CNO Delivers Remarks at Joint Women's Leadership Symposium (JWLS)

Below is a transcript of the remarks as delivered:

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for the very warm welcome. Adm. Chatfield, thank you for your kind introduction. It is really wonderful to be back here at another JWL Symposium (Joint Women's Leadership Symposium), and I am honored to have a chance to speak with you all today.

What an amazing day! You know-today-anytime I can escape the Pentagon is a really good day…but I am especially pleased to be here today because you know what I'm escaping? My Navy move. I am in the middle of my pack out from moving from the Naval Observatory over to the Tingey House on the Navy Yard.

And I can tell you that it doesn't matter what rank you are, or if you are on move 20, they do not get any easier! So, thank you for letting me be here today to escape that, but more importantly to be here with all of you today.

I want to thank-where's Brianna, the president-there you are-of SSLA (Sea Services Leadership Association) and the entire SSLA team for putting together a really terrific agenda, for holding this forum year after year.

You know, I attended my first JWLS when I was a captain, and I can still remember how impactful it was. Similar to this year's, it was a great program with really interesting speakers. But more than those sessions, I specifically remember a very impactful luncheon.

I had the opportunity to be seated with a group of junior officers and senior enlisted leaders. It reminded me of the importance of the connections that symposiums like this build. Events like this create connections, they bring together people from various services, officers, enlisted, civilians, different designators, rates, and ages who might not normally ever have a chance to ever meet.

And at the table everybody was really comfortable sharing their individual challenges, both personal and professional, and it was amazing for me to sit there and just watch the connections grow as people shared all of their life experiences and how they handled them, you could see the solutions growing. They shared the goods, and they shared the others, and it was a great sense of community.

So, I want to thank all of you for making the time, and traveling, to be here-for investing in your own personal and professional development this week, as well as investing in each other. As we focus on strength through service, that's service to self, service to others, and service to our Nation.

I also want to say thank you very much personally for what you do every single day in service to our Nation.

Thank you for continuing to make the choice to serve, and please also extend my thanks to your families and to your support networks. I know it can be a big sacrifice to be a supporter of someone like us-someone that has a dynamic profession; someone who is always busy, always traveling, and in a very demanding job. So, I know we can't let that go unnoticed. So, when you get back on the text, or you get home, please say thank you, from me to them. I know in my own career, it truly takes a village to keep it all going.

And for me, I would also say that part of that village has been at SSLA. So I do want to congratulate SSLA or as it was known in my beginning of my career, the Women Officers Professional Association, which we called WOPA back then, for celebrating your 40^th anniversary. How about a big round of applause, 40 years.

That's 40 years of providing impactful networking, connection, and education to women of all branches in the military in support of their mission to "Mentor, Inspire, and Lead".

And as somebody who has been around the Navy just about that long, I attended many WOPA meetings while at my first duty station at Great Lakes, and they had quite an impact on me way back then. I have been a witness to quite a bit of change in our military, and I can tell you first hand that it was very different when I signed up about 42 years ago.

I reflected on this recently when I asked my team if I could host a [female] 3 & 4 Star Luncheon back in March. You know, when I joined the Navy back in 1985, there was one female admiral, she happened to be stationed at Great Lakes, where I was for my very first duty station, so I got to meet her. Rear Adm. Bobby Hazard. There were no two-star, three-star, or four-star [female] admirals back then, or generals for that matter. So as my team was putting the luncheon a few months ago, I was pretty happy to find out that we would all not fit in my dining room. Because there are 24 active-duty three and four-star [female] flag and general officers across the Joint Force, and many more two-stars. And you can see that same thing in our senior enlisted community as well because as we have grown in the flag community, we have grown equally in representation in the senior enlisted community over the years.

I'm really happy to note that today, as I'm speaking with you today, women are making outsized contributions to the Joint fight in every warfighting domain, and at the leading at the edge, from the seabed to space. And outside of the uniformed military, women are making a huge difference in our Department, as you heard today from DEPSECDEF Kathleen Hicks, serving at the very highest levels of our Department.

And I know that there's not really a "finish line," but I am glad that we're nearing the end of the "firsts." That women serving and excelling in military leadership are no longer a novelty, or even an interesting milestone, but just a part of our everyday DNA.

I've been really fortunate to have had this front-row seat to history. And while I know that there is always going to be more work to do to unlock the full potential of our teams, I am confident as I look out at all of you, and I look at all the leaders that I get to see every day, that we have the right people in the right places to continue the momentum that has brought us this far.

It's going to be your passion, your leadership, and your energy that will make the military of 2064, 40 years from now, even better and stronger than it is today.

So, as I was getting ready to come and talk with you today, I was reflecting back to that JWLS luncheon which was about 12 years ago, and then my WOPA meetings about 39 years ago, and I realized I probably won't get to sit down at a small table like that and talk with each one of you. So, I thought I would use my time today to share some reflections from over this career which is almost 40 years of service. To me, these reflections are really my "top 7." They really make up the approach that has helped me along the way and I hope that they would be a little bit useful to you as well.

So, I will do it sort of like David Letterman, you know he used to have that top ten list, so I'm going to have my top seven.

So, number one, because I am going in the up order, so number one is the most important one, not the way he did it, backwards.

So, number one, define success. Probably the most important thing I will say today is that each of you needs to decide what success looks like to you.

Is success being me? Is it being the Chief of Naval Operations or a senior enlisted advisor to the chairman or a service chief someday? Is it commanding a ship, a squadron, a battalion? Is it having a great civilian career and also serving in the Reserves? Is it being a teacher? Is it being a full-time parent? Is it being a writer? Is it being a movie star? Anything, or maybe now you can be a "video star" on social media. Anything is possible and I actually saw one of you when I came in today. I am looking forward to seeing one of your posts today, oh, there you are, yup. I look forward to seeing you in the social space a little bit later. Anything is possible and anything is "right"-it really all depends on what you want to do!

It is not easy to define success, and I think that you might find that your definition of success actually evolves over time, but it is important, as Stephen Covey once said, to begin with the end in mind.

You owe it to yourself, and those around you, to keep that definition of success authentically you. Today, with every single door, every single career path available to you, it's not about "What CAN you do?" it's about "What do you WANT to do?"

You get to choose your own adventure, you get to define your own authentic success, and that takes me to number two.

Once you figure out what you want to do, number two is to understand your organization. You really do need to know how the system works in your given career field. What are the rules? What do you need to do in order to get promoted? What experiences do you need to have? And then how do you become a very well-rounded professional in that chosen field?

I think to excel in any job, you really need to start learning before day one, and never stop learning. Think about what you can learn ahead of time as you start to look for your next job.

You can't prepare for everything, you can't react to everything, so if you think about your own experience, you marry that up with the system and what you need to do to be advanced, you can understand your gaps, and then you can work overtime to fill them in.

And once you do that, the third one is to set goals. Once you define what success means to you, and you understand the organization, then you need to set goals for yourself, both personal and professional. You need some short-term goals, you need some long-term goals, because that's how you will focus on the things that you need to do to move forward and work toward achieving your own version of success.

I think you'll need to continually evaluate those goals, and your progress in achieving them while giving yourself some grace and time to reflect on them as they evolve over time. For me personally, I found it helpful to have a few big goals with some intermediate steps along the way to keep myself from being overwhelmed. I have also found that just the act of simply writing down the goals and putting them somewhere I can see them every day, like your bathroom mirror, helps me stay on track and not let my goals be overcome by the busyness of the day.

The fourth one is developing a good network. And I can't over-emphasize the importance of networking. And right now, this week, you are building your own network. Spend some time building those connections, you never know when they're going to come in handy in the future. Invest in those relationships and in your network. Build trust, so you can keep them strong and connected. I think it's easier now to build a network, thanks to technology and social media, but you really still have to invest your time to keep those relationships strong and active.

I think the strongest and most useful networks are really the ones that are made up of people with a lot different perspectives, and that's really what you're going to get here at the JWL Symposium-but it's mentors, it's peers, it's seniors, it's juniors, it's civilians, men, women, sometimes even people in your own family with different experiences.

For me, I've had an amazing network over all of these years, mentors, male, female. I have peers like Adm. Chatfield right here, Mary Jackson, Adm. Aeschbach, "Clutch" Joyner, Yvette Davids, some of these relationships go back longer than 30 years, and they have been invaluable to me and have really helped me on my journey.

I've also come to see that the network you build doesn't really just exist for your own benefit, it's also how you help others build networks, all of those folks coming up behind you.

It's part of our responsibility to help them build their own network, to mentor them so they can benefit from all of those relationships.

I think having a sounding board and someone who can help you navigate along your journey is really incredibly helpful.

So, the more senior you are, the more responsibility you have to mentor others and help build those great networks.

Number five is about creating balance. You know, when I was a one star, I was Commander, Naval Forces Korea and the U.S. Embassy there asked me to talk to a very large and diverse group of Korean women from a lot of different backgrounds from all over their country. And the name of the talk was to be, "Can Women Have It All?" So, that was the first thing they wanted me to talk about. So, what I decided what I would do is I ask the audience, "What exactly is 'all?' What does 'all' mean?" And in my view, just like "success", "all" means different things to different people.

And when I think about the question, I always come back to a speech that I read from Maria Shriver, way back in 1998, that she gave at the Holy Cross University for graduation, and what she said has stuck with me ever since.

Essentially, she said you can have everything you want in your life, you just can't have it all at the same time. Sometimes you just have to sequence it and it may not be with the same level of intensity each step of the way.

I thought that was a great insight. And it really made me step back and look at my life as a journey over time, not just as a standalone checklist of everything I needed to get done during this tour, or in this phase of my life, or at this age of my life.

I have found that over these past 39 years of trying to integrate my life and my work, I have been pretty fortunate to have experienced what I have defined as all, even though it has not been all at the same time and again, not with equal intensity.

I try to think about it, and I try to put it together with a little diagram that sort of illustrates how I think about my own life and my own integration in this Venn diagram of three overlapping spheres. So, you can see one of them there is my "work" sphere, that's my role as commander and executive. My "me" sphere is my mental and my physical health. And then my "friends and family" sphere is I'm a mom. My daughter just graduated from high school last Tuesday. She is heading to college, and being a spouse. So, those are my three spheres that I need to work on, yours may be different, depending again on what's important to you.

So, for me, it would be great if all of these spheres were always the same size, in perfect balance all of the time. But life's not like that. Sometimes the "work" sphere is crowding out some of the other spheres. Sometimes your "family" sphere is crowding out the other spheres. Sometimes the "you" sphere needs to take priority.

So, what I always found was that the most important thing is understanding where I am in the balance between those spheres, so I can make the time to invest in the ones that have gotten smaller when I have the opportunity to do that. Sort of invest in them like it's a bank account and make sure we don't stay too far out of whack for too long.

And this has really helped me out a lot. It requires a lot of self reflection, and it requires thinking about it every single day. I wish there was a magic button we could all push and if your life looked like that and they're all round spheres and they're all perfectly balanced, please come and see me and tell me your secret. And maybe we can patent it and figure out how to put it in a bottle and make it that way for everyone. This is something we all work on. And all of my peers, whether they are civilian, whether they're in the military, this is something that we all work on every single day

Alright, back to the number six, embracing excellence, and I do think this is a critically important one, because I think that the best way to have a personal or professional impact is by simply being excellent. Make excellence your calling card more than anything else.

Whatever your chosen profession is-whether you're a shipdriver, a pilot, an artillery person, a doctor, a nurse, an engineer, a quartermaster, a lawyer-you absolutely have to strive to be your absolute best.

Learn your profession, practice your skills, and when called, you'll be able to deliver. And you'll be able to lead teams that deliver excellence every single day. In our military profession, America is counting on us to deliver warfighting advantage. And we must rise to the challenge and be excellent every day.

So, no matter what your rank or position, part of that excellence is going to be creating an environment where everybody understands, and can live up to, that high standard of excellence. You have a sphere of influence, and a climate that you create. So, make your sphere of influence and everything in it excellent.

And that takes us to number seven-create an empowering environment. Be thoughtful and deliberate about the kind of culture that you create in your organization.

I think there was a time, especially when I was coming along through the Navy where I used to think about culture as something that somebody "up there," or somebody "out there" was responsible for.

And that "they" would take care of it. But the reality is that we are actually all the "they" and our culture is every person's business.

If you don't own it, and if you don't take an active leadership role in creating a culture of excellence, where people can bring their best every single day, you are going to miss out on incredible talent and the power of teamwork.

You must create that environment and unleash the power of your amazing team. Empowering those in your sphere of influence creates a capacity far beyond what you can do yourself.

And when you understand your mission, you can translate that mission to your team well enough so every single person understands the mission, they can connect their dot to the mission. That's how we get everybody to row together, at pace, and with purpose. And that is when we all win together.

So, I hope some of these thoughts-my "Top 7"-resonate with you, and that you'll be able to incorporate them in your own future journey, wherever it takes you.

As far as my own journey goes, you know, when I set out on the grand adventure that has now become a Naval career, I really wanted to drive toward a certain future, I wanted to be on I-95.

I was going to be on I-95. I was going to be up in Maine. I was going to drive to Florida. I was going to know what is at every single exit, and I wanted to know how long it will take to get there and what was going to happen when I got there.

But what I have realized over the years, is that life is a lot more like the Potomac River. It meanders around, there's a lot of curves, branches, there are rapids, there are eddies that you get stuck in. But all of those things are possibilities. And if you are open to the possibilities, unexpected opportunities will come your way.

Adm. Nimitz once said-and I am paraphrasing here-'learn all you can, do your best, and don't worry about the things you can't control.'

I found that quote back when I was a midshipman and it has helped me every step of the way. If you focus on being your best and getting all the experiences you can, one day when that possibility comes your way, and the door opens, you will be ready to walk right through.

So, as I wrap up my remarks today, let me leave you with a final thing. I got seven-my top seven-I've got seven words: Lead, Believe, and Be Open to Possibilities. I think if you do those three things you will indeed achieve your own version of success.

And I hope they serve you as well as they have served me, through lots of change, lots of challenges, and many wonderful opportunities.

So, thank you again to SSLA for the opportunity to be here with you today, and thank you to all of you for what you do every single day, for our Joint Force and for our Nation. And for making the time this week to align, to connect, and to drive action, so we may bring to bear the critical skills of everyone in this room, the diversity of thought, and the warfighting advantage that we need to continue to be the most formidable, most agile fighting force the world has ever seen.

What each one of you do matters every single day, and I am incredibly proud to serve alongside all of you. So, thank you very much for what you do, and thanks again for allowing me to share some of my thoughts with you today. Thank you.

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