to understand because they might think it's a leader and I've thought this, wow, we're going to change this program.

We're going to change the Coast Guard under Admiral Allen. It's going to be a much better place. Yeah, it's going to be hard to get there, but wow, look what's going to happen on the other side. There'll be 1% of the people that will be with you, 1%. And even they might fall away if things don't work out exactly as they're supposed to. And they sell them do, right? It's trial and error, trial and error, trial and error, as you're trying to work towards a better outcome. So I

do think that leaders need to understand that any change needs to be incredibly well communicated. You need to try to bring people on board. You need to show them where the value is, explain the risks. And then you need to do the hardest thing that requires moral courage. You need to let them know, the team know. And if you're not with me, you need to find another job and leave this organization because we can't afford to have somebody who's undermining the effort behind the scenes. And in the government, that's what happens because you can't fire anybody. And that's what I've seen it over and over again.

You try to change something. Employees that are there, that are unionized, that are they're never going to support you and they're going to undermine you and just wait you out, right? You know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, I do. So you have to try to, if you can't get people on your team, you've got to try to move them on and get them off your team so they can't stand your way because they will stand in your way and the one bad app on the barrel will corrupt the entire barrel. And that's something we don't like to talk about much as leaders. We want to

talk about the happy and focus on the positive and everybody's got some good in them. Well, I've seen the other side of human nature in my 40 years of leading, and you've got to make sure you don't let that one or two percent of people destroy an opportunity for everybody. And there's a lot of that human nature element to overcome as a leader. Yeah, and I'll answer this just for my perspective, I've had two people on the podcast

who've talked about this. One is in an episode I just released today with Dr. Michelle Seeger who is a renowned behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan in her new book, The Joy Choice. She answers this question by saying that in society, we have been taught to start and stop behavioral change, but not to sustain it. And in a similar light, when I interviewed astronaut Wendy Lawrence, her whole topic was on, you've got to give yourself permission to dream the dream.

And she said, where so many people get stuck is they stop taking continual action. And I think what both of them taught me is we can have these long-term aspirations, but that's not what gets you there. Whether it's an eating habit you want to change or becoming an admiral, it's the microchoises that you make every single day through, as you've discussed, passion, perseverance. And to me, the other missing element of this is whether you call it commitment or intention. You've got to be intentional about what you're doing.

And I think from a lot of what I've gathered, it's lacking that sustainability that prevents people from moving this forward. In the book, you talk a lot about core personal values to live by. Why do you think it's so important to have these in life and what are some of yours? the foundation of your character, the cornerstones of who you are, and how you're gonna behave in a certain circumstance, without the core values and the foundation they provide for your character, you're just gonna blow with a wind. We've all seen leaders like that who don't seem to be grounded.

They just go with whatever seems to be the popular culture at the time. I love this saying you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything. I love it because the core values ground you and that you know what you stand for. You're not going to fall for something that isn't the right way to do business or the right way to respond. So my personal core values that I learned in childhood or honesty and humility is one pair and hard work and perseverance is another pair. And they really are cornerstones for my foundation and my character. And I learned the honesty and humility from my parents,

coaches, teachers when I was young, and I won't go into all that because I don't have much time. And the hard work and perseverance I learned working as a teenager on farm work and having a sweat in the tobacco field and be evaluated based on how fast I could tie up bundles of tobacco. So those four core values kept me like an anchor to winward in a tumultuous sea and between those core values and then having a North Star to steer on, it was like a, I know it's a nautical analogy, but it works for me. Alaving you to main study in tumultuous seas and make sound decisions and keep steering a steady course because you're grounded in your core values. So I can't, I usually talk when I start any kind of leadership talk

with any kind of group, I usually start with core values, because it's that important to me. If a reader was going to take one thing from your book, what would you hope that they took from it? I would hope that they would read my book and whatever their level is, because it is a book written to appeal and to have something for people from the entry level to the C suite. can be the best leader they can be, how they can give back to help others become the best if they can be. So my book is all about giving back leadership lessons from my 40 years in uniform, so that others can become the best they can be without having to go through every single little

learning experience that I went through. So from the entry level to the C-suite, if people can read my book and become a better leader, the best leader they can be, and then pay it forward. And for those who were senior reading the book, mentor back down to somebody, bring somebody up behind you. For those who are junior reading the book,

be motivated to say, hey, I can do it too. I've seen a model of who, how Abel Stowe's did it, I can become the best I can be too. I have one final question for you. If you were giving the commencement speech at Kellogg, what advice would you give those MBA students who are entering the world today? So when I was at the Kellogg Business School

at Northwestern University, it was all about management, not leadership. And there are two different things, as we know, there's a lot of ways people have made analogies, but managers manage things and leaders lead people. And there's a difference between how you deal with things and how a product line and how you deal with people who are on the product line. And so I think I would make sure that in my talk to the prospective graduates, I would make sure that they had a good understanding of the importance of the people on their product lines,

or wherever they were going to be in the leadership management world of business. And too often times we're looking at the bottom line, we're looking at the production rate, we're looking at the marginal cost curve, and we're not looking at the people. And then we have post-COVID-19 great resignation, and we wonder why?

There's a lot of reasons for that. I don't want to simplify it, but your most important resource is your people. So as you go out there as new leaders into the world, make sure you don't lose track of that. Keep your humility. Don't let hubris bring you down as you get a little more senior and climb up the ladder a little bit.

So it's all about people. It's all about others. It's all about being a servant leader who's focused first and foremost is to serve others. And yeah, you're always going to take care of yourself. But if you make it your mission to serve others, then your focus is always on the other person not devolving into that self-centered inner focus that can be really destructive. times. It always keeps you focused on helping other people and pushing your vision outward instead of getting sucked into a tunnel vision of your own problems.

Well, Sandy, thank you so much for spending your time with us. And for the listener who's out there, there are a lot of different leadership books out there. What I really loved about Sandy's book There are a lot of different leadership books out there. What I really loved about Sandy's book is how she tells these personal stories, gives examples, and makes it very digestible through the 3P illustrations that she gives throughout the book. And I will put the book into the show notes, of course. But if someone is looking to get to know you better, where are some places that they can do that? Well, thanks for asking.

And I've got a great website. I only say that because I have a great website designer, the same gal who designed the cover of my book, www.sandrastosalloneword.com. If you just search my name, it's the first thing that pops up on the internet. And if you go to that website, you can order my book, this tab's for Amazon, tabs for local bookstores.

I like to support independent bookstores. But also, please consider signing up for my mailing list because you can get onto my weekly mailing list and you can get on my mailing list and get my weekly blog. It's called Leading with Character. It's a new topic every week. It's like 500 words.

And you can keep up with motivational leadership thoughts just by signing up for my newsletter. So that's how you can get hold of me. Well, Sandy, thank you so much for being here. It was such a delight to have you on. And I'm a true honor for me. Thank you again. Thank you.

You've asked some of the best questions I've ever had and I hope that it's a great conversation for your listeners. Hey y'all, thank you for watching today's episode and a huge thank you, the Vice Admiral Sandy Stowe's and all things sandy will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our web links if you buy any of the books from the guest on the show.

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and repeat number one Amazon bestseller of over 20 Thriller novels. I take a lot of liberty with the stuff that's done in the books. I don't try to tonk, fancy it to death with research. I do most of the research just through reading articles and Google. At any given moment, I'll have a bookmark folder with a couple hundred articles I've read on various

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