Five-Star Leadership: Lessons from Fleet Admiral Nimitz and the Race to Midway
By Captain Robert McFarlin, U.S. Navy
March 2022 Proceedings Vol. 148/3/1,429
LEADERSHIP FORUM
For extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor . . . Despite enemy strafing and bombing, and in the face of a serious fire . . . [Miller] manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy attacking aircraft.
With these words, on an overcast spring morning in 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz awarded Messman Third Class Doris “Dori” Miller the Navy Cross. The gallantry Miller displayed during the attack on Pearl Harbor is legendary. His heroism has been captured in books and on the silver screen. But the simple act of Admiral Nimitz, in the frenetic days between two of the most critical naval battles of World War II, is a lesson in leadership that should not be overlooked.
Just days before Nimitz and Miller shared this moment, significant losses fighting a practiced and determined Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the Battle of the Coral Sea had severely blunted the spear of the U.S. Navy; and planning for the Midway campaign, a mere week later, had entered the final, breakneck stages.
Despite these critically important battles—the loss of which would have had existential implications for Allied forces—Nimitz made time to honor Dori Miller. This is the first Five-Star Leadership Lesson: Sailors first.
Five-Star Leadership Lesson 1: Sailors First
An awards ceremony could have been delegated to a subordinate commander, but Nimitz understood the importance of putting his sailors first. Without the sailors of the Pacific Fleet, defeating the Japanese Empire would have been impossible.
The mantra of putting sailors first is as old as the Navy itself. This is what John Paul Jones had in mind when he said, “Men mean more than guns in the rating of a ship.”
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/march/five-star-leadership-lessons-fleet-admiral-nimitz-and-race-midway
