It's Your Ship

A former United States Secretary of Defense, Perry was Abrashoff’s boss who influenced his leadership style. Abrashoff served as a military aide to Perry and considers the Defense Secretary to be the finest leader he had ever met. While speaking of his successful tenure as captain of the Benfold, Abrashoff credits much of his leadership style to Perry, a role model outside of his family who provided a positive model of leadership. He claims to have received an education while simply watching Perry at work in his role as Defense Secretary. Specifically, Abrashoff learned from Perry the importance of active listening as it relates to leadership. Of Perry’s ability to make people feel heard and listened to, Abrashoff says, “Each person who talked to him had his complete, undivided attention. Everyone blossomed in his presence, because he was so respectful, and I realized I wanted to affect people the same way” (54). While Abrashoff admits that his own listening skills were not as good as he wanted them to be, he often would recall this particular skill Perry demonstrated and he would use it to inform his own approach to communication while captain of the Benfold. Another skill that Abrashoff learned from Perry was to harness the power of language: “If leaders back their words with action, if they practice what they preach, their words create a self-fulfilling prophecy” (61). Abrashoff borrows a portion of the subtitle of this book, “The Best Damn Ship in the Navy,” from Perry’s remarks about the US Navy as “the best damn Navy in the world” (61). Abrashoff creates the catch phrase, which becomes the ship’s mantra and create an ideal that the crew strives to achieve.

Rafalko was a Radioman First Class during Abrashoff’s tenure on the Benfold. Abrashoff credits Rafalko with figuring out how to operate a new communication system that had yet to be deployed. Amazingly, during a 1997 crisis in Iraq, the Navy fleet in the Persian Gulf was still using an outdated and overwhelmed communication system. With such high stakes, communication problems were potentially catastrophic. Rafalko mentioned to Abrashoff that he had read all the manuals on the new system and offered to teach the rest of the fleet in the Persian Gulf. Eventually, he did so, and a possible communications crisis was avoided. Abrashoff mentions the anecdote to further illustrate his point that a leader needs to have an open line of communication with every member of his crew. Rather than look down at Rafalko as a subordinate, Abrashoff says, “My only role in this saga was to listen to Rafalko, appreciate his idea, and do my best to press it once I was convinced it was a good one” (69). The story shows the value that trust has within an organization. When the crisis in the Persian Gulf ended, Abrashoff insisted on bringing Rafalko with him to discuss the circumstances with high-level, senior officers, because it was his idea. Rafalko, meanwhile, after leaving the Benfold was enlisted “to help ensure state-of-the-art communications for the president of the United States” (69).