The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters by Vice Admiral Sandra Stosz Uscg (Ret)

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters by Vice Admiral Sandra Stosz Uscg (Ret) "A prime resource for any leader's library." -James Mattis, General, US Marines (ret), and 26th Secretary of Defense Today, our nation is like a ship being tossed in tumultuous seas. The winds and waves of change have divided and distanced our society, threatening to wash away the very principles our nation was founded upon. Now more than ever, our nation needs leaders with the moral courage to stand strong and steady-leaders capable of uniting people in support of a shared purpose by building the trust and respect necessary for organizations and their people to thrive. In Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass, Admiral Sandy Stosz draws upon her forty years of extensive experience and wisdom to provide tools that will help leaders reach their goals and succeed at every level. Character-centered, proven leadership principles emerge from these engaging, personal stories that teach leaders how to find, and then become, an inspiring mentor; implement successful diversity, inclusion, and equity programs; successfully lead in a complex environment; and much more. Leaders eager to make a difference by helping people and organizations be their best will find Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters their go-to resource. About Vice Admiral Sandra Stosz Uscg (Ret) Admiral Sandy Stosz started out in the US Coast Guard as an ensign serving aboard polar icebreakers, conducting national security missions from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Her forty-year 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. Along the way, Sandy served for 12 years at sea, commanding two ships, and led large Coast Guard organizations during times of crisis and complexity. She finished her career as the first woman assigned as Deputy Commandant for Mission Support, directing one of the Coast Guard's largest enterprises. 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.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris boss all right boss here from the chrisbossshow.com the chrisbossshow.com oh my gosh welcome to the show we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here be sure to refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives get everybody in on the action get them listening to chris foss show podcast because we're a podcast

that helps save the souls and minds and brains of everyone so if you get everyone involved you help everyone become better so there's that i think, guys, we have got an amazing author. You can, of course, see the interview at youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss, hit the bell notification button. You go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, and see all the wonderful books we're reading and reviewing over there. You can also go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I think there's one other, Instagram.

The Insta, as the kids like to call it. You can go there and see what we're doing over there, see the interviews we have and everything else. Today, we have an amazing woman on the show. She has this new book that's coming out that you can pre-order. It will be out June 1st, 2021. The name of the book is Breaking Ice and breaking glass leading in uncharted waters she's a retired vice admiral and this episode is brought to you by a sponsor ifi-audio.com and their micro idst signature it's a top of the rangerange desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones.

It has two Brown-Burr DAC chips in it and will decode high-res audio and MQA files. We're using it in the studio right now. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. Her name is Sandra Stowe, and she's with us here today. She started out as a U.S. Coast Guard as an ens woman to command an icebreaker in the Great Lakes and to lead a U.S. Armed Forces Service Academy.

Along the way, she served for 12 years at sea, commanding two ships, and led large Coast Guard organizations during times of crisis and complexity. She finished her career as the first woman assigned as Deputy Commander 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 Newsweek's The Daily Beast mentioned Sandy and named her as their list of 150 women who shake the world. She was on the list. She wasn't the 150, of course, women that were on the list. Welcome to the show. How are you? Hi, Chris. Thanks so much for having

me on. I'm doing great today and happy to be here. Thanks, Sandra. It's wonderful to have you on as well. So give us your plugs or people can look you up on the interwebs. Thank you for the opportunity. So you can find me at www.sandrastows.com, all one word. I'm also on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And my book is right behind me here. So there's a link to that book on my website and you can pre-order now. There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Well, that becomes a story. And I guess the book is Leadership Lessons Learned Over 40 Years, A Told Through My Stories in the Coast Guard. And the motivation to write the book came when I was young. I was in my 20s, and I'd been six years at sea after graduating and commissioning from the Coast Guard Academy, commissioning as

an officer in the United States Coast Guard. I had been six years at sea and was in a job serving for the Secretary of Transportation as his military aide. And that's a job that gave me a chance to see the government from the top down. That's where the Coast Guard fell under in those days. We now, for those who are in the know, we're in the Department of Homeland Security and moved there after 9-11. Oh, wow. Wow. So that story starts on why I wrote the book. Back there, getting a chance to experience the government at the top levels, serving a cabinet secretary, and looking down and seeing that the Coast Guard fit is a small piece of that bigger picture. And I was working with a number of younger people on the staff. And I said to one of my friends, whose name was Shane, I said, Shane,

I'm going to have to write a book on leadership one day to give back a little bit of what the Coast Guard's given me for these amazing, awesome experiences. And she said, Sandy, you've got to call that book Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass. And the reason being, because I started my career on icebreakers, like you said, polar icebreakers. And I had been one of the first women to come into the Coast Guard. And I'll tell more about that story later, but I had been the first woman on this or that assignment. So the Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass comes from that start with icebreakers and being one of the first women. What an awesome inspiration. So give us an arcing over the view of the book,

and then we'll get into some of your history. Thank you. So the book is Leadership Lessons Learned in those 40 years in uniform. And I give those leadership lessons back through stories, proven principles, frameworks, and models targeted at people, leaders at all levels, character-centered leadership lessons. I would like to reach the mid-level leaders. I feel they get left out. Entry-level workers usually get a lot of attention when they come into the workplace and senior executives make sure they get all the executive education. And it's the middle leaders who are making up their minds whether to stay or go with an organization or to take their careers who get left out. So targeting to inspire all leaders at all levels, but especially the middle level on how you can lead and succeed both in your personal and professional life and do so with character.

That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. They can order the book up at a local book dealers or Amazon near there, near you or anyone else for that matter. Give us a lowdown on how you were motivated. You want to get into the Coast Guard, how you began this journey, if you will. The journey. And so it always starts before you enter the Coast Guard. And I like to start back with childhood. And my book does start with that, because I think how your character and core values are formed really matter as to who you're going to be. And I was born and raised with three brothers in a very active athletic family. So I was the oldest of those four children, but we're all very

close in age. And I do think that being the oldest is important in your leader development. I think you end up by default having to be, you learn more about leading in that position. So the three boys and I, we, I ran with the boys. So I think that mattered too. When I got into the Coast Guard, which was mostly men at the time. It didn't seem so unusual for me because I'd been born and raised with mostly male siblings. And my parents taught us core values. My core values when I was a kid were honesty, humility, hard work, and perseverance.

And those didn't change. I added core values as my life went on. For instance, the Coast Guard's core values are honor, respect, and devotion to duty. But I found that living my core values and having core values to center on was so important in developing a passion and purpose of where you wanted to go. So getting onto how I got into the Coast Guard and carving out who you are and keeping a moral compass so that you can find a true purpose and passion. And when I was born in 1960 for perspective, so in 1972, Title IX was brought into law, and that was equal opportunity and education for women. Following the next year,

1973, was the Equal Rights Amendment. And then when I came into high school in 74, the groundwork was set for young women to be able to have equal opportunity to achieve their goals, to set their aspirations. And I hadn't even realized this, but there were still structural impediments to advancement for women. And one of them was the armed forces. So in 1975, when I was a junior in high school, my neighbor walked over an article from the Baltimore Sun. I was born and raised in Ellicott City, Maryland, and that's near the Naval Academy in Annapolis. So this article on the Baltimore Sun was featuring the Naval Academy because Congress had mandated that all the service academies open the doors to women. And that started in 1976. And the fact that there was an open door that other people, other women hadn't had a chance to go through, I'm like, I want to go through that door.

So I applied to the Naval Academy and you had to get a congressional nomination, which I pursued. And my guidance counselor came to me though, one day and said, Sandy, you need to cast a wider net. And I'm like, no, PJ, I want to go to the Naval Academy. He says, I got in the mail a flyer from a Coast Guard Academy up in New London, Connecticut. And he said, let's take a look at it. So we poured over that flyer and it has smaller boats. And to us, we said, it must be a small Navy. So I'll go ahead and apply

to the Coast Guard Academy too. In addition to the Naval Academy, of course, the Coast Guard is not a small Navy. It's a whole different kind of service. We've got very big boats, frigate sized boats that are currently now, you can find the Coast Guard over in the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf worldwide. So we have a great mission, but I applied to the Coast Guard Academy. And to make a long story short, I got accepted there very quickly. It's a directed mid-college, not a congressional nominations requirement because the Coast Guard, although an armed service, falls under a different title of law. That's why we're in Department of Homeland Security. So I accepted that nomination or that, excuse me, that appointment and went to the Coast Guard Academy. And then I, it's a four-year college and it was hard.

I'm really glad I had my core values, hard work and perseverance, because I needed every bit of that to get through that arduous time. And it prepared me for 36 more years of challenge serving our nation in the Coast Guard. But I'll stop there if that's one part of the story. So was it the excitement too of the adventure of going places, doing things, being on the open sea? Did the open sea appeal to you or is it just the adventure of it and traveling? Great question. The open sea, definitely. I'd never had a chance to sail. We just didn't have the means to do that. But being close to Annapolis, there was always some buddy who had a sailboat. And I always thought, wow, I'd love to catch the wind in my sails and go out and see what I could be like flying a little bit with a sail. I don't know. I was a young woman who dreamed a little bit about what I could do. And yeah, so I had never had a chance to sail, but my grandparents

lived on Cape Cod and had a little rowboat as close as I got to the water. But I love being out on that rowboat. And my granddad would row me around and we would row together to get shellfish and just enjoy the out of doors. And so I always did have a yearning to try my hand at sea. And that was a lure of the Coast Guard and Naval Academies. Let me ask you this. Did you ever see or envision or dream that you would achieve the level of success you

had achieved in your career? No. And I think that's a great question because a lot of people look at somebody successful, whatever you, however you define that. If you define it by position and rank, I went to the executive level of the organization, but it was never anything I expected to be able to do

when I was a student. So the message for young people who might read the book, the mid-level people I'm trying to appeal to is you're not going to be at the top of the organization right away, or even at the mid-grade level. You need to be patient and do every task that's given to you with the same passion and commitment. Not just do your primary job well, but anything that's collateral that your boss asks you to do, volunteer for something. So create a reputation that you're a go-to person and be content in the middle and realize it's going to take a long time to get to the top. But as

Cervantes said in Don Quixote, life's all about the road, not the end, right? The journey, not the destination. And looking back, my life was all about the journey and the struggles, the potholes in that road, overcoming the challenges, like the book's title is Leading in Uncharted Waters. So maneuvering around all those icebergs, the obstacles to achieve success. So the message is, yeah, it wasn't hard. I never expected to get to the executive level. I tried to keep my humility and the Coast Guard helped me with that by making everything really hard, but it's definitely possible if somebody puts their mind to it. How much did you have to overcome in the way of sexism? And you're in an age where, you know, in the seventies, eighties, even today, there's a lot

of sexism that goes on in organizations. As you went through your career, how did that affect you? How did that shape you? How did you address it and different things? How was that a factor in your career? It was an obstacle and an opportunity because whenever you overcome an obstacle, you're like better, you're stronger for it. So honestly, I can't say at the time I looked at my life this way, because at the time that you're facing obstacles or challenges that come from somebody who might be giving you a hard time, because you're a woman, and you've done nothing wrong, just the fact that you exist as a different gender, you get piled on, that's challenging, but you come out stronger. So people, instead of just complaining, or I think that people should embrace the opportunity to continue to plow forward,

even if they have adversity. And so, yeah, I had some challenges where I reported to my first command, first ship I ever command. It was up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the end of the earth, a small icebreaker up there on Lake Superior. And it was in 1990. So it's important to note the time because things have changed for the better since then. But yeah, along my 40 year history, which started that long ago, there was people who didn't think women should be in the Coast Guard. And this boss that I had looked at me, and I was coming right from that job I told you about working as the aid to the service secretary, the secretary of transportation. And my boss looked at me and

said, you're just the secretary's fair hair golden girl. We'll see how long you last. Wow. He proceeded to make it really hard on me in that job as commanding officer where I had this crew of people to lead and I'm trying to earn their respect and build trust in who I am. But the amazing thing was the crew embraced me as a woman. At first, I'm sure they were interested in what it was going to be like to have a woman commander, but my predecessor, the man that I relieved as captain, set them up. He said, look, she's going to be just like anybody else. She's qualified and competent.

She's been three years of polar icebreaking experience. It's going to be good. And so he had prepared them and paved the road for me so that when I came, he had been an ally to me to help me to transition successfully. But my boss got it different. But a person on the crew served again as an ally to me. And as it appeared after a few, a couple of months, that it was obvious to everybody, the boss was being hard on me for no reason. One of my enlisted people who was junior to me, a chief petty officer, walked up to the captain's office, asked to enter, closed the door and said, you need to back off on our skipper captain.

She's doing a good job and it's creating bad morale on the crew to see you picking on her all the time. Wow. Yeah. This is a guy who's junior to me standing up for me, a man. So I had men standing up for me against other men who were not believing a woman could do the job. And there was strength in that. And I chose to look at it from the positive side of look at the men who supported me, not to be overwhelmed by the man who didn't. And I know easier said than done, but I think it's an important message for people.

Most definitely. I mean, there's so much you had to overcome even more so as a woman. You're in this saltiness to sailors and people who work in the sea. And so I can imagine it was maybe even maybe a little harder because people have watched that Ocean's Deadliest Catch stuff. Those guys are tough birds. Yes. I think there is a little bit of a expectation there that this is too hard for a woman or whatever it might be. And to some extent, everybody comes to a new job, even in this day and age. I don't care what you are,

what you look like. When you enter a new job, you're going to have to build trust and earn respect every day. It's not going to just be you're the new person in the office, and you're a woman. So we're just going to shower you with privilege and stuff. No, you've got to come and improve yourself. And it's not bad to have to prove yourself. I always strove to arrive at a new unit and be professional, personable, to earn trust and earn respect and build trust. And I thought that was on me to do that. And it was successful, a successful strategy. That's a really good point. It probably comes a lot from your core values of hardworking, honesty, and doing the job. Because I think as we look at leaders or what I call the person on the white horse is we look to

them for the leadership to be fair-minded, to be good judges, and whether or not they work as hard as we do. And if they show us that they're hardworking, that they care, that they're going to have the interests of the people in the workforce or employees or shipmates or whoever it is, that's an important aspect to building that trust and building that value, would you say? Absolutely. You really have to build trust and earn respect every day. And you can do that if you're a new person coming into a job, a position. You can succeed in breaking the ice to go back to... I titled the book Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass for a reason.

There's a lot of double entendres in there. But if you're in a new job, you don't have to be the first woman, you're going to be a new person, break the ice by using a little humor to put people at ease, appropriate humor, I think to show that you're a real person, you've got a personality, let people know who you are, be open and honest and frank with them. And, and then I think you have to ask questions. So a great way to break the ice is a new person, instead of feeling like you need to show these things, no, ask questions. And that empowers the people you're asking.

They get to tell the new person, whether it's a peer, a subordinate, or your superior, they get to help somebody succeed. And most people want to do that, but they can't unless you ask the questions. And that really starts to level the playing field. And then you look around and find out what people in your work group need, whether it's your boss, what does your boss need? What do your subordinates need? And deliver. Get early wins to build that trust. And I think that that is all a good recipe for breaking the ice in a new workplace.

And we all should look at it that way, not as you walk into an office and everybody should bow to you and look to serve your needs, which I think is a new thing people expect now. Yeah, it's interesting. I used to keep, there was a sign or something I used to keep on my desk years ago, and it went something like, you have to earn, it's something about how you don't, just because you have the title doesn't mean you get the respect and the leadership acumen. You have to earn it every day. And you have to earn the trust of people. You have to get their confidence. You have to truly lead. And I think that makes all the difference. In the book, you, just looking through the chapter list,

it's just rife and filled with all sorts of great leadership skills, great things to do when you work in different environments, whether it's a workforce or just leadership and in your home environment or people. Let's talk about some of the aspects that you like best that are then some of the things you put in the book. I'll go to something that once again can relate to any leaders at any level, but maybe hits the mid-level people, that target audience. When I was a younger officer, learning how to lead, and it's a constant learning process, by the way, when I was at the senior most level before I retired, I was still learning every day something new about leadership. And I think that's really important, lifelong learning.

So that's just a little side thing. But one of the things I learned when I was younger was I had a boss and this boss wasn't all that great. It was a boss on one of my first ships and I was struggling to qualify and to find a way to show him that I could do the job. And the job for me was driving the icebreaker. So a deck watch officer is the title, but you're basically in charge of the ship, getting it from point A to point B during the time you're standing the watch. And he just thought that I had the wrong style. He was used to working with men and there weren't many women on the ship. This is way back in the 1980s. And I had to learn how to believe in myself before I could project project that confidence.

Because I knew he was looking for something else. And he told me, he says, I'm not going to qualify you, give you your qualifications until you stand on the bridge like John Wayne with a six gun in each hand, working orders. And the bridge is the pilot house of the ship where you drive and navigate. And I'm like, no way. I'm a shy, introverted young woman. I'm not going to be a John Wayne, a Western hero, macho guy. And so I tried to be John Wayne maybe for a day or so and failed miserably at being somebody I wasn't. But I found then the strength to be confident in who I was. And that was a powerful lesson. And it sounds so

simple, but even today, anybody listening to this probably knows somebody in the workplace who doesn't believe in themselves. And you can't believe in others if you don't believe in yourself. So how do you lead a work group if you yourself have a problem with believing in your own power to succeed. So I think that's an important lesson in leadership. And there's dozens more like that in my book. It's just a simple thing, but I think important to capture. And I think that's communicated too, correct me if I'm wrong, in when you're being a leader, people can tell if you have that folly in you where you're not confident in who you are, you're not comfortable in your own skin. I think so. And I think it lends to people not trusting you. You can be the most honest, sincere person in the world. But if you have a

hesitancy and don't trust your own judgment or don't believe in your own ability, then you're not going to be able to earn the trust of your people because they're going to be wondering, is she competent or capable? Even though she's nice, being nice isn't enough. Especially in the armed forces, in the Coast Guard, when your life is in somebody else's hands, you've got to respect them and trust them. It's interesting that you make a really good point. If you can't trust yourself, how can you expect other people to trust you? Absolutely. And I think a lesson for other people, leaders at all levels is, yeah, it's on the individual to become introspective, to test and try themselves, build their confidence, learn to trust in themselves. But it's also up to peers in the workplace and supervisors to reach out their hand and help somebody develop that confidence.

And there's lots of ways to do that. You get to know your people. And this comes to emotional intelligence, being situationally aware. So you have six people in your work group. It doesn't mean you treat all six of them the same? One might be really extroverted and need some kind of leadership that just lets them go on their own. Then somebody else might be really introverted, might need a helping hand to bring them up to where they are confident enough to run a group or assume the lead on a project. They might need more reinforcement that is, hey, you're doing a

good job. So every day, maybe reinforcing that individual, you're doing a good job, whereas the guy over here or the gal over there doesn't need that daily reinforcement. So getting to know your people and helping them develop the confidence they need is on the supervisor and they can't shirk that responsibility. Yeah. And that's an interesting aspect because I think some people try and lead with a broad-based brush. They try and treat everyone the same. I may have been guilty of that over my years and not identifying weaknesses and strengths. He always had that top sales guy that he can always run on his own and does his own thing. And he just goes and kicks butt. But you've got people that are at those different levels that

you have to adjust for and address differently. Because like you say, sometimes they just have different needs and different support mechanisms that you've got to give to each of them. Well, absolutely. And sometimes people leave. They call it the leaky pipeline at the mid-level. That's another reason I like to aim the book at the mid-level people. Leaky pipeline because people leave. And sometimes you might hear interviews or ask

somebody, why did you leave the organization? Was it a bad supervisor? And they'll say, no, it wasn't a bad supervisor. Well, it might not have been a bad supervisor, but was it an engaged supervisor who was making that person in the middle, that quiet person at the desk that didn't say much? Did they feel included or did they just feel left out all the time? Was it partly their personality maybe, but didn't the supervisor have an opportunity and an obligation to know that person needed a different leadership style? So they leave the organization because they don't feel valued because the supervisor is missing the forest for the trees and isn't reaching down to nurture and give that person what they need to

stay with their company. And this is a great aspect of your book and teaching organizations is because companies put a lot of value into hiring employees, getting them and everything else. When they lose them, they lose a part of their investment that they put in to not only acquiring that employee, but keeping them, training them, going through all those different stuff, whatever sort of knowledge of value they built into them. What are some other aspects that you like to talk about that are in your book that we can touch on? I have a little model. It's just a little ditty called the three Ps of power. And I think this is an important one to learn early on. And for younger people coming into the workforce. So I had a boss once and I had been trying to work

with an employee who I was trying to get to do a task and he was reluctant and I was trying to find the best way to effectively lead this person. Of course, you're in the military, so you can just hammer with a stick if you need to. But I was like, man, there's got to be a better way to motivate this person to want to do this job. It was a bad job was cleaning the bilges, quite frankly. And the guy was on a punishment detail, but he'd done something wrong. So the punishment was in the bilges, which means the bottom of the engine room, the oil was sloshing back and forth. And he's assigned to that kind of punishment detail, but I'm his supervisor. And so I went to my boss and said, I'm having a hard time motivating this guy and I need your advice. So my boss told me, look, Sandy,

there's three Ps to power and you got to learn these or you're never going to succeed. He says, there's position power, professional power, and personal power. He said, if you want to succeed, you lean on the last two and use the first position power only when you really need to. And the position power is the hammer. I'm the boss, you're the subordinate, do it as I say so. And the professional and personal power is the other side of how you motivate people and inspire people. So by using your personal power, that is, hey, I'm going to be emotionally intelligent. I'm going to understand what my people need.

I'm going to learn about them. I'm going to get out of my office and walk around and meet them, ask them how they're doing, ask them what their concerns are in the workplace. And then I've got professional power. I'm not going to be the boss who's coming in with my tie or my ascot all out of kilter. I'm not going to be the one who's making a bad joke or the one who's unprofessional. I'm not going to be the one

who's trying to be overly friendly because thinking that being kind and nice and friendly is the way to earn respect. I'm going to be professional. I'm going to present myself in the manner that earns respect and that makes people want to trust me. So the personal and the professional power, and if you use those, you'll find, I found, you very seldom have to use the position power. And you're much more effective as a leader if you use professional and personal power throughout your career. I really love the aspect of those because some people, as we talked about before, they use that position power. Like, I'm the boss, so you must respect me or do what I say. And it's a horrible sort of thing to learn around with,

especially in the larger organizations and stuff. It was funny. I learned a long time ago to try and use those other two principles like you talked about to motivate my employees. So I'd be like, hey, could you help me with something? I want you to help me. And here's maybe some changes or here's something that I think we should do or I would like to have you do. But I would ask them to do it. And sometimes I get a little bit of blowback and they'd be like, well, I don't want to do it. And I'm like, let me explain to you what we're doing here. I'm asking you to be nice, but if I need to pull that first P card position, I can do that too. Now I'm pulling that card or else. That's why knowing your employees that emotional intelligence part is important.

Because some employees might be saying, well, I don't want to do that because they don't understand why. And to some extent, and this wasn't the case when I first came in the Coast Guard, you just did what you were told. But nowadays, I think those of us who want to be better bosses, make sure our people know why they're being asked to do something so that they can develop the passion that they need to put everything they've got into the job, to look for new innovations, to develop novel solutions, and all that's really important in the world that we're in right now. Definitely. What are some other aspects in the book? You have so many. You've got multiple chapters here, I think 17 chapters of stuff. And you talk about so much stuff between developing visions, the art of decision-making, leading the organization, the meaning of success and things of that nature. And you give a formula for success. Any of those that you want to touch

on? I guess the decision-making one, the more senior I got, everybody who's listening to your podcast today will be able to tell a story about somebody they worked with or for who just couldn't make a decision. And it's so frustrating because if they're the one that is key to getting that decision made so the whole organization can move forward and they won't make it, then the morale erodes, business suffers, you lose employees. Once again, people leave because they don't see progress. So I say there's three problems that keep people from making decisions. And the first one is paralysis by analysis. So they're going to be sitting there, the boss, the supervisor waiting for one more piece of information before they'll

make a decision that their people bring to them to make. And the decision is at the 80% level. And there's 10, 20% more information the boss wants, but it's going to take months to get it if you can ever get it. And so they sit on it and they just don't make a perfectly good decision because they're waiting for one more piece of information. So paralysis by analysis, and there's lots of examples of that. I imagine as you escalate, as you went up through the different levels all the way up into our higher realms of government, that you would deal more with that because government is so big and there's 50 million people to make a decision. And there's risk in making decisions. decision paralysis by analysis because it's easier to sit on the decision until it just fades away and people forget about it than to take the risk of making a decision especially if they think there's one more piece of information they could have that would give them get them closer i'll

give you an example when i first came into this last job that i had where i was a very senior person in the coast guard in charge of half the coast guard all the mission support one of the first meetings i had like my first week I'm sitting there at a great big conference table, which is what you have in the government with lots of people around it, like maybe 20. And then people sitting around the room and the chairs around the table. And they were presenting to me acquisition they wanted me to approve to buy an aircraft hangar. And it was going to be a $30 million bid or something that we're going to put on this hangar, but it was really only worth about 15 million. But if we didn't buy it, and it got sold to somebody else, we weren't going to have

a facility for our aircraft maintenance. And so there was all kinds of issues. And so at the end of the day, they briefed me and they push a piece of paper in front of me and they say, ma'am, here's all you need to do is sign this so we can go forward with this $30 million acquisition. And so I look over my shoulder figuratively, because who am I going to ask permission of? And I'm like, there's no one else to ask. The buck stops with me. And I said, you know what? It's been a great brief, smart people who have been months researching this just because I don't have the full knowledge and I never will get a hundred percent of the

knowledge on this detail. Doesn't mean I can't sign it. So I signed it. It worked out great, but they were petrified that I wasn't going to sign it because a lot of people wouldn't have. So paralysis by analysis. The second problem with decision making is the consensus conundrum. And that's where a boss will have a room full of people. And if anybody disagrees, they're like, this person doesn't agree. So we don't have full consensus. So I guess we can't make a decision. And I've seen that. I was amazed to see that, even at the most senior levels in the Coast Guard.

I'm like, come on. You've got six people around the room. One guy doesn't agree. Just make the decision and move on. Let that guy get over it. You shouldn't take offense at things just because you're an outlier on the decision. You can't stop a decision because one person doesn't agree with it because you'd never go anywhere if that was the case. But there is a consensus culture nowadays that people are afraid to do anything. They're just like, I'm paralyzed. And this person or

they'll go and something bad will happen. And then the third problem is the being nice syndrome. And this is the person, the decision maker who just doesn't want to make a tough decision against somebody that's maybe had misconduct or something because they're like, he's been a good guy up until now, just because he was inappropriate with that woman over there and touched her on the back. That's not a big deal. And he's a good worker and he's got a whole family to support. I'm going to be nice and I'm not going to bother with holding him accountable. And I've seen that. And that's just one example, but you see all kinds of examples of the being nice syndrome where people just can't discipline

somebody or hold them accountable for not completing a project, for misbehavior, for anything because they want to be nice. And we're all told nowadays to be nice, be it everywhere, be nice. So people misinterpret that to mean I won't take any action, make a decision that affects somebody adversely because I'm supposed to be nice. And a lot of people don't realize too, that what that does is people that see that happening, like maybe in that example, you gave that woman who was touched, they see that there's no accountability and they distrust or they get frustrated or the disillusion with the organization because they're like, these people don't care about me. They care about them and there's no accountability. So then you just drift into chaos basically, since there isn't any. You break down what we call in the

military good order and discipline. And even if you look at audits that workplace cultural audits that happen in the government, every year there's a workplace satisfaction survey that goes out. It might be every couple of years. The biggest concern that government employees have is that they don't believe that everybody's held accountable for their performance. So a lot of supervisors, there's underperforming employees and they don't want to say anything for fear of not being nice or having a complaint filed against them because they've asked someone to actually do their job. So they don't do anything. And then people around who are working their butts off are like, this guy's doing nothing,

not delivering, and the boss won't say anything about it. So why am I working extra hard to cover for him? And he or she's not being held accountable. So yes, the biggest complaint for government employees is that people aren't held to the standards. Yeah, most definitely. This book is pretty amazing. As I read through the chapter list, there's so much stuff here. One of the chapters is learning to lead and how to go about that process. That's really important for people. One of the chapters is learning to lead and how to go about that process. That's really important for people. One of the other chapters is finding passion and purpose. Do you want to touch on that a little bit about how important that is?

Absolutely. And it's important, maybe the single most important thing to say about finding passion and purpose is that it can happen at any stage of your life. So when I was younger, I was motivated a certain way as all young people are. So I ended up finding a passion and purpose was serving my country in the Coast Guard and going to sea and having an adventure. And the Coast Guard's awesome.

And so is all the military because you serve a purpose bigger than yourself. And it makes you feel really good to be part of something bigger than just you. So that was great. And for a young person who's a little bit idealistic, but when I got more senior in the Coast Guard, I had inflection points where I had to reevaluate my passion and my purpose. And I think a lot of people feel like if they have an inflection point, I must, maybe this is the wrong place for me to be. Maybe I leave the organization. Well, maybe you just rediscover your passion and purpose within your organization, or maybe you do leave. But I think people need to understand that you should, in a healthy life, have inflection points where you rediscover passion and purpose along the way. And one of those happened for me when I'm a seagoing person.

When I was in the Coast Guard, I spent 12 years at sea on the pointy end of the spear, so to speak, out there. And there came a time as I got more senior where the next job for me to have asked for was yet another ship to go back to sea again. And I'm like, something inside me said, and I think I was at a 20 year mark. So I would have been about 42 years old. And I asked myself, what do I really want to do in the Coast Guard now? I've been at sea all these years doing the mission, exciting, pointing to the operations. And I'm like, what do I like so much about being at sea? And I thought, well,

is it the sunsets? It's beautiful out there. You're out. It's the adventure. And I'm like, no, I know what it is. It's the young people that report to the ship. And they report all the time in the military. They're coming on and they're rotating off because we rotate every two or three years. Young people coming right out of boot camp and they're shy. When they come on board and when the ship's still in port, they salute the wrong end of the ship and they get yelled at when they first report aboard. Then two weeks later,

they're pulling on a line and they're speaking with confidence and they're learning the job. They're growing their own self-confidence and belief in themselves by realizing they can do this. And I thought, wow, I want to develop young people. And from there, I changed course. And I asked to command our bootcamp. And I was privileged to get that job. And then eventually to command our Coast Guard Academy as a superintendent. So I found that giving back in the form of developing young people as leaders of character became my passion two-thirds of the way through my career. I think that's amazing. I think you really had some great leadership skills and a passion for being a leader. I just went through an inflection

point recently where I had to rediscover my new passion. And I think how you identify that is really brilliant because there was a time where I felt lost, kind of with coronavirus. It really threw me off. And I think it threw a lot of people off and put them in an insecure sort of state where they were just like, who am I? Where am I? And what's my future? Do I have a future? But yeah, thinking about it, we go through these stages of life and inflection points, as you point out, where we sometimes have to rediscover, refine our passion and all that good stuff. So that's great. And I think people are going to read your book and be amazed. I think that's exciting to rediscover, but at first it's scary. And I think that I mentioned, I made a nod to lifelong learning in the first part of our talk today, Chris, but

I really encourage lifelong learning through reading, reading books, listening to podcasts like yours and expanding your mind, that helps you to rediscover passion and purpose and feel confident that you know why. I've been educating myself. I've read all this. I've seen it now written a few places. I've started to think about what that means to me and man, I can resonate with this. I really feel like my success in the Coast Guard was a lot due to committing myself to lifelong learning and reading and trying to always elevate myself. Was there a singular person or a hero or someone you looked up to in leadership or you modeled yourself after or anything like that? Was there someone, you know, like Bobby Kennedy is one of my heroes, my main hero, And some of his different speeches and things that he talked about with Ripples of Hope

and South Africa and stuff were some of the axioms that I put in and installed in my values and my life. Was there, who was that for you or was there a person for you? I'll start with the first thing I thought of, which you might've been speaking about when you were in childhood. But the first example that came to my mind when you asked the question was Secretary of Transportation, Sam Skinner. He jumped into my mind as somebody I modeled myself after when he was working for President Bush, the first President Bush, Herbert Walker in 1989 as the Secretary of Transportation where the Coast Guard fell,

and I was his military aide. He just set a role model for all of us. And I'll give you an example. So he had senior people working for him, as you would expect at the cabinet level, your senior assistant secretaries to the secretary, they're all people at the top of government. And then he had a chauffeur, a driver who drove his car and drove him everywhere. And that driver's name was Lloyd. And I was with the secretary all the time because I was his military aide. But at first, it amazed me that the secretary of transportation would stop before he was, and he was busy. He was on his way to the hill to meet with Senator Kennedy on the Americans with Disabilities Act, for instance. And he would stop and talk with Lloyd and ask Lloyd, the chauffeur, how's your family?

And how are you doing? And tell me what's going on. And he would treat the lowest level paid employee with the same trust, with the same respect that he treated his senior assistant secretaries who were his age or older. And I learned something from that. I'm like, here's a man who's at the top

of the government busy and takes time for somebody who other people wouldn't even notice. They wouldn't even recognize who their driver was. And here's a guy who elevated that driver and that driver would do anything for the secretary. And we looking would do anything for the secretary because we knew that he had our backs, that he cared about us as people and was going to be looking out for us. And we weren't just there as objects to serve. We were actual people with families and lives that really mattered so much. Yeah. People look to the person on the white horse and they set the example and the tone and the makeup of the organization, how it operates. And I've worked with bad leaders before that they run high school where it's all about popularity contests and no one does any work. And I've seen all sorts of different management failures.

But yeah, having those sort of values make all the difference. As we go out, is there any sort of, I'm sure there's lots of deep tidbits in your book and stuff, but is there any just off the cuff tidbits or advice that you give to women who want to succeed in business fields like this or other ones in corporate to be able to achieve those higher levels and break through the glass, if you will? Oh boy, I've got a whole, what we call in the military and the sea service is a sea bag, which is a- This is going to have to be a part two show, I guess. I've got a briefcase full of advice for women, but- What if we pick a couple of ones off the top? Yeah. In a nutshell, I think, look at your status as a woman in a workplace, if you're especially in a mostly male, and there's still mostly male workplaces out there.

Look at it as a superpower. And I really wouldn't have said that when I was going through it myself, but of course, a lot of whatever you might call wisdom that we're talking about today comes in reflection looking back. But I would say, use it as a superpower. When you're different, you have strength and you have perspective to bring that is valued

that the men don't have if you're a woman. Be confident in that, that you've got something to offer that they don't have because of your perspective and because of the diversity that comes inherent with your gender, your background, your experiences. And look for where you can find that place to fit in. So look for where your value can be added. Don't expect somebody just to reach down and say, hey, we need you over here. They might be doing that too. But carve your own niche to find where your strengths will fit into the organization and use your gender as a superpower to play off what's special and unique and different about

you, which I see as strengths, not as weaknesses. And if you turn them into strengths, which is easier said than done, but if you have an attitude of that, if you have that mindset, you will achieve that goal of turning your differences into superpowers. There you go. There you go. I think that's brilliant. And women do bring a certain superpower to an aspect of meninated fields because, you know, between emotion, empathy, intelligence, I think women are smarter than men when it really comes down to it anyway. And they bring all of that to the table. Where men, we're a little bit more two-dimensional. I'm a big proponent for getting more women in government and our Congress and everything else.

Even in my home state of Nevada, we were the first state to put more women in the legislature there in the state than ever before. And they're doing great things. They're caring about kids and future and schools and all this sort of stuff. And a lot of us men guys, we're just like, let's go start a war. I don't know. I'm just being funny. But yeah, that's pretty much how we are. I'm sorry.

What was that? That's real diversity, different perspectives. Neither one's right or wrong, but you need to realize there are more diverse perspectives and that there's value in each one. And if you're the person who's in the minority, then you just have to realize that you've got something to offer and leverage that.

Don't hide that superpower. Don't hide that talent and bring it out. It's been wonderful to speak to you today, Sandra. I've learned so much and your book is just rich with leadership and learning and everything else. People should really pick it up and get to know more about you, your journey, and probably be very inspired, I would say, by what you've done. Thank you very much for spending the time with us today. And thank you for giving me the chance to share some of those leadership lessons, Chris. There you go. Thank you very much.

To my audience, be sure to check out the book. You can order up. It's a pre-order right now. June 1st, 2021, Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass, Leading in Unchartered Waters. You can go see the video version of this on youtube.com, Forge Us, Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, Forge Us, Chris Voss.

See us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, all those different places. You can see us in the Clubhouse app as well. Thanks so much for tuning in. Stay safe, wear your mask, and we'll see you guys next time.