BL0014: Set and Maintain High Standards

Everyone must understand the value of effective leadership.  It’s the only way to grow successful teams.   Without Bold Leadership you are doomed to mediocrity.  I believe that setting and maintaining high standards serves as the key ingredient for Bold Leadership.  Today I am going to share two examples of leaders who set high standards and exceeded the mark and their teams excelled.  Setting and maintaining high standards always ensures peak performance for your team.

What happened to standards…the state of our nation?

  • The School System
    • Teachers are attacked for a student’s poor performance by the parents. What happened to student accountability for meeting standards?
  • The impact to leadership development
    • Young people are bailed out and not held accountable. We are failing to develop the leaders of tomorrow by giving them choices then holding them accountable when the make poor choices or do not perform up to standards.

What are standards and Why does it matter?

  • Minimum acceptable
    • If the minimum weren’t good enough it would not be the minimum. How many times have you heard this?  If you are only trying to meet the minimum standard you are destined to fail.
  • Low standards = poor performance

Two Leaders who set high standards and turned around failing organizations

  • Commander Matthew Duffy
  • Commander Anthony Grayson

The skippers who earned the Navy’s top leadership prize said their crews have equal claim for earning the prestigious Vice Adm. James Stockdale Award.

Cmdr. Matthew Duffy described his command tour as “pretty unique” and “not what I was anticipating.” The squadron was in trouble when he reported as XO. He and the skipper had to deal with problems so bad that a previous commander ended up in Admiral's Mast. When a July 2014 fleet-up put Duffy in command, he not only had to fix the broken squadron, he had to prepare it for the John C. Stennis' deployment. Amid these challenges, Duffy’s message was consistent and clear: Put forth a perfect effort, and let your professionalism and achievements speak for themselves. The results were telling. The squadron received more than half a dozen of personal and professional awards for their efforts.

“This recognition is squarely the result of the men and women [of] the VAW-112,” Duffy said. “As far as I'm concerned, this is a direct reflection on their achievements during some pretty challenging times. … I had very high standards and the men and women of the Golden Hawks exceeded them.”

Cmdr. Anthony Grayson, the FFC Stockdale awardee who led the crew of attack submarine Providence through the pressure of an expedited deployment, was just as quick to credit his crew.

“I look at this award is recognition of Team Providence’s hard work over the last year,” Grayson said via email; his boat is forward deployed. He described “a tough shipyard period” followed by a “very short” deployment workup. The crew had to squeeze in opportunities to train amid long hours spent repairing and maintaining the boat. The hard work paid off and they outscored all other subs in deployment workups.

“My crew developed my command’s guiding principles, the first of which is to ‘believe in Team Providence,’ and they have done that every step of the way,” Grayson said. “I am proud of the part I played in this as their commanding officer, but I believe that this award belongs primarily to them.”

'Communication and trust'

Duffy said, “Never underestimate the impact you can make on others by just offering a bit of assistance, a minor course correction, or in encouraging conversation,” he said. “It can have a profound impact. Strive every single day to look for opportunities to serve others and you will make a difference, and you will have