Saltwater Leadership: A Primer on Leadership for the Sea Services. By Rear Admiral Robert Wray, Commander Andrew Ledford, Vice Admiral John Mustin & Rear Admiral Theodore LeClair. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2021. ISBN 9781682475508.
Reviewed by Peter Jones
Saltwater Leadership is a leadership book written for junior officers. It is the second edition of a book first written by Robert Wray in 2013. His co-authors have diverse backgrounds and no doubt bring fresh insights from the contemporary US Navy and US Coast Guard.
The book’s premise it that leadership is “learnable. You don’t have to be born with it. Whatever you are today, you can become a better leader tomorrow, if you choose.” It sets out to help the young officer with this in five ways. First, it lays out an analysis of leadership literature to distill the key elements and root the precepts of naval leadership is some context. It also effectively tackles the relationship between leadership and management. Secondly, the meat of the book, is five chapters entitled Leadership Lessons, Taking Care of People, Forceful Backup, Culture and Professional Competence which provide thematically based leadership anecdotes from an array of officers. These incidents are generally ‘learn from my mistake’ in flavour, although the reader may draw different conclusions from those implied.
The third section of the book is ‘Leadership Advice from Those Who Have Led’ and includes original research by the authors. They invited members of the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine to list the primary traits required of a successful junior officer. They distilled the 380 responses and found they wanted a junior officer to be an honest and hard-working shipmate. Not content with this, the authors have distilled the leadership lists of the key leadership service manuals which all have a strong alignment. My favourite was the Division Officer’s Guide’s list, which was:
- Know you job
- Know yourself
- Know and take care of your subordinates
- Set a positive example
- Project a clear vision and communicate effectively
- Direct, motivate, and develop subordinates
- Demonstrate effective management skills
- Build effective teams
Of note when Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths spoke to 1,000 ADFA midshipmen early this year he emphasised to them their future role as young leaders in building and being part of teams.
The fourth section ‘Becoming The Leader You Want to Be’ provides a helpful framework for junior leaders to develop their skills and their self awareness. Finally Saltwater Leadership provides a list of further reading as well as a compendium of quotes from great leaders on leadership. My favourite is by Theodore Roosevelt who said, “He who makes no mistakes, makes no progress.” It is important we allow junior officers to still make those mistakes.
Saltwater Leadership is a small book with lots of wisdom. The cultural differences between the RAN and the US sea services should not prove a barrier to our junior officers. Indeed the book’s anecdotes give another insight into US Navy.
Finally, the authors should be commended for the efforts they have put into this fine book. All the royalties are being donated to various mariner charities.
