Tell us a little about your path to NPS and what has kept you here for the past 15 years. What do you enjoy most about working with NPS students?

After college I eventually landed in SF Bay area before going back to the east coast for an MBA and PhD in Organizational Behavior. My plan was always to make my way back to California long-term. NPS was my first position after graduation. I was initially intrigued to come here to learn about a context I knew frankly nothing about – the DoD and the military – and teach and do research on leadership within those contexts. My family has grown and together we’ve grown roots here in the community and live in Carmel Valley where we have no plans to ever leave.

 Much of your research has focused on leadership, careers and how people and teams perform. What questions have been most interesting to you throughout your career, and what have you learned that has most shaped the way you think about them?

With respect to leadership, learning all the ways and contingencies for how it is enacted across various organizations and organizational levels always fascinates me. For instance, the way the Marine Corps and the Navy view leadership is very different and as such the way it is taught, measured, and enacted in those organizations is very distinct. The same holds true for various career communities (e.g., aviation v submariners etc.) and across the private sector as well.

While my response above touches a little on careers, more specifically within careers the increasing salience of work-life balance, or perhaps better stated as work-life harmony becomes ever more prevalent. With dual-income families essentially the norm at this point, coinciding with the increased pressures of our non-work roles in families, at schools, etc. it’s become evident that the organizations, including the gov’t and the military, that are best able to help individuals achieve their personal perspective of work-life harmony will be the one’s that ultimately win the ‘war for talent’. All of this is accentuated by the capacity now to complete work in remote formats… and also the increased electronic tethering we have to all of our non-work roles as well.

 You play a leading role in NPS’ Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) program. Tell us about LEAD and the work you’ve done with the Naval Academy to develop and grow the program.

LEAD is a hybrid program with the US Naval Academy in which we educate incoming Company Officers for 1 year and confer MS in Leadership Education and Development to assist them in taking over the CO roles at USNA and prepare them for future strategic leadership positions. Courses are completed online, and in-residence at USNA with our OSG professors holding onsite immersive courses at USNA as well. Together with USNA staff and faculty we been extremely successful at attracting both more and higher quality applicants over the years, which of course will pay huge dividends on the midshipmen and the future of our Navy and Marine Corps as the next generation of talent and leaders emerge both from our LEAD program and from USNA. We have also been highly adaptable and creative in ways that we synergize courses across the program to produce truly excellent theses/capstones with real actionable outcomes.

 What makes LEAD such an important opportunity for the officers who participate, and what have you learned from working with them?

Our LEAD students are simply fantastic. Extremely smart driven individuals who feel called to return to the Naval Academy after having completed a few tours and give back to the midshipmen. Not all of the LEAD students attended USNA, but all understand the tremendous influence they can have in the CO role in the lives and careers of their midshipmen. Working with the LEAD students is truly energizing and its also quite wonderful to feel as though I am indirectly tied to an undergraduate university again and to help have some influence at that school as well. I think probably the thing I’ve learned most from the LEAD students is a) a lot more simply about the US Naval Academy and b) a true respect and admiration for that institution as well. At a time when it can sometimes be a bit hard to remember why I chose this version of an academic career path, they have been refreshing, rejuvenating, and a great reminder of why most of us took this job.

 Your research often looks at the relationship between individual careers and the organizations and teams people are part of. Where do you see the strongest connections between individual success and well-being and the effectiveness of the organization?

All people idiosyncratically define what success means to them. The organizations that both respect their employees, appreciate their sacrifices, and enable them to achieve their  personally defined values will be those that are strongest across any competitive landscape. If these things are truly incorporated in the organizational ethos – the organization is in the best competitive position to attract and retain the highest quality human capital, which ultimately is where creativity and innovation and competitive advantage is derived.