Episode 279 Turn the Ship Around with David Marquet

On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike is joined by David Marquette, a former submarine commander in the Navy, who shares his leadership style, and tells us about his new book.

David tells us about high school when he didn’t care about what people thought about him and how he brought that with him to the submarine. He cared deeply about the mission and the people on board, but he wasn’t worried about the next promotion or the next review, allowing him to be the best leader he could be. 

David talks about how he changed the structure of leadership around him. Leaders usually apply their authority to make decisions, although David decided to turn against the grain and shifted it so that he used his authority to structure an organizational design. 

Another change David brings under his leadership is the removal of jumping to the defense of an opinion. Naturally, you will want to defend yourself in a difference of opinion, but David teaches you to ask why first, which can be less confrontational. 

Mike asks what the biggest challenges are in creating a new culture of intent-based leadership, to which David answers we act our way to new thinking, we don’t think our way to new actions. A leader may have a vision of what he wants to see, but nothing changes until he begins to act on it. 

Finally, David tells us about his new book Leadership Is Language, which he wrote after feeling like he was programmed to speak a certain way. He encourages us to stop asking binary questions like “is the covid vaccine safe?” This should be replaced by “How safe is the covid vaccine?” You can buy the book online here.

To find out more about David you can check out his company Intent-Based Leadership. You can also find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter @ldavidmarquette. He also does some short leadership videos on YouTube under the channel name Leadership Nudges you can check out too!

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode, and leave us a review to help us improve and grow and bring better content to you! Thanks for listening!