It Is Time to Overhaul the Navy’s Mentor Culture

By LCDR Adam “SARA” Moffit, USN

By highlighting the importance of relationships, or “Connections,” and specifically discussing the decisive nature of mentorship, the Navy Leader Development Framework 3.0 provides the strategic foundation for an overhaul of the Navy’s mentoring model. The current mentoring model just isn’t working. The formal, mandatory E-6 and below program has become an outdated administrative burden, a check in the block for many. The informal E-7 and up program, if it can be called a program, leaves the Navy’s leaders to find mentors and protégés by chance or not at all. Some Echelon II commands, like the Judge Advocate General Corps and Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, established their own programs that include all ranks, but they are the exception, not the rule. The Navy must move beyond the program model by maturing its mentor culture to better address the Force’s needs in order to achieve enduring change and peak operational readiness.

Maturing the Navy’s mentor culture should be part of the strategic efforts that are already underway. In NAVADMIN 254/19, Culture of Excellence, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Michael M. Gilday, defined a Culture of Excellence as “a culture focused on the high ideals espoused in our Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment,” which ultimately produces Sailors that are “ready to win wars, deter aggression and maintain freedom of the seas.” The CNO is proposing we improve operational readiness by knowing, supporting and developing our people. This is a desirable and familiar end state, but how do we get there? What will change? Over the past three years, senior leaders have worked hard to better frame the problem, articulate the operational approach, and highlight key lines of effort in Design 2.0, Navy Leader Development Framework Version 3.0, and Signature Behaviors of the 21st Century Sailor. Reshaping our mentor culture must be one of the foundational efforts in this larger cultural shift because it directly impacts our ability to know, support and develop Sailors, and provides a bridge to connect doctrine to the deckplates. These changes are about more than a mentor program rewrite, they are about changing attitudes toward mentorship in the Navy altogether.

The Navy’s mentor culture transformation, like other major ongoing initiatives, should be guided with clear strategic vision from senior leadership as a cornerstone of the 21st Century Sailor platform. Instead of rolling mentorship into “Inclusion and Diversity,” as it is currently on MyNavyHR, the Navy should break it out as a standalone focus area. While inclusion and diversity are important objectives for the Navy, a mentor culture serves to accomplish much more than these important outcomes. Mentoring is central to accomplishing both tangible and intangible objectives. Tangible objectives include better retention, increased competition with industry, and improved overall performance by learning lessons of the past from those who experienced them first hand and applying them to current operations. Intangible objectives include improved understanding and belief in the mission, more widespread trust within the organization, and expanded personal and professional perspectives. Inclusion and diversity are fruits of a healthy mentor culture, not the other way around.

The strategic vision must incorporate well-structured, actionable components and processes that are aligned with overarching objectives. At its core, mentor culture derives its effectiveness through relationships, or connections, but it is important to articulate the specific structure by which those relationships are formed and maintained. Components should include developing an intuitive mentor-protégé digital interface, establishing a voluntary mentoring program that is tailored to the Force’s personal and professional needs, and integrating mentor opportunities into existing conferences and events. Process improvements should include

integrating expectations and the benefits of mentoring into existing enlisted and officer training pipelines, developing a straightforward mentor pairing plan that is aligned with the enlisted and officer leader development paths, and providing periodic opportunities to provide feedback during a Sailor’s career. These components and processes will provide the minimum necessary structure to ensure the Force understands intent and expectations, while also fostering confidence and trust in the overall mentor culture shift.

Although each of these components and processes needs to be described in greater detail to be operationalized, addressing specific aspects of the improved mentoring program first is appropriate because it will likely serve as the centerpiece of the culture shift. While some Sailors are and will continue benefiting from naturally-formed mentor relationships, many would benefit from a structured program to overcome personal or professional barriers that prevent their participation (e.g., personality type or lack of command emphasis). The program should be voluntary, tailorable, straightforward, and provide a combination of both formal and informal options (e.g., 1-to-1 mentoring, circle mentoring, and peer mentoring). Many well-run and well-intentioned mentoring programs fail because they are obligatory. Mentors and protégés who have no interest in the program or its aims are required to participate and, as a result, damage its credibility and decrease its effectiveness. The program must be voluntary. The program

must also be tailored to the needs of its audience. For the Navy, this means the program should not be oriented to a unit, but to the individual at key decision points in a Sailor’s career (e.g., approaching reenlistment, department head, post-command). Lastly, it should contain technologically relevant content, with an application-based digital interface and options for digital conferencing. Sailors expect and are accustomed to using streamlined digital interfaces. Without one, the program will lose interest before ever having the chance to share why the program exists or what it has to offer. Leaders must engage Sailors where they are in a way they understand to get them where they need to go.

"At its core, mentor culture derives its effectiveness through relationships, or connections, but it is important to articulate the specific structure by which those relationships are formed and maintained."

Many fear a formal program overhaul will become an even greater administrative burden than its predecessor, but this is about changing mentor culture, not a program. Mentor programs of the past were about, or at least became about, the programs themselves. The administrative program became the objective because of how it was executed and assessed. This is common amongst military programs: control and measure what you can because it is easier than controlling and measuring what you must. From an execution standpoint, making participation mandatory ensured coverage across the Force, but, as mentioned previously, doing so undermined the program’s intended outcomes through a loss of credibility. Mentoring should be taught in recruit training and commissioning programs if the Navy wants to ensure a baseline knowledge across the Force. From an assessment standpoint, the most convenient way to evaluate the program was during annual administrative inspections, where other personnel programs were assessed. Although this method made sense in terms of mentoring being a “people program,” the inspection focused exclusively on measures of performance (MOP), i.e., whether a Sailor is assigned a mentor. In the meantime, measures of effectiveness (MOE), i.e., whether a mentorprotégé relationship results in personal and/or professional development, went unmeasured and the program failed, while everything seemed to run smoothly. The program, but really culture, must be measured in new ways to capture whether intangible objectives are met. Navy leadership must ensure execution focuses on the objective and assessment criteria measures whether we are doing the right things to avoid an overly administrative focus during this culture shift.

The timing is right for an overhaul of the Navy’s Mentor Culture, and leadership must include mentoring as part of the current leader development and Culture of Excellence efforts. Mentorship is about passing on lessons learned to the next generation, challenging and expanding the less experienced perspective, diversifying the more experienced perspective, and increasing understanding of both mentor and protégé. For the Navy, a healthy and strong mentor culture with formal and informal opportunities will mean increased retention, operational readiness, and mission effectiveness. A clear vision with actionable components and processes, based on achievable objectives, is crucial to the culture’s transformation. Leadership must include both measures of performance and effectiveness, based on the same objectives, to assess the culture shift’s success, ensure efforts remain relevant, and minimize administrative burden. Leaders often describe Sailors as the Navy’s most valuable asset. Now is the time to invest in the connections that will help those Sailors develop into the Navy’s future leaders.