What we asked him was, go back to a time in your career
where you obviously weighed the decision to stay or leave.
You stayed because you've been here for over 30 years, but
tell us a story about what you remember going through to make that decision.
So we're asking a story based question, and
we're asking a personal one that's in his life.
So, he's never left.
Obviously, we can't ask him why he left.
But we can ask him a story about wrestling through that decision.
How did he make it?
What were some of the things we can
get from the story that indicate why he stayed?
So he did.
He went back to the time when his oldest daughter was in high school.
I don't remember what rank he was at that point in time, but he said that he and
his wife spend a long time wrestling with the idea, should they leave?
Because we all kind of want to protect
teenagers when they're in that high school period.
If they're moving a lot or there's a lot of transition when they're
trying to deal with all those social development issues, it's difficult.
So, that was his concern.
As a successful naval officer you're moving every 18 to 24 months
with new assignments in different parts of the country.
And so he walked through that story.
And the story obviously ended with him deciding to stay.
And then we said, well, could you go to another point?
Do you remember another time in your career where this issue of staying and
going became really, really critical, and tell us a story about that?
So he went further along to a point where he was being
head hunted by defense contractors.
They wanted to hire him into their organization to become a lobbyist
in Washington to work with the Department of Defense to help
them get contracts and so forth.
And they were offering the red carpet, the best school system, the best housing area,
a very, very lucrative salary, lots of security, etc.
And again, he talked about, they sat with the family, they really considered it,
he worked through various things that he remembered at that point he told us about.
We were about to ask him for one more story when he interrupted and he said,
this is really interesting isn't it?
And we said, what, what's so interesting?
And he said, well, both those stories, it's the same reason.
He says, I love succeeding as a leader.
The Navy gives me training, they give me responsibility and
then they give me the opportunity to take a little more responsibility with
feedback, a little bit of a safety net.
And he said, if I take that extra responsibility and succeed,
I get the feedback to help me monitor how I'm doing.
He said, if I succeed, I just love it.
He says, as selfish as they may sound,
that's really what was going on in both of those incidences.
So right then and there, the topic of retention began to shift.
It began to become something a little bit bigger.
Maybe this isn't about simply figuring out why people leave and
preventing some of that, or why people stay and
increasing some of it, maybe it's a little bit larger.
Could it be about this notion that everybody's a leader?
That there's leadership in every job at all levels.
He turned this whole question of the topic over to a task force of about 25
Naval officers of varying ranks, and he gave them two questions.
He says, I want you to decide whether or
not we should use appreciate inquiry on this issue.
And secondly, what should the wording of the goal of the summit be?
If you decide yes,
we want to have an appreciative inquiry summit, then what should be the topic?
And he shared with them his stories that he had shared with us, and
the awareness that he had of this idea of
succeeding as a leader seems to be really, really important.
The group wrestled with both questions.
They decided, yes, we want to use the appreciative inquiry process.
And the topic that they ultimately came up with was engaged and
empowered leaders at every level.