Vice Admiral Sandy Stosz has had an incredibly decorated career over the course of 40 years in the U.S. Coast Guard. Along the way, she’s broken down barriers and collected a long list of ‘firsts.’ This week, we speak with her about her perspective on leading the way, having moral courage, and choosing service.
Into the Storm (ft. Sandy Stosz)
From breaking through ice (and glass ceilings) to defending her nation, Sandy Stosz shares lessons in leadership
OPENING QUOTE:
“Being true to yourself, believing in yourself, gave you that power to demonstrate moral courage. Those three principles of leadership all melded together, for me, to be the leader I needed to be to get the most out of that Coast Guard Academy, to best serve its people.”
—Sandy Stosz
GUEST BIO:
Vice Admiral Sandy Stosz began her career in the U.S. Coast Guard as a young ensign, serving on polar icebreakers and conducting national security missions from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Over the course of her 40-year career, she’s served for 12 years at sea, commanding two ships— including being the first woman to command an icebreaker on the Great Lakes— and running security checks in the area around New York in the tense period following 9/11.
Stosz is also the first woman to be superintendent at the Coast Guard Academy, during which time she was named as one of the 150 Women Who Shake the World. She then became deputy commandant for Mission Support, directing one of the Coast Guard's largest enterprises in her final land-based role.
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[14:55] - Overcoming Adversity— and Antagonism
A hostile environment can’t stop you
When Stosz first entered the Coast Guard Academy, she faced hostility from men who felt she didn’t belong there. Rather than give into feelings of inadequacy, she embraced her stubbornness and refused to let someone tell her she didn’t belong. She relied on her own power, rather than falling into feelings of victimhood, and the result was her unprecedented career.
[23:52] - Core Values & Coast Guard Values
Bringing personal values to an organization
Stosz reflects on how she built upon her personal core values through training in the Coast Guard. To her, leadership begins with core values. Leaders cultivate environments that reflect their core values, and make those values integral to the organization they serve.
[30:37] - From Outsider to Leader
Stepping into established teams as a newcomer
It’s always difficult to step into a leadership role in an environment with an already-established culture. But Stosz doesn’t see this as a liability— she sees it as a superpower. When you’re the ‘outsider,’ you can bring new perspectives that shake up long-held beliefs and traditions in order to revitalize an organization. Embrace your other-ness, rather than running from it.
[46:17] - When to Push & When to Release
The delicate balance of leadership
Sometimes it’s so easy to become “utterly focused on doing the job.” But sometimes, as a leader, you have a duty to care enough about your people to tell them they’ve done enough and it’s time to rest. This is even— and perhaps especially— important in high-pressure situations, such as the one Stosz faced commanding a security ship role in New York after 9/11.
[59:49] - The Importance of Accountability
Don’t turn your back on the standards that matter most
Setting standards is easy. But holding people accountable for those standards is much more difficult. But when you lead with moral courage, you’re empowered to hold yourself and others to a higher standard— and you’ll often find that your people rise to the challenge and beyond.
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CREDITS:
Sandy Stosz:
Being true to yourself, believing in yourself gave you that power to demonstrate moral courage. Those three principles of leadership all melded together, for me, to be the leader I needed to be to get the most out of that Coast Guard Academy to best serve its people.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to Perspectives From the Top. I'm Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience from military, business, and government, bestselling author, and your guide to greater success. Together, we'll discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers, and trailblazers. The must-know trends, thought-provoking revelations, and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our Perspectives From the Top community of listeners around the world. It's great to share the insights of such successful people with you to help you get to where you want to be. Now, today's guest is Vice Admiral Sandy Stosz, who started out in the U.S. Coast Guard as a young ensign, serving on polar icebreakers, conducting national security missions all the way from the Arctic right down to the Antarctic. During her 40-year career, Sandy served for 12 years at sea, commanding two ships, including being the first woman to command an icebreaker on the Great Lakes, and running security checks around New York, post-911 on her second command.
Chris Roebuck:
She was also the first woman to be superintendent, leading the Coast Guard Academy, during which time she was named as one of the 150 Women Who Shake the World. After that, she became deputy commandant for Mission Support, directing one of the Coast Guard's largest enterprises in her final land-based role.
Chris Roebuck:
Sandy, great to have you on Perspectives From the Top, and thank you for taking the time to talk to us. First question, going back to when you started this amazing journey that you've been on, our listeners are really interesting because lurking somewhere, deep in someone's past, is someone who's had a fundamental impact on where they ended up. it might be a family member, a mentor, a teacher. Was there somebody who got you going on this path at the very beginning?
Sandy Stosz:
That's a great question, Chris. I think, probably, everybody you asked has to think a little bit about that because if we've gotten where we are, it's not on our own. We've had a lot of help along the way. I have been blessed to have some mentors, coaches, teachers that have helped me along the way, and I hardly know where to start.
Sandy Stosz:
When I was a young person, before I started my career, I have to say it was my swim coach and my track coach who were those instrumental leaders in my young life, who helped me to find my potential, and achieve, and develop the confidence needed to then go on and apply to the Coast Guard Academy and start a job in the Coast Guard, a career in the Coast Guard actually.
Sandy Stosz:
I was a shy, young girl. Didn't have a robust confidence set at the early ages and I needed to build that, and I did that through athletics. I think that's important because people have to find their niche, because not everybody's born with confidence and ready to jump right in and be a leader. There's the question of whether leaders are born or made. I really believe it's both. I definitely was not a born leader, but I was helped along the way to become a leader by people like my coaches who saw potential in me, nurtured me, looked for where I could do my best.
Sandy Stosz:
Even with swimming and track, I didn't know exactly what parts of those sports I was good at. My swimming coach helped me discover that I could do the butterfly, and my track coach helped me discover that I could throw the shot put and discus. Those two men had a big influence on my career by setting good role models and reaching their hand out to help me to discover where my talents lied so I could then get the confidence I needed to track into a college, which was the Coast Guard Academy, and a career in the Coast Guard.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really interesting in that it is just those teachers or people that give you that simple foundation of structure and focus that then, as you do the execution of the structure and focus, helps you build confidence, and then it starts. It then starts rolling from then on. It's just one of those powerful things that just that little seed at the beginning just blossoms into something that is quite amazing.
Chris Roebuck:
To some degree, you preempted my next question, which was ... But don't worry. When you were finishing your education, obviously, you were thinking about what to do. As you said to me before, as you were having these thoughts, suddenly, a new career opportunity opened up for women that wasn't there before. Now, listeners will now know what it was, but tell us ... The Coast Guard Academy and serving in the Coast Guard. Tell our listeners a little bit more about why when that opportunity suddenly opened up did you say to yourself, "Actually, this is interesting"?
Sandy Stosz:
Chris, first I'll say you're just a great interviewer because you just set me right up to segue right into that second question, so it's perfect. For context for your readers, I was born in 1960. The reason that's important is because in 1972 in the United States, we put into place the Title IX. It's a law that required equal opportunity and education for girls and women. That was '72. '73, we had the Equal Rights Amendment, and so when I went into high school in 1974 as a freshman, you can see the ground was laid for me to have the opportunities that my mother, and even girls who were three years older than me had not had, because when I went to high school, there were organized sports for women.
Sandy Stosz:
We were assigned an official coach, so it used to be before that time, women were just a club team or something in high school. We actually had our coach, and we had the same opportunities as the men. That gets to where your first question was, with the men, the coaches who role-modeled for me, helped me develop my core values, which were the foundation of my character.
Sandy Stosz:
In 1976 when I was a junior in high school, this whole trend of equal opportunity continued with the law being put in place that the service academies in the United States ... Which is the Army at West Point, the Navy in Annapolis, Colorado Springs is the Air Force. You've got Kings Point for Merchant Marine actually, in Kings Point, New York, and then the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. All of us were required to open their doors to women. It had been all men until then. It's hard to believe now.
Sandy Stosz:
I was born and raised in Ellicott City, Maryland, which is right around the corner from the Naval Academy. When this law was put in place, the Baltimore Sun did a feature article on the Naval Academy. My neighbor, knowing that I was a tomboy ... Because I was the oldest of four kids, and my three brothers were boys. Well, so I was the only girl with the three brothers. Knowing that I was a tomboy, my neighbor walked that article to my mother and said, "Hey, Sandy might be interested in this new opportunity."
Sandy Stosz:
I looked at that article. It was a two-page spread, and I read it. It talked about how young people who joined the Naval Academy could get a free education, serve their country, see the world. All that appealed to me, and so I applied. You had to go through the congressional nomination process, and then go and get the appointment process. Meanwhile, my guidance counselor, who in the amazing but true category, Chris, just happened to have been my swimming coach. He was now my guidance counselor. He was obviously a man who was trying to help develop young people.
Sandy Stosz:
He said, "Sandy, you can't put all your eggs in one basket. Look at this flyer I got in the mail from this place called the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut." We poured over that flyer and between the two of us, we decided the Coast Guard was a small Navy. Of course, the Coast Guard's not a small Navy, and maybe we'll get to that later. I applied there kind of like as a backup, but the Coast Guard Academy accepted me right away.
Sandy Stosz:
Meanwhile, I was trying to go through the political nomination process, meeting with my congressman and senators, and trying to get that nod of approval. I was still going through that process when the Coast Guard Academy had accepted me because they work on a directed mission program, whereas the Naval Academy and the other service academies work under a nomination and congressionally mandated system.
Sandy Stosz:
I accepted the Coast Guard Academy because they wanted me for what I knew, not who I knew. I wanted to go somewhere where, appreciated me based on merit, not based on maybe my connections, who my parents knew, somebody who knew the congressman or senator, get me a good word. That's how I ended up at the Coast Guard Academy.
Chris Roebuck:
That's an amazing story. It's interesting, and until you said that when we spoke, I did not realize that, as an officer, to get into the American military academies, you need to be sponsored by, effectively, a local politician.
Sandy Stosz:
Yes, that's the case. The Coast Guard, this is a little too much detail maybe, but law is important. As you've seen, I've gone through how law gave me equal opportunity. Well, the law, Title XIV is where the Coast Guard falls for jurisdiction. Even though we're a military service, but the rest of the armed forces, under the Department of Defense, fall under Title X. We're under Department of Homeland Security in the Coast Guard, although we're still a military service, because we have multiple missions.
Chris Roebuck:
Which, to some degree, goes to the point that the Coast Guard, because of that way that the selection system operates is, in some ways, likely to get a more diverse group of people coming in.
Sandy Stosz:
You hit the nail on the head, because we don't just get who the congressman happens to know. We actually target into communities that have been underserved, looking for people who have the skills, the talent, the motivation, and the passion to be part of our United States Coast Guard. We have done very, very well with recruiting and retaining women and minorities.
Chris Roebuck:
That's a really interesting detail, to be honest, I didn't expect to even come out. I didn't know we were going to talk about this. That's fascinating. The ability to select the way that the Coast Guard does means that you can be truly representative of the communities that you represent, which I think is great.
Chris Roebuck:
You go to the Coast Guard Academy and, obviously, you have to do your training there before you go to sea. You obviously have to get it right because Coast Guard is a pressure job. It can be a dangerous job and arduous. Clearly, you were one of the first women ever to go there. That must have been challenging in a number of ways, in all sorts of ways. Tell our listeners about what that experience was like, being a trailblazing woman in an academy dominated by men.
Sandy Stosz:
I came into the Coast Guard Academy in 1978. I entered when I graduated high school. It's a four-year college where you get a STEM degree. I was the third class to have women, and so when-
Chris Roebuck:
Quick dive-in for listeners who aren't in the U.S. STEM is science, technology, engineering, and math.
Sandy Stosz:
Thank you for clarifying that, Chris. Yeah, so you get a bachelor of science degree.
Chris Roebuck:
A science degree, basically.
Sandy Stosz:
Yeah, exactly. Which, in my book, means it's really hard because engineering and math have always been hard for me. I was in the third class of women, so out of a corp of cadets, the four-year corp of 1,000 cadets, there were only 5% women. My class entered in with about 312 cadets or students, and four years later, we graduated 156 total. Of those 312, 30 were women, and we only graduated 10 or 12 of those women, so it was like, I think it was 10 that we graduated, so high attrition rate.
Sandy Stosz:
It was very hard. It was hard for men and women. Because I showed that it was about a 50% attrition rate for men too. For women, it was a little extra hard because a lot of the men didn't want us there because we were still new. I remember thinking to myself, "I just came from a high school where there's boys and girls, and it's 50-50, and here I am at this new place, and a lot of the guys don't want us here because it's their academy."
Sandy Stosz:
I remember there was this, people would say, the guys would say behind your back or just so you could hear them, "Well, they must not be real women if they're coming to the Coast Guard Academy." I'm like, "Okay, so we're not real women. What are we?" It was, for somebody who already didn't have huge confidence, even though I had been building confidence through sports, I did well in academics, it was still hard to maintain your confidence when people all around you didn't think you belonged there.
Sandy Stosz:
If you're going to succeed, you needed to overcome that and train yourself, because this doesn't come easy, to understand that you don't have to listen to what somebody else is judging you for, that you have the power in your own mind to choose to ignore what they're saying and to prove them wrong. I think I was helped a little bit by my stubbornness.
Sandy Stosz:
Even though I was unconfident, I was also stubborn, so I wasn't going to let somebody tell me I didn't belong somewhere. That irritated me, so I'm like, "Okay. I might not have much power as a freshman in this new place where I'm not wanted by some people. I might not have power over the system, but nobody can take away the power I have over my own thoughts, and feelings, and actions." I learned really early in that experience to go inside for my own power, and not be a victim, not to let somebody else tell me how I should feel and fall for that trap.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, It's a testament. You got through the system, and certainly for listeners, there is for all military academies around the world, for officer academies, the rates that people fail to complete the course are always 40, 50, maybe 60% because of the fact that the training is so tough, because it has to be for where you may end up being a leader. We can touch on that.
Chris Roebuck:
Just for our listeners, many of our listeners outside the U.S. will be in countries that has a Coast Guard, which is responsible for the policing and management of the coast or coastal waters around the shoreline. The U.S. Coast Guard has a broader remit that is much, much wider than that, not only in U.S. waters but across the world, and it interacts with the U.S. Navy. Give our listeners a brief idea of that broader global role of the Coast Guard, because that's what you then ended up doing.
Sandy Stosz:
I'm really glad you asked that question because the United States Coast Guard is a big force. We're a force of about 50 or 60,000 active duty civilian and reserve members with a budget of about 13 billion. We've got hundreds of fixed-wing, rotor-wing aircraft, ships from over 400-feet, like small frigate-size ships, down to small boats that guard our coast. We are, for the global listeners, we associate on the international scene, oftentimes, with other countries' Navies, so our U.S. Coast Guard works with Navies all around the world of these countries that don't have a full Navy, but have a robust Coast Guard, so that, for starters.
Sandy Stosz:
The U.S. Coast Guard is a military maritime and multi-mission service, different from our Navy partners. We're part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Defense, but we do become part of our sister sea service, the Navy, in times of declared war, which hasn't happened since World War II. In World War II, we were right there with the Navy.
Sandy Stosz:
In fact, your readers, your listeners, I bet you, won't know that the U.S. Coast Guard crewed, our members served as cockswains driving the landing crafts that delivered United States Marines to the beaches of Normandy during D-Day, and all across the South Pacific Islands during World War II. It was Coast Guard men, in those days, delivering marines, who were all men in those days, to the beaches in the South Pacific and in Normandy.
Sandy Stosz:
In fact, the only Medal of Honor recipient the Coast Guard has, his name was Douglas Munro. He was a signalman and a cockswain of one of these boats that was delivering landing craft, delivering marines at Guadalcanal. When the marines had to retreat quickly from Guadalcanal during that infamous battle, the Coast Guard was right there to evacuate them. Douglas Munro, when his landing craft boat was providing cover with machine gun fire for the marines coming off, and he was shot and killed evacuating marines. That's our only Medal of Honor recipient, is Douglas Munro, serving in World War II.
Sandy Stosz:
Just by a little bit of history there, and counting up to present, we have these large, national security cutters that are brand new. They're 418-feet long. We've got a fleet of those. I believe we have eight, don't quote me on that, and more coming. Right now, we have those ships patrolling in the South China Sea, for example, conducting Freedom of Navigation exercises.
Sandy Stosz:
We have six new, 150-foot fast-response cutter patrol boats over in the Persian Gulf, and the 5th Fleet operates over there, the United States Navy's 5th Fleet. There's oil rigs over there that we're keeping the Persian Gulf safe and secure, and we have polar security cutters in the Arctic and the Antarctic doing missions that range from science to, once again, maintaining a United States presence in those contested waters.
Sandy Stosz:
We partner with the Navy as a soft power to their hard power. Our ships are pure white with a red and blue stripe, so we have this bigger mission. We could be doing search and rescue in the South China Sea, or law enforcement for fisheries in the South Pacific in some of these areas where territorial waters are not respected by certain nations. We do have a much broader role than your listeners might expect. We do that because keeping America safe and secure requires us to keep the threat pressed away from our shores, so we help the Navy with that, and we have different authorities.
Sandy Stosz:
When we were having piracy problems at the Horn of Africa, Coast Guard law enforcement detachments were deployed onboard Navy ships because we had the legal authorities to be able to board international vessels in international seas and provide the Navy, by virtue of our presence, the authority to engage with those pirates in that activity, so it's a very interesting service the Coast Guard. It's small, but very connected to the interagency and foreign Navies, and Coast Guards, our DoD counterparts, and it's mostly because of our authorities and the way we've learned to interoperate with others, because of our small size. We need them and they need us.
Chris Roebuck:
The broad role that the Coast Guard has is obviously reflected in your training. Your time at the Academy is obviously focused on enabling you to be a more effective leader and being able to do your role. Give our listeners some insight into, what were those basic principles that the Coast Guard Academy, that you took away from your time there, that you think are of value, maybe not just in the Coast Guard context but within the context of any organization?
Sandy Stosz:
That's a good question. Thank you for asking that. At the Coast Guard Academy, I built upon my personal core values through that training. I'll back up just for one minute to say something I should have said earlier, because I always start my talks with the importance of a leader understanding their personal core values, because I believe those are the cornerstone and the foundation of their character.
Sandy Stosz:
My book, which I know you'll mention at some point, Breaking Ice & Breaking Glass, is all about leading with character. Not just being a good leader, but how to be a good character-centered leader. It starts with core values. My personal core values developed in childhood. I won't go into how I developed those, but they were honesty and humility, and hard work and perseverance. The hard work and perseverance is what got me through those four years at the Coast Guard Academy.
Sandy Stosz:
The core values that I then came into when I entered the Coast Guard Academy, on top of my four core values, honesty, humility, hard work, perseverance, were honor, respect, and devotion to duty. Those are the Coast Guard's three core values. You can see that between a person's personal core values and your organizational core values, you start to have a very good foundation that's going to help you to understand how to be a good leader.
Sandy Stosz:
At the Coast Guard Academy, it's all about training. It's about you're getting your four-year bachelor of science degree, but also coming out as a leader of character. The Coast Guard Academy and all the U.S. military armed service academies, the mission is to develop leaders of character, and so that starts with leading self. When you're a student, you're learning how to lead yourself, which is all these self-awareness issues. Your core values, that's why I'm so big on those, and who you are, what your interests are, what your personality is.
Sandy Stosz:
We give our cadets personality tests so they can help understand how they think. I call that real diversity, cognitive diversity. They start to understand all that about yourself. Then you also learn how to lead others in incremental and amateur ways because you're just starting out as a leader, so leading self and leading others. I can't say, Chris, that when I came out of the Coast Guard Academy I had the full maturity on what I think were the best leadership traits, but those developed over time.
Sandy Stosz:
What I will tell you is that fast forward 30 years, and I was at the Academy again. I know you'll get to that later in the interview I'm sure. I spent four years there as superintendent, which was kind of amazing to go from being a cadet, which I didn't think I would ever graduate. I was really worried about making it through as a student at the Coast Guard Academy. 30 years later, I come back as a superintendent, or the equivalent of the president of that college.
Sandy Stosz:
By then, I had taken all that I learned as a student at the Coast Guard Academy, all that I applied throughout my different command positions over the course of 12 years at sea, and I had a leadership philosophy of three things that I think go into effective leadership, for a leader to get good outcomes, both for their organization and for their people.
Sandy Stosz:
Those three parts of my leadership philosophy are build trust and earn respect, and that's something you have to do every single day. You can't just presume that because you're not senior, so you say you're the vice president of a company, for some of your listeners, or in my case, in the military, or up on the executive level, you can't just assume because you have position power that people are going to automatically respect you. No. You've got to use your personal power and your professional power to build trust and earn respect, and I call that the three Ps of power.
Sandy Stosz:
I was told when I was really young, "There's three Ps of power, Sandy. If you're going to succeed in the Coast Guard, you should lean on the personal power and the professional power, and use your position power only as a last resort." Your personal power is how you present yourself, how you're able to influence people, your empathy, your emotional intelligence. Your professional power is how hard you work, how much you know, how well you do your job, how you present yourself, what kind of a role model you are. Those are the two kinds of power you use every day to build trust and earn respect in your people.
Sandy Stosz:
The second part of my leadership philosophy is believe in yourself and others. It sounds simple, too simple, but too many people don't believe in themself. If you don't believe in yourself as a leader, if you're unconfident, or if you're overconfident, you're not going to be able to lead your people. If you're unconfident, don't trust yourself, you're going to be hard on your people, as hard on them as you are on yourself.
Sandy Stosz:
I'm sure people who are your listeners have heard, can hear themselves in what I'm saying. They've worked for somebody maybe that the boss is really hard on them and they tell them, "I'm only asking of you what I would do myself," but the boss is really being too hard on the people because they haven't come to that self-discovery of believing in themselves and not always having to pretend they're somebody else, so being genuine, believing in yourself, having confidence in yourself. That's really important.
Sandy Stosz:
Then, demonstrate moral courage. You don't hear this much when you hear people talking about what's important in a leader. You hear things like, "Communicate, and make decisions." All that's important, but demonstrating moral courage as a leader, too often, leaders skirt around the tough issues. They don't want to confront an issue or a person face-to-face and make the tough decisions that put somebody at disadvantage and that aren't going to make them popular, so they don't.
Sandy Stosz:
They end up, as a leader, being a bystander, and not engaging, not doing the morally correct thing. Just not doing anything wrong, but just avoiding doing the right thing. That's a nuance that a lot of people just don't want to grapple with because it's never fun to sit down and tell somebody they're not performing up to par, and exactly why. It's not fun to hold somebody accountable when they're really popular in the office and, "All they've done is rub that woman's shoulder. What harm is that? They're the best performer. We don't want to say anything to them and ruin their career." I think that's really an important element, is demonstrate moral courage. The other two, again, were believe in yourself and others, and build trust, and earn respect.
Chris Roebuck:
Putting those in place, because your first appointment at sea wasn't actually, to any great degree, around the coast of U.S. You were doing polar work. Unlike most listeners, you've seen the Arctic and the Antarctic, but that was your first role at sea. Inherently, therefore, you were still finding your feet.
Chris Roebuck:
You went into a military research ship, where there was an established crew. You were a new officer on that ship. How did you, within that environment, where virtually everybody else, I'm assuming was men, how did you establish your credibility with your peers and with your team?
Sandy Stosz:
That's a great question because people often look at being the only one or one of the only ones and being different as a liability, when I actually think it's a superpower. Keep in mind, I was born and raised with those three brothers, and then in a mostly male environment at the Academy, so I was used to being the one who was different.
Sandy Stosz:
When I came into a new role in my career, when I graduated from the Academy and started out as an officer in the Coast Guard, I was used to being the only woman. It was the men who were off-balance, so there's power in that. Say that for starters. Boy, first of all, what a dream come true. I graduate the Coast Guard Academy, and my first assignment, I go from New London, Connecticut, to Long Beach, California, to meet the Coast Guard cutter, Glacier, an icebreaker that's getting ready to deploy to Antarctica.
Sandy Stosz:
I wanted this adventure, this opportunity to see the world when I was picking a college, and picked the Coast Guard Academy, and here I am in the United States Coast Guard going to Antarctica. How amazing is that? I was one of the few women in a crew of about 220, but not the only woman, and not the first woman on that ship because in those early days, the Coast Guard was picking a few ships and cutters that they could send a critical mass of women to.
Sandy Stosz:
They were trying not to send women alone, so there were actually about 18 or 20 women out of 220. Most of them were enlisted. There were two of us officers. It was still unique, but the crew really rallied around us. I can tell you, the crew supported me. I didn't have any resistance, being a woman on that first ship of mine, and I really give the Coast Guard credit for this. We integrate so well.
Sandy Stosz:
I was the combat information center officer. It was my first role, believe it or not. That ship had a combat information center, a CIC, where you had radars, and you helped the ship navigate. In my, there were five of us in there. I was the only woman, but I had two guys who were African American, and two other guys who were white, and nobody could care less about the color of your skin or your gender. That wasn't important to doing the job.
Sandy Stosz:
In that department that I was in, we were responsible for safe navigation of that ship, going down across the equator, going into ice fields. Why would we want to worry about somebody's color of gender? It was all about your qualifications, your competence. Once again, I'll go back to that personal and professional power. You build trust and earn respect, and it transcended whatever demographic appearance you might have had.
Sandy Stosz:
I'm a full believer that workplaces, leaders who want to their workplace to come together, to unite and strengthen, as opposed to this division and weakening that we see around our country and around the globe even, you want to unite your people around a common mission, purpose, and values. In the Coast Guard, we have that nailed. We have three strong core values, honor, respect, and devotion to duty. We have 11 amazing missions. We have a great purpose in serving our nation, serving something bigger than ourselves.
Sandy Stosz:
I found that being one of the only women in the Coast Guard was not as hard as you might think because there was a fence of united purpose, values, and mission. It's still not easy for anybody, and you have to be professional. I'll give you an example of where it was a little bit hard, because women and men, I believe, can be different. I don't think women and men are all the same. I think that's why real diversity, there are different traits and characteristics in the genders. I was this less ... More shy, more quiet person. I'm an introvert, and I was thrust into the role of driving that ship.
Sandy Stosz:
My duty assignment was desk watch officer. That means that I drive the ship from the bridge or pilot house, and have to be up there responsible for this 300-foot icebreaker with a 220 crew, even when the captain's sleeping at night, so you have to be competent. You got to pass all the required competencies, and you break in for this watch under a qualified watch stander. I had been underway now on this new adventure, heading for Antarctica, standing the watch with people who are already qualified.
Sandy Stosz:
I got to the point where they thought and I thought I had all my qualifications, all the competencies needed. The next step was to have my boss recommend me to the captain, who would sign a letter that officially qualified me to stand the watch, but my boss wouldn't qualify me. One day, I went to see him and I said, "Hey, what else do I have to do? I've got all the competencies to do this job, but you're not recommending me for qualification." He says, "Well, I don't ... There's just something missing," and I pressed him on it.
Sandy Stosz:
He said, "I've got it." He said, "I'm not going to qualify you until you stand on the bridge of that ship like John Wayne with a six gun in each hand, barking orders." John Wayne was an action hero in our country in the 1960s and '70s. My boss, a man, back in the early 1980s when I was on the ship, had a vision of a competent deck watch officer as somebody who barked orders, and I was going to be a different kind of leader.
Sandy Stosz:
I was going to ask people to do their job and tell them, "Here's what you need to do," but I didn't need to bark orders. When I was told I had to be John Wayne, this action hero, if I was going to get qualified, my heart sank, and I went away, and I thought about it a lot, for a day or two, but then I had a revelation. I realized, I'm not John Wayne. I can't be John Wayne. I don't need to be John Wayne. I just need to be confident in the person that I am, and it was as simple as that.
Sandy Stosz:
Within the next couple of days, somehow I just exuded the confidence needed to put in there with the competence, and my boss qualified me. I think he sensed it. My lesson is that competence without confidence isn't going to get you where you're going. You can't uncouple them. They're two sides of the same coin, and I think a lot of women in the workplace, they get passed over for the next promotion and they think, "Oh, it must be gender discrimination." Maybe not. Maybe you're just not projecting the confidence your boss needs to see to select you to the next level.
Sandy Stosz:
If you're not confident enough, are you going to really take care of your people? Are you going to stand up for the company? I think a lot of people who aren't selected for the next promotion, if they're a minority or a woman, instead of going right to, "Well, it must be discrimination," need to say, "Wait a minute. Let me look inside first. Do I have the confidence and the competence needed to advance to the next level?"
Chris Roebuck:
I think there's, equally, just a lot of men that don't get jobs because of exactly what you said. The ability to, even if you have confidence, sorry, competence, the ability to do the leadership side of it.
Chris Roebuck:
One of the things that most of our listeners won't realize is that in many military services, there's a cycle of jobs, unlike a business, or other organization, or role, where what you do is you'll go and do some form of operational service, and then what you'll do is you'll then go and spend two or three years in an office environment doing the administrative planning and that sort of stuff to enable you to get a bigger picture perspective of how the whole thing works.
Chris Roebuck:
Inevitably, what you were doing was you were doing operational roles, and then going into the more administrative side of things. Often, people within the military find that those non-operational roles are frustrating, but others find that it is a useful step that allows you to see how the bigger parts of the machine work, that then allows you to be more effective when you get more senior. How did you find those repeated roles where you were pulled out of what was perceived as the real world of the Coast Guard and put into an office?
Sandy Stosz:
I'm so glad you asked that question, Chris. Obviously, your military background is serving you well, because you know to peel back that layer of the onion. I completely agree that when you go ... I was six years operational coming out of the Coast Guard Academy at sea, and when you go ashore for the first time, it's hard and you're thinking, "Man, here I've been out there operating. I've been to the Arctic, to the Antarctic, doing missions. I've been doing law enforcement," on, and on, and on. "What am I going to do in an office that can compare with this?"
Sandy Stosz:
My assignment officer, when I was just that young, late 20s officer finishing my first six years in the Coast Guard, all of them at sea, I go back to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C. I'm like, "Okay. My career must be over, surely." To make a long story short, I was in the job, working on the next icebreaker acquisition and loved it, but I ended up getting ... Somebody recognized me, and there's a whole story behind that. It's in my book. We don't have but a little bit of time here.
Sandy Stosz:
I got recognized. I went up to interview with the secretary of transportation, where the Coast Guard was at that time. We're now in Homeland Security. The secretary of transportation selected me to be his military aide, and I'm only an O-3, a lieutenant, so I'm only 28 years old, or something like 28, and here I am now at the top of the organization, working directly for a cabinet secretary, and I get to see the entire government.
Sandy Stosz:
I get to see the Coast Guard is a tiny spec, sorry to say, Coast Guard. It was my whole world. It's just a spec in the whole government of the United States of America. That perspective really helped me to be a better leader because I understood, at a young age, to look outside the lifelines, is what we say in the sea services, so outside just the confines of your own vessel to the bigger picture. Otherwise, I've known so many people who have gone more and more senior, up to the ranks and they're still operating inside of what is a hull of a ship because they never got from the tactical to the strategic.
Sandy Stosz:
I was able to get a presentation of what it's like to be at the strategic level, as a young officer, and I never looked back. Yeah, sure, I went out and did tactical jobs, but I made sure that as I went up the chain, I transitioned to that strategic outlook, which is what you're getting paid for. Yeah, it's fun to be at sea driving a ship, but at some point in time, some of those funner things that you did when you're young, you leave that to the next generation of young people coming up and you turn to your duties to look at the strategic opportunities for the organization, and you find deep satisfaction in that.
Sandy Stosz:
Meanwhile, you reach out your hand, and you start mentoring young people who are out there in those tactical roles, and you use your wisdom to give back. I found being ashore to be an incredible growth opportunity, a maturity opportunity, and it made me the leader who is capable of going up to the executive level.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, well, it's interesting because, obviously, for listeners, one of the ... This isn't just about the Coast Guard. There is a fundamental challenge in all organizations that all leaders have, moving from an operational perspective to a strategic perspective to enable them to see, particularly when people move to board level, to see the totality of the organization, because that is what makes boards of organizations effective.
Chris Roebuck:
One of the most critical things that I did, as someone who assessed people for their potential fitness to go on a board and help to develop them in that, was their ability to take the big picture view. Because if you have a group of people at the top of an organization, all of whom are just thinking about their own department, and not thinking about the big picture, and not thinking we, not me, and not thinking one organization, the organization isn't an organization. It's effectively a set of suborganizations that won't work well together.
Chris Roebuck:
For listeners, think about what Sandy's saying within the context of organizational principles that apply just as much to the commercial world. Interspersed with those driving a desk jobs, you had some really interesting roles. You had, I think it was your first command was escorting ships across the Great Lakes to make sure they were safe.
Chris Roebuck:
Then you were on, commanding a larger ship that was supposed to be doing fisheries duties off the East Coast, but because of 911, ended up, effectively, protecting New York Harbor from a security perspective, and checking all the ships coming in and out. That latter one, in particular, you must have been under a lot of pressure, given that there are an awful lot of ships going into New York Harbor. We alluded to it in a discussion we had, the fact that people within this environment just want to keep doing the job, but you, as the commander of the ship, commanding officer of the ship, going back to that last point, have a responsibility to look at the totality of what's going on.
Chris Roebuck:
I found your comment interesting because I've seen this happen before in the military, but I've also seen in happen with young people within commercial organizations, that they are utterly focused on doing the job and to keep doing the job, but at some point in time, you as a leader, have a duty of care to turn around and say, "No, you've done enough. It's time to rest." In that command role in particular, that slightly pressurized environment, you were trying to balance all of those elements around doing the the job, training people to be better, making sure they got their rest, et cetera. How did you balance all of those, like juggling a set of balls?
Sandy Stosz:
It was, and something you said triggered me, because you said something about somewhat pressurized environment. All of us leaders work, at times, in pressurized environments. There's a deadline. There's a hostile takeover coming your way. There's something, but post-911, which is when I was operating in command of a ship off of New York Harbor, it was nonstop, uncertain, pressurized environment. We didn't know there was going to be an end. We knew it wasn't going to be short-term, so it's a little different.
Sandy Stosz:
There's two kinds of skills leaders need. How to respond to pressure in a short-term pressure, how to keep focused and engaged, but then, what do you do in the longer haul? There's no playbook for this. There's no script. There's nobody coaching you, and there's not enough resources. You're just told to go out there and try to make it work.
Sandy Stosz:
This is where having strategic focus and experience came in for me, because I think a lot of people do get tunnel visioned into the moment as leaders and they're like, "Okay. We have a huge job to do. We're responsible for security off of New York Harbor. We're not going to let any ship get through that might be carrying something that could threaten the port, like say a dirty bomb or something," and so we're just told, "Get out there and board as many vessels as you can."
Sandy Stosz:
Well, you can drive your crew into the ground, and we found ourselves doing that at first. We were trying to board all the boats, so we were ... It was wintertime. We were in the rough seas off the North Atlantic, lowering a small boat down. There'd be guys coming back from a boarding on one of these great big merchant vessels, 800, 900-feet long. Imagine trying to climb up the ladders, they hang over, the accommodation ladders that hang over the side, and slam against the side trying to get onboard in a boat, little, tiny rigid-hull boat with a rubber pontoons. They'd come back and they had ice all over their clothing, so people were exhausted.
Sandy Stosz:
A few weeks into this patrol, the first one that we had those conditions, I realized that something had to give and that I, as a leader, had to step in. Because usually, a leader is happy to see their people turning to, doing more than expected, working as hard as they can. A leader's like, "Yes." Well, I'm like, "Whoa. I've got to dial this knob back. The heat is too high," so I said, "Okay. What's my top priorities here?"
Sandy Stosz:
Quite frankly, the mission is the top priority but equal with that is safety. I got to have people doing the job safely or they'll kill somebody or sink the ship. Then I can't do the mission, so your safety's right up there. I'm like, "Okay. To run a safe ship and effective operations, I've got to balance a three-legged stool of the operations, the rest that the crew needs, and the training they've got to do to stay competent in other parts of their jobs."
Sandy Stosz:
You can't have an emergency go off on the ship and people aren't trained for where to respond and how to react, so we had to balance those three elements, operations, training, and crew rest, like a three-legged stool. Nobody was going to do it unless I gave a direct order, so I gathered the crew on the mess deck once I'd figured this out, and of course, I talked to my senior leadership and said, "Hey, we've got to do something different because we're burning people out, and something's going to happen. We're going to have a mishap or something."
Sandy Stosz:
I had the crew on the mess deck, which is where we all gather in a ship. It's where they eat lunch. I said, "Look, I'm not only giving y'all permission, I'm telling you, we have to start doing something different. I want you chief petty officers, we need to have our balance here. I want to do the operations, but I want you to get your crew the rest they need, the regular rest you'd get in a tough operations tempo, and I want you to keep on doing the training. We're going to take time out during the day and spend two hours on Wednesday doing a drill for man overboard, or something else we need to drill on, and make sure we're competent."
Sandy Stosz:
"We're going to take, and we're going to say we're going to do three boardings a day, not six. We're going to have the space. We're not going to try to board every single boat that comes." I made it clear that this is what we're going to do, and it gave people permission to take a heavy sigh and say, "Ah, okay. We're going to rerack our priorities." That was really important as a leader, because I could have kept letting that snowball roll down the hill until it crashed and shattered at the bottom.
Sandy Stosz:
Leaders need to know when to step in, and you get that from having a strategic perspective, and having seen a bigger pictures, and knowing that you're just a small part of it, and the world's not going to stop if you don't board every ship going in. I think leaders bringing that strategic perspective and creating a sense of management and calmness in an office. It might not be measured calm. I don't know. Managing everything so that people are still in a high, up-tempo, but they're able to cope mentally with it, and physically, and emotionally so you've got the balance.
Chris Roebuck:
It's that optimizing performance without burnout.
Sandy Stosz:
Yeah.
Chris Roebuck:
After that, you then had more senior strategic roles. You were the director of the Coast Guard Reserve, which must have been interesting, because you were then dealing with civilians who were part-time Coast Guard. Then, as you alluded to, you got your ultimate role, which was you were head of the Coast Guard Academy with 1,000 trainees. Just a brief comment about, one, how you felt. Whether it was really interesting and powerful having a reserve who weren't full-time Coast Guard who had different perspectives and then also, what did it feel like being in command of the Academy?
Sandy Stosz:
Okay, so Coast Guard Reserve. I'm so glad you asked that. All the services in the United States armed forces, including the Coast Guard, have a reserve component, and that's not the National Guard, by the way. That's different. This is a reserve component of people who want to serve their country. They go through an accession source, either enlisted or officer, but they're going to be part-time. In our country, they drill, quote, quote. They come in and serve at a unit that's assigned to them near their home one weekend a month, and then two weeks during every year.
Sandy Stosz:
They can be called up to deploy though, and we've had reservists up on orders for years at a time over in the Persian Gulf, for instance. The reserves though are normally people who have a civilian occupation. They're teachers, they're financial managers, they're anything you can imagine. The amazing thing about the Coast Guard reservists is they are easy to lead because they have a passion for the job they're doing.
Sandy Stosz:
We've had investment bankers who want to be an enlisted boatswain mate and drive a boat on weekends, and drive a boat around to conduct boardings in a harbor. You don't want to come in and do the reserve duty in the financial accounting office. They want to pursue this passion of driving a small boat and skipping across the waves, so you have people who are passionate about this part-time service they're doing.
Sandy Stosz:
You also have people who are a little more relaxed in the chain command, so I always felt like I really was able to trust that my reserve leadership was telling me what I needed to know, not what I wanted to hear. Whereas, in the Coast Guard, the chain of command, no matter how good people are, there's this deference that gets in the way sometimes of your subordinates really being honest with you and telling you what you need to know. They're going to try to plate it up for you really nice and gentle, and they don't want to create a bad reaction. I love the reservists because they're passionate for what they do and because they're genuine, and I can really feel like they can tell me what I need to know.
Chris Roebuck:
That's interesting. Then the Academy, that must have been a joy to take over because then after the Academy, you then supervised the Academy as a commandant, and all of that. Talk about the feelings that you had taking over the Academy. Also, I think that leads into your book, Breaking Ice, Breaking Glass.
Sandy Stosz:
Right. Yes.
Chris Roebuck:
Pick up, just give us a quick overview of the Academy and how all of this has pulled together in terms of the principles you pick up on in your book.
Sandy Stosz:
Absolutely. It is a 40-year journey, and that's not maybe normal for a lot of your listeners, and that's okay because that's real diversity. There's people who choose to switch around their career. They work for 10 different companies by the time they've been in 40 years, but you know what? In the Coast Guard, I moved 20-some-odd times, so I actually had 15 or 20 new jobs, just under the same umbrella organization.
Sandy Stosz:
It though was like coming full circle when I was able to come back as the superintendent or president of the Coast Guard Academy, and take those experiences with people and operations, having moved from the tactical to the strategic, and oh my goodness, did you ever need that, moving up to lead, be the president of an institution of higher education. There's a lot of complexity there. Maybe it goes hand-in-hand with being an academic institution, but there's a lot of different kinds of people, from full-time faculty, to the people who mow the lawns and keep the maintenance up, to the cadets, and so you have to really bring all the personal and professional qualities you've learned together to the table.
Sandy Stosz:
You find yourself, as the president of the college, the position power is huge, but you're not going to get anything done to move that organization forward ... I had five goals that I wanted to achieve while I was there. I'm not going to achieve those goals if I just say, "I'm the new president, everybody. Here is my five goals that you're going to do." You've got to really, really leverage your personal and professional power when you're orchestrating a big organization as a conductor more than as some kind of chain of command leader.
Sandy Stosz:
You really need to lean on those skills of persuading people, motivating people, inspiring people so that the several hundred people that you have working at the Academy, and the 1,000 trainees, the cadets are all motivated and inspired to bring that Academy to the best level it can be, and to move it forward to achieve the goals you want to achieve so that all the cadets, all the people who work there feel fulfilled and you're moving your organization forward.
Sandy Stosz:
That was not easy, and that's when I sat down and wrote that leadership philosophy that I talked about earlier on, where I found there's three principles that, I believe, had worked for me and made me the leader I was, actually helped me to lead the Academy and achieve some level of success there in achieving our goals. Those, once again, were believe in yourself and others. I had, heck, 1,000 young people I had to believe in, and all the faculty and staff.
Sandy Stosz:
Build trust and earn respect every single day, with the position of power being the last thing you go to. Then, demonstrate moral courage. There were times at that Academy, that's where I really felt that had to come out the most because it is so easy to look the other way. There's a famous quote saying, "The standard you walk past is a standard you accept." In a training environment where people are learning, at the Coast Guard Academy or any other college, I would argue, you need to set the standards, hold people accountable to the standards.
Sandy Stosz:
It's easy to set standards. "Oh, yeah. We have these performance evaluations. Oh, yeah. We have these requirements," but holding people accountable for the standards becomes a whole nother level of effort that many, many leaders turn their backs on, or turn their eyes away from. I think that's where I really found that being true to yourself, believing in yourself gave you that power to demonstrate moral courage. Those three principles of leadership all melded together, for me, to be the leader I needed to be to get the most out of that Coast Guard Academy to best serve its people.
Chris Roebuck:
That's great advice for any of our listeners, those three things. How can people learn more about you and your book, Sandy, and the Coast Guard?
Sandy Stosz:
Absolutely. I'm really thankful for the chance to talk about the book and just say, Chris and I have only grazed the surface of my time in the service. It's all available in my new book, Breaking Ice & Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters. It's designed to help people at all levels, leaders at all level to become the best leader they can be.
Sandy Stosz:
It is available through my website. There's a button you can click. Of course, you can get it on Amazon, your local bookstores, anywhere you want. www.sandrastosz, all one word, .com. I've also got a weekly blog, Leading With Character. I tackle a different leadership topic every week. That blog is on my website.
Sandy Stosz:
I would just finish by saying the Coast Guard is a great place for women to serve. It's come so far in the 40 years since I entered. We have opportunity for everybody. The only limit that you're going to face is the limit you set on yourself, whether you're a woman, a minority, anybody.
Sandy Stosz:
The last words of advice I would leave for people is to be bold, so take big steps. Believe in yourself. Be bold, and then you can become whatever you want to be. That's a mantra that I found, looking back, worked for me. Believe in myself, be bold, and become all you can be. I know that a lot of our listeners are more senior executives, but maybe that's something to inspire the young people working for you.
Chris Roebuck:
I think, Sandy, that will inspire everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. It's been great, and I'm sure my listeners will be able to get all sorts of things they can go and do now out of what you've just said. Thank you very much, indeed.
Sandy Stosz:
Thank you for having me, Chris.
Chris Roebuck:
My pleasure.
Chris Roebuck:
So many great insights from Sandy there, which are easily applicable in any environment, not just the Coast Guard. Certainly, the three principles that she set out at the end, which she said guided her through her career, are applicable anywhere. One, believe in yourself and others. Two, build trust and earn respect. Three, demonstrate moral courage.
Chris Roebuck:
Given my experience across multiple sectors, and I expect for most of you listening in all sorts of different sectors, if your leaders were doing those things and if you were to do those things as a leader, it would produce positive results. Note here that within the world of the Coast Guard, which can be dangerous and high-pressure, these things take on an even greater importance.
Chris Roebuck:
I would just add that one of the most interesting points, I think, is that Sandy mentioned that not many other guests have mentioned, is that often, leaders are trying to encourage people to do more, but that there are certain groups of people in certain roles where, actually, leaders have a responsibility to say, "No, you can't do any more." It's perfectly possible for young, ambitious, and driven people to push themselves too hard and the leader has a duty of care to prevent that. We'll explore more of that in my reflection.
Chris Roebuck:
Have a think about how you can use some of Sandy's ideas to help you get to where you want to be and certainly, I'll be feeding them into my keynotes and masterclasses to help my audiences in the future. Don't forget that in a week, I will be giving you more depth and key takeaways from Sandy in my insights and ideas for action in my reflection. If you've used any of the insights you've got from Perspectives From the Top and they've helped you, send me your success stories. I'd love to hear them.
Chris Roebuck:
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Chris Roebuck:
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