English to Russian Other Ships, Sailing, Maritime

Доброго времени суток.

In February 2015, I was invited to speak at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. I stayed over on the campus and the morning after my talk I was given a tour by LCDR Brooke Millard, who taught writing there but had previously commanded a coast guard cutter. Since she was considerably shorter than me, I couldn’t help but ask her how she managed to command all those male crewmen, which—rank or no rank, formal authority or no formal authority—could not have been easy out there on the blue ocean. She thought about it for a couple of days and then wrote me this e-mail, which is as good a description of leading by extending own-ership as I could find:

Thanks for asking. At the unit I worked at previous to my command tour, I was in charge of about 10 chiefs—guys with about 18+ years, all subject matter experts in their specialty field. I was a brand new LT with four years in [and] 26 years old. When I told them to jump, I was expecting a “how high?” response, but instead I got [a very hostile] attitude. The first 6 months there were tough. I had to come up with a different leadership tech-nique. I knew that children are often given two choices for food: “Do you want carrots or apples for a snack?”—both options of which mom approves of, but giving a child the option gives him/her a choice and [makes] them learn to own that decision. I tried a similar technique with my chiefs. I introduced a problem/issue, solicited their advice/ideas, and ultimately came up with two options for action; one was usually a better option than the other, and they naturally chose the option I liked best. But it appeared—to them, at least—that they had a choice— and, therefore, buy-in. ***It worked at the training command***, so I applied the same technique with many decisions as a captain of a ship.



Спасибо.