"Leadership is about more than directing; it's about inspiring your team and guiding them towards a shared goal.”

In this episode of Executive Evolution, Craig Anderson interviews his son, Daniel Anderson, discussing various aspects of leadership experienced throughout Daniel’s naval career.

Daniel reflects on his initial leadership role as a Combat Electronics and Main Propulsion Division Officer upon joining the Navy. He shares his insights into the balance between hands-on leadership and administrative duties, the evolution of his leadership strategies, and the application of the "good dude" theory of leadership.

Things to listen for:

• (00:00) Intro
• (02:10) Lightning round
• (05:55) Navigating team dynamics in the Navy
• (08:16) How to balance leadership and learning
• (14:43) Lessons on delegation and micromanagement
• (19:45) The ‘good dude’ theory in leadership
• (22:50) How to improve time management in leadership

After You Listen:

• Connect with Craig on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to Craig’s Weekly newsletter https://clearpathcoaches.com/stay-in-touch
• Download "Ten Tips to Level Up Your Leadership"

Key Takeaways:

• Identify individual motivations to inspire and effectively lead your team
• Delegate tasks according to team strengths to maintain efficiency
• Trust your team but verify their work to ensure accountability and foster growth

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

Craig Anderson [00:00:00]:

My boss looked at me, shook his head, and said, come into my office. We need to talk. Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to. This wasn't quite an early leadership role, but I was in a position of influence. I was a student assistant in the financial aid office at the University of Florida, and I had made a decision that I really wanted to move into that direction from my career. Thought I'd be an english teacher, decided I was going to be a financial aid advisor, and I was also a college student.

Craig Anderson [00:00:42]:

And I dressed like a college student. Shorts, t shirts, usually with some stupid slogan. My boss and mentor, Rick Wilder, looked at me and said, one day, Craig, if you really want to have a full time role in this organization, you need to start dressing and looking and acting like you want to have a full time role in this organization. It was time for me to step up my game, and if I wanted to be a leader, he was going to show me how to do it. In today's episode of Executive Evolution, I interview my son, Daniel Anderson. And while I am not the mentor in this story, he does talk about how a mentor is helping him in his early leadership roles as part of his naval career. It's really a pleasure and an honor to see him grow as a leader leader over the last few years, and I'm excited to have him on the podcast. Before we jump into the podcast, you know, I always ask my guests to tell me the one piece of advice they would go back in time and give themselves as an early leader.

Craig Anderson [00:01:37]:

And you can get all that advice accumulated in ten tips for new leaders. We have a link in the show notes for you to download that document today. Figure out the things that will help you become a better leader right now. And now onto Daniel Anderson story of his Executive Evolution. Danny, welcome to the Executive Evolution podcast. I'm glad you could be here today.

Danny Anderson [00:02:01]:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Dan.

Craig Anderson [00:02:03]:

Absolutely. This is exciting. I have an opportunity to interview my kid for the podcast. It's a first, Danny. We always start out the podcast with a lightning round. Are you ready to go through the lightning round? Yeah, let's do it. All right. What is the best leadership book you have ever read?

Danny Anderson [00:02:22]:

So, I don't read a lot of books just purely on leadership, but my favorite book on leadership is probably Matterhorn by Karl Marlantis. It's a fictionalized account of his time as a platoon leader in Vietnam. And that goes through him showing up day one, and kind of one of the themes is his progression as a leader throughout the, the time that he was in Vietnam. It's a really good read. He's a fantastic author, and I'd highly recommend it.

Craig Anderson [00:02:50]:

Nice. What were the big takeaways from that book, like, from a leadership perspective for you?

Danny Anderson [00:02:55]:

Basically, all he does is he's like, hey, I just want to get good paper on me so I can go up and do all these things and make a career out of everything. And it kind of goes to show about how that's not the real way that you're a leader. You have to develop your own leadership style, and you have to motivate the people around you to accomplish a job. And how he learns that process, which I think is very helpful. I mean, specifically for me, it's kind of helpful as well because of my job and everything like that.

Craig Anderson [00:03:22]:

So, yeah, how to motivate people is not as easy as it looks.

Danny Anderson [00:03:26]:

Yeah, definitely not.

Craig Anderson [00:03:27]:

All right, next one. Who is your leadership crush?

Danny Anderson [00:03:32]:

That would have to be Ernest Evans. He was the captain of the USS Johnston in the battle off Samar in World War 2 and he was the captain of a destroyer escort, which is a very small, lightly armed ship. Essentially, a large, overwhelming enemy force kind of broke out and essentially ambushed a couple destroyer escorts, a couple destroyers, and some escort carriers. And the destroyer escorts basically had to go and sacrifice themselves to try and stop this overwhelming force. And what he did is he kept his ship going in, he dealt as much damage as he could, and he stayed throughout the ship being sunk and went down with the ship and being able to sit there and say, hey, look, we're all probably going to die, but we need to go do this to save these other people. They're the more valuable asset, and we need to do that. And that's part of our job, and that's what it's calling for today, the ability to tell, you know, a couple hundred other guys, hey, we're all going to go die, but it's for the greater good. I think that's really inspirational in the way that he led.

Danny Anderson [00:04:34]:

He was wounded before. You know, he went down with the ship and everything. And the accounts of the sailors that served on the johnston are insane about how good of a leader he was and about how he could inspire all of them to go and do this insane, enormous task that they weren't going to return from.

Craig Anderson [00:04:53]:

Yeah, well, the stakes are high when you're in the armed forces, and there's but even in outside that, right. We are as leaders trying to do something for the greater good. And sometimes that means it's not about us and it's about someone else. So I love that example. A little harsh, but I love that example. Okay, last one in ten words or less, how would you define leadership?

Danny Anderson [00:05:17]:

Motivating the people around you to achieve a goal.

Craig Anderson [00:05:23]:

I like it. And it's not always easy, right. To kind of get motivating people is not an easy task.

Danny Anderson [00:05:30]:

No, not in the slightest. You know, people have a lot of different intrinsic motivations and you can't deal with the same people exactly the same. You have to understand how those people are and what motivates them and how to get them to perform the best. And you need to take that group and you need to all achieve the same common goal.

Craig Anderson [00:05:49]:

Yeah. And just trying to get everybody to make that their motivation rather than what it is they're trying to achieve for themselves. It's tough. So this is going to be fun because, you know, you're nothing, 40 years old, sitting around being a leader in an organization. We can go back, but I know you're in a leadership role today. But what was the first real leadership role that you think of when you think of leading a group?

Danny Anderson [00:06:13]:

Probably the first one I was, you know, put into was being the captain of my lacrosse student high school. But I don't think that's, that can translate over. So we'll go with the first leadership role I had, you know, outside of college, which would be the comet electronics Devo and the main propulsion devo on the Anchorage. That was day one. You show up, youre expected to be in charge of all these people that, you know, in the first instance, when I was in combat electronics, I had one sailor that was younger than I was. And thats a very interesting thing to learn. Day one, youre expected to show up and youre expected to know all these things and know how to get these people to all achieve the same goal together. It was a pretty steep learning curve.

Danny Anderson [00:06:56]:

I made a lot of mistakes. I definitely wasn't as good as I could have been. But probably the biggest takeaway from that is figuring out that people have different motivations and you need to figure out how to tie those in together and get them all to work as one.

Craig Anderson [00:07:09]:

Yeah. And just to frame it up a little bit, when you graduate from college in ROTC and you go into the service, you from day one have a team of 1015, 20 people that you're leading right out of the gate, which is not the experience of most 22 or 23 year olds in their first job. No.

Danny Anderson [00:07:26]:

Yeah, definitely not. And then, you know, to put it, you know, 23, 24, you're, you know, driving a billion dollar worship in the middle of the night, which is also, it's interesting. It's kind of a big deal. But the big thing is you're expected to be competent even if you're not necessarily competent. And a lot of the learning process there is learning from the senior non commissioned people that you're really heavily relying on. They've been in the Navy 1012 up to 20 years, and learning from them, being humble enough to realize, like, hey, this person is a lot better at this than I am, and I need to sit here and I need to learn from them as much as I can. That's definitely a process. And that was also incredibly helpful because day one, I didn't know everything.

Danny Anderson [00:08:09]:

You know, it took me a while to learn everything. And you need to rely on those people that have been there for a lot longer than you to be successful.

Craig Anderson [00:08:16]:

And how hard was that lesson to learn? Because I would think you go in, you think, well, I'm the boss. But the reality is you have a team who knows way more about the job than you do. So is that something like day one, you realize, how did you come to the realization, I really need to listen to some of these folks.

Danny Anderson [00:08:33]:

It's kind of like drinking from a fire hose in reality. And the process of figuring it out is getting a lot of stern talking to, a little bit of public humiliation sometimes. It's a lot of, hey, you're messing up. This is what you need to do a lot of, hey, let's go to the office, those senior non commissioned folks, and they're going to be like, okay, so that was dumb. This is why it was dumb. This is how you do it better next time. Because that's one of the things they're called chief petty officers. That's one of the things that they're charged with, is mentoring junior officers.

Danny Anderson [00:09:02]:

Even still going into my second ship, I relied on my chiefs heavily because, you know, they're the subject matter experts on doing the job, and you are the person that's there to lead organize manager.

Craig Anderson [00:09:15]:

When you think about kind of those early days of it and looking at all these people looking at you for guidance, direction, whatever, and given they were, you know, as you said, most of them were older than you, what was that feeling like inside? As you're looking at them, looking at you for direction, you get a lot.

Danny Anderson [00:09:33]:

Of imposter syndrome, especially when you're just kind of doing it on the fly and figuring it out as you go along. You're sitting up there and you're telling all these people what to do, and you feel inside like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Why do I have the right to be up here telling all these people what to do and how to do their job that they've been doing? Just because I had a college degree, it takes a minute to realize, hey, you know, I am learning. I am learning how to do this. I am in the routine. I know what needs to be accomplished. I know essentially what right looks like. And you have really, really bad imposter syndrome for a while until you kind of get your feet under you and you figure out, okay, I understand this.

Danny Anderson [00:10:14]:

I'm not just that poor lost incident anymore. I understand this. And now I can sit here and I can say, do this, and this is why I want you to do this.

Craig Anderson [00:10:23]:

So what I'm hearing is, with the imposter syndrome, for you, at least, what helped beat that back was starting to feel more secure that you knew more about the job. Yeah. How long did that take?

Danny Anderson [00:10:36]:

Probably about six months. Because the thing in the navy is like, you're not just, hey, you're just leaving people notes, hey, you're learning about different areas of naval warfare. You're learning how to drive a ship. You're learning how to stand this watch, and it's very hard to kind of sit there and funnel all those things and figure out, oh, okay, like, this is what's going on. This is what I need to accomplish today. This is what I need from the guys today personally. This is what I need to do to better myself, get these qualifications done, and kind of understanding where you fit in as well into the organization. It's very much like middle management, essentially, is what it is.

Danny Anderson [00:11:17]:

And understanding that, hey, this needs to get accomplished. I'm probably not the best person to go sit and watch these guys do maintenance on this system. The chief is probably better at that. I need to sit here, and I need to do all the administrative stuff to keep that out of their hair and fly top cover, essentially.

Craig Anderson [00:11:33]:

And I remember you telling me when you were going through that, that part of your job was trying to keep things out of their way, right. Trying to stop things from outside, making it even harder for them to do their work. How was that showing up for you on a day to day basis or week to week?

Danny Anderson [00:11:46]:

I think the most prevalent thing was when I was in main propulsion doing that, because I'm not going to go down there and take apart an engine and put it back together. I'm going to do all of the administrative requirements so they can do that. If I'm down there, they're going to want me out of the way, so I might as well just take care of all these requirements to keep that from getting down to them. And if something got messed up, being like, hey, it's my bad, it's on me, and taking the heat for them and knocking out all the extra paperwork and stuff like that, but at the same time, you need to show up in the morning, you'd be like, hey, all right, look, I know you have a ton of stuff to do. This is priority one. This is priority two. This is, hey, you know, at some point we need to get to this. It would be nice if we got there today, but being able to give that prioritization to them so they can work effectively on their own is another huge part.

Craig Anderson [00:12:32]:

Yeah. Okay, so you've got some distance from that now, but looking back, how do you rate yourself in that first leadership experience?

Danny Anderson [00:12:41]:

I don't think I did the best job I could have. Like, you're still learning. You have other distractors, like getting your warfare qualification. You have to do that. And my sailors, I know, really liked me as a person and enjoyed working for me, but I feel like I definitely could have found a better balance about being down there with them, kind of suffering with them a little bit more, as opposed to just flying that top cover so they don't have to worry about that stuff. Because on the other hand, you're developing these people to be the next generation of leaders, and sometimes they need to sit there with you and realize, oh, so this is what an officer does all day, and they kind of need to learn that. And I think I took care of too much for them. I think I could have delegated down to them some of the administrative requirements.

Danny Anderson [00:13:25]:

But overall, I mean, the way that I base it is, did they enjoy working for me? And I think the answer is they enjoyed working for me. So I did. Okay.

Craig Anderson [00:13:33]:

Okay, good.

Danny Anderson [00:13:34]:

Yeah.

Craig Anderson [00:13:34]:

So now let's kind of accelerate. You're six years later, right, in the role or in the Navy, and you have different leadership roles. Now. How does leadership interact with your current role or your most recent role?

Danny Anderson [00:13:46]:

So my most recent role, I was doing a lot of my boss's job. He had some personal things, and I was taking care of a lot of his job as well. And I think being able to learn that, because that is the job I'm going into next. I think that helped a lot and also being able to develop more that time in between taking care of all the administrative requirements, all the things like that, and also spending time in the trenches with the guys, essentially, you know, sitting there. And I think I did a lot better job of doing that. But the hardest part, I think, on my second ship was learning how to delegate, because I took so much of that work on my first ship, I think learning how to delegate because it was a lot smaller ship with a lot less people and the same requirements. And I think learning how to delegate, at least on my second ship, was probably the biggest thing for me. And overall, I think that's going to help me in the future, is being able to be like, hey, I don't have to do everything.

Danny Anderson [00:14:37]:

I have these people that are plenty competent to do these things, and also, I don't even have the bandwidth to deal with this right now.

Craig Anderson [00:14:42]:

Yeah. So how did your understanding of delegation evolve? Because delegation is, on the one hand, seems really easy to just say, oh, I delegated it, but it doesn't always work out that way. How did you learn to delegate through the time you had that role?

Danny Anderson [00:14:58]:

Painfully, by sitting there doing everything. And not everything was the best product it could have been. I had one of the chief Betty officers came up to me and said, hey, I'm pretty good at this. I can take this on. You can concentrate on other things. I learned it painfully. And by failing and not doing the best that I could, that some things can, in fact, be delegated down, because there is that balance right, where you just show up and you're like, everything's on you guys, I'm gonna go hide my room. Or, you know, just doing everything instead of just delegating a task and then checking it, utilizing that trust but verified overworking myself, kind of led me to.

Craig Anderson [00:15:38]:

Realize that, yeah, a lot of it is, we. We assume delegation is just, hey, here's this thing. Do this thing, and I'll get back with you. But in fact, you know, some people, you have to tell them every step of the way, and it takes a lot of time, and it feels like a huge amount of effort, even though it's an investment. But then, as you said, like, your petty officer, your chief petty officer had things that they could do, and you probably didn't need, even need to do a lot of oversight because it was something they were good at. So people are kind of on a continuum in delegation, and you want to get them to the point where you don't have to pay too much attention. So it sounds like you started to learn. Certain people, I can do certain things, and other people, I have to sit on it a little more and really check the work.

Craig Anderson [00:16:17]:

I mean, is that about it?

Danny Anderson [00:16:19]:

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you have different people, and even the same person might have more stuff going on outside of work, and they can't necessarily do as good of a job as they usually do. What you're talking about, about showing people the steps, problem is, when you do that too much, then they completely rely on you, don't learn how to do it themselves, which goes back to, you know, hey, now it's completely my problem again. It's kind of like what I was saying, you know, people have different motivations. People are good at different things, too. Some people are really good at writing ports. Some people are really good at turning wrenches. Some people are really good at leading.

Danny Anderson [00:16:52]:

And some people are just managers. Yeah, at times. Micromanagers.

Craig Anderson [00:16:56]:

How is micromanaging showed up for you? Is that a challenge for you?

Danny Anderson [00:17:00]:

I had a captain who already knew what he wanted to do, and he would still tell you to generate a plan. And if that plan didn't meet what he wanted, he would tell you exactly how to do things, especially when you're driving the ship. That really is irritating because it feels like there's no trust coming down when you're micromanage to the extent there's no trust there, which turns you into, well, why am I even sitting here if you don't trust me? I have a plan. I think this is how it's going to work. I understand that you have a different idea of how it's going to work, but do you trust me enough to be able to do this safely and effectively, or are you going to sit here in the chair and tell me exactly what course I'm going to be on, exactly what speed I'm going to be on, when to do things. People should be given, you know, the rope to hang themselves with, essentially. And as long as somebody is standing there that can catch them, then it's not an issue. But micromanaging is very taxing on them.

Craig Anderson [00:17:58]:

Have you ever found yourself caught in a trap where you realize you're micromanaging somebody too much?

Danny Anderson [00:18:03]:

Yeah, definitely. Sometimes you'll have people who, you assign them a task, they don't really want to do the task, so they keep coming back to you and saying, hey, how do I do this? Okay, cool. How do I do this? Okay, cool. How how do I do this? And you got to sit there and be like, all right, I see what you're doing. You're trying to make me do this, and I'm not going to do that. Or in general say the guys messed something up and now I feel like I need to have a higher visibility on it. And once they get back up to that level where I don't think they're going to mess that up again, it's kind of hard to put the brakes on and pull yourself away from the task, but I've definitely been guilty of micromanaging people before. It kind of goes back to, hey, I lost some trust, now I need to gain that trust back.

Craig Anderson [00:18:48]:

Yeah, kind of moving from very directive, and then as they earn your trust back, pulling back, a little more coaching, a little less day to day do this, and you can kind of start to pull back once you feel like they're, they're back on task. So you kind of lifted up from one group, came over, dropped down, and now you've got another group of 20 people. So it's kind of like transitioning roles in a big way. How did you say to yourself, all right, when I walk in that door for the first time, here's what I'm going to do. So it goes differently in a good way this time.

Danny Anderson [00:19:16]:

I definitely had those things that I thought I failed at on my last shift. You know, being down in the trenches and suffering a little bit more with the guys, it's like, okay, I'm going to do that. To get them to be comfortable enough to have you there with them, you have to show them that you're not a jerk, you're not like somebody that is super uptight and also that you're someone that can be fun to be around and isn't just a burden on everybody to be around. On my second ship, I kind of went in, and I'm a big believer in the good do theory of leadership where if you're a good guy, you know what you're talking about, you don't screw your people over and you fly top cover for them and take the hits so they don't have to. I think that's a very effective way of leading people. I kind of went in with, hey, I'm going to be this good guy. I'm going to take ownership for whatever they do and fly that top cover and at the same time be able to be around them to earn that trust. Because leadership is a two way street.

Danny Anderson [00:20:16]:

If your people don't trust you, then that's not effective. And if you don't trust your people, that's not effective. You have to have trust on both ends. And I kind of went in saying, all right, I want to earn their trust and then learn how they operate, and then we'll get down to, all right, now I understand how this organization runs, what I need to do to be effective in this organization, and went in with that idea of, hey, sit back, learn. This is new for me. And then give it a month or so, learn the organization, and then I'll go out and start leading those people.

Craig Anderson [00:20:50]:

Yeah, but how does the good dude theory of leadership work when you have people who aren't performing?

Danny Anderson [00:20:55]:

Part of that good dude leadership is no public humiliation. Part of just leadership in general is no public humiliation. Right. Like praise in public, reprimand in private. Part of that is being like, hey, look, like you need to start performing. You failed this task, this task, this task. And keeping a log of yourself. Hey, I directed this person on x day to accomplish this.

Danny Anderson [00:21:16]:

They didn't get it done. Okay, now I'm gonna sit here and look back, and then you have to go in and be like, hey, look, like you can sit here and say, like, oh, no, I've been doing my job. Like, I have receipts, yelling at somebody and personal attacks that doesn't work in general. And that also, for the good dude theory of leadership, that doesn't work, you know, with the personal attacks and everything. The drawback with the good dude leadership is sometimes there are times when you have to sit there and you have to yell at people, especially in the navy, when you're doing something dangerous, you don't have the time to be like, hey, man, look, like, this is kind of how we have to do it. It's like, no, like, I am ordering you to do this because if we don't do this, somebody's going to get hurt, and you don't really have the time to be able to explain your thought process behind that. So the drawback with that is sometimes it's a little jarring the first time you yell at somebody, if you are not a yeller, and I'm not really a yeller, but on the other hand, that is effective. If I'm yelling, then something is definitely wrong and something needs to get corrected.

Craig Anderson [00:22:17]:

I had a marine on the podcast, and he talked about how the command and control kind of works, but once he got out of the marines, it didn't work very well. Just say it because I do it, and it sounds like most of the time that's not what you're doing. But sometimes when it's a corrective thing or someone's doing something that's putting safety at risk, you've got to move quickly, and that's where you kind of pull that cardinal, you know. So now you've got six years of experience in leadership. I know you said your first role was captain of lacrosse team, and then maybe it's going back to that Danny, or going back to Danny early on when you were on your first assignment. But if you could jump back in time, whatever time machine you want to use, what's the one piece of advice that you would give yourself in that early leadership role that would make you more effective and have some, maybe less pain along the way?

Danny Anderson [00:23:05]:

Work on your time management. There are things that need to be done now that are very important. There are things that need to be done on a short term that are very important, like, say, in the week. There are things in the long term that you can probably push off, but they're still very important. Then there are things that you absolutely need to do today but aren't really that important, and you can kind of put a little less effort in there. So definitely prioritization and time management, I would definitely tell myself about that and make sure you actually write everything down that you're tasked to do and cross it out when it's been done, pay.

Craig Anderson [00:23:39]:

Attention to the details and make sure you've got everything in front of you so you know what's got to get done.

Danny Anderson [00:23:44]:

Pretty much, yeah.

Craig Anderson [00:23:45]:

Especially in that early leadership role. You've got 20 people running around that you got to keep track of, but then you've got probably a whole world of people telling you what to do and what's important all the time. So it's a lot of things to keep track of. Well, that's cool. Well, normally at this point, I would ask people to find out ways they could follow you on social media if they wanted to connect with you. But given the nature of what you do, that's probably not something that's all out there for people to see.

Danny Anderson [00:24:09]:

Yeah, I'm going to take a pass on that one.

Craig Anderson [00:24:12]:

But someday you will be out of the Navy and you'll have a great social following so people can just keep out for Danny Anderson someday down the road, maybe in, say, 15 years. Well, Danny, thanks so much for coming on and sharing the story of your Executive Evolution in your career so far. I really appreciate it.

Danny Anderson [00:24:28]:

Of course, dad.

Craig Anderson [00:24:33]:

Well, I really enjoyed that opportunity to interview my son. He's really grown into a leader early on in his career, and that's just going to continue to grow for him. I do want to break down today's interview in the areas of competence, competence and calm, as I always do today in the area of competence. What I think is so important is Danny talked about you need to ask for help, especially early on in your leadership career. You don't have to know all the answers. You're there to provide guidance and direction, but you can't know everything. So be sure to ask for help in the area of confidence. Know that leadership can be a sacrifice.

Craig Anderson [00:25:11]:

That's something you have to understand about it going in now. Maybe not now. Maybe that sacrifice is not as extreme as the captain of the USS Johnston in the story Danny told us about. But sometimes you're going to have to take the hit in your leadership career for the greater good of the organization. So know that going in and that's part of being confident as a leader. And then finally, in the area of calm, Danny talked about how you have to know that you're going to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and that's going to make you better next time as you grow in your leadership career. Thanks so much, Danny. What a pleasure to have you on as a guest on the podcast today.

Craig Anderson [00:25:51]:

What a pleasure to have you as a guest on the pod today. Really enjoyed the experience as always. You can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is building your confidence, confidence and calm. See you next time on Executive Evolution.