On Your Lead
On Your Lead is a podcast about the miles that make you better at life, leadership, and everything in between.
Hosted by Thad David — Marine Recon Scout Sniper veteran, speaker, and endurance athlete — the show explores what it really takes to lead when things get hard. Through conversations with elite athletes, military leaders, entrepreneurs, and high performers, On Your Lead digs into discipline, decision-making, ownership, and the long work of becoming someone better.
This isn’t about quick wins. It’s about earned confidence, taking the long road, and learning from people who’ve carried the weight before you.
And learning from people who’ve carried the weight before you.
Whether you’re leading a team, building a business, training for a big goal, or navigating a hard season — these are the miles that shape who you become.
On Your Lead
Mike Abrashoff — Leadership Isn’t Control, It’s Letting Go
What if the fastest way to become a better leader is to stop trying to do everything yourself?
In this episode of On Your Lead, I sit down with Mike Abrashoff, former U.S. Navy commander and bestselling author of It’s Your Ship, to unpack how he transformed one of the Navy’s lowest-performing ships into a fleet leader by giving ownership to the people closest to the work.
Mike shares the real mechanics behind the turnaround: interviewing all 310 sailors, inviting challenges to every process, and making junior crew members the VIPs when admirals visited. We talk about the “line in the sand” for delegation, why many top performers struggle when they become managers, and how leaders get trapped doing low-value work instead of the thinking only they can do.
We also dig into preparation as a form of freedom — including the bold decision that allowed his ship to pass every certification in record time, dramatically changing morale, schedules, and results. We close with a conversation about legacy leadership: measuring success not by what happens while you’re in charge, but by what happens months after you leave.
This is a practical, grounded conversation about trust, discipline, and building teams that don’t depend on you to succeed.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
My second year in command, I was irrelevant. I worked maybe three or four hours a day.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to On Your Lead, the show about the miles that make you better at life, leadership, and everything in between. I'm Thad David, a Marine Recon Scout Sniper veteran, speaker, and endurance athlete. Let's get into it. I'm here today with Mike Abrashaw, author of It's Your Ship. How are you doing, Mike? Doing great, Thad. How are you doing today? I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you could just give us a little bit of a background for everybody that doesn't know about your amazing uh career, would you mind sharing a little bit?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm kind of an accident. Um, you know, went to the Naval Academy and came up through the ranks and uh had the fortune or misfortune of getting assigned one of the worst ships in the Navy. And I couldn't choose our missions when I took command, and I couldn't choose the people I work with. And yet here we are near the bottom in performance, and I'm thinking, gee, this is it, that's the end of my career. How do I improve this ship? Well, then it hit me. Uh, why not engage the crew and get them to feel like they're part of the organization? And so I embarked on something that had never been done before in the history of the Navy. I interviewed every sailor individually, all 310 of them. And I told them, I don't care what your age is, I don't care what your rank is, I don't care how long you've been here, you can come to work every day and challenge every aspect of our operation. And if you have an idea how to improve a process 1%, I want to hear from you. And what happened? Uh, the crew started taking ownership and they drove performance, and we became uh the leader in the Navy.
SPEAKER_01:That's such an incredible story and journey. And I feel like just even saying I'm going to interview that many individuals, I think a lot of leaders and a lot of people in general might just think back and say, well, that's that would take a lot of time. Like how much, how much time, just out of curiosity, how much time did that take?
SPEAKER_00:Some interviews took five minutes, others took 45 minutes. Uh, it all dependent on uh what came up during the conversation. They were free-flowing, and sometimes they would veer, you know, off on paths or tangents that I never anticipated. But what it enabled me to do is to find out where people were coming from. And um, and and some you know didn't want to share anything. So um, you know, I just asked them what their goals were and how how I could help them accomplish their goals. But the other ones, it was like, gee, these people were smart. Um, maybe I can chart help them chart a course for their lives and their careers so that when they leave the Navy, they'll be um, you know, they'll be in a good position to climb the the ladder of success. And so um the the the interviews I would do three or four a day. Um and what resulted in in my I put a lot of effort in in the first year, but once the crew uh was were connected to our purpose and they knew what needed to be done, my second year in command, I was irrelevant. I worked maybe three or four hours a day. And so uh you put the work in up front, and then it gives you time on the back end to prepare the ship to do even greater things in the future.
SPEAKER_01:And I love that principle because that's essentially the goal of a leader is to empower your people so that they can take the reins and you can step back. But to your point, it's that work on the front end that makes it all possible.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And the big thing was connecting people to our purpose. And once they understood what was important, then we didn't allow ourselves to become distracted by stuff that wasn't important. So it was a relentless focus on the important things. And then once people understood my vision, um, you know, that we're playing to win, we're not playing to come in number two, then everything we did was built on getting us to that next level. And uh once we got there, they they took the reins. And then it was my job to figure out how to keep us there and to get even better. And so when after that first year, we got awarded the Spokane Trophy, which is the award for the best ship in the Pacific Fleet. But then I spent my second year figuring out how we can do even better. And in years two and three after I left the ship, Benfold won the award for best ship in the entire U.S. Navy. And it was because I didn't get bogged down in$5 an hour work, and it freed me up to do the big thinking, how to position ourselves for the future.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. And so when you say getting bogged down in$5 an hour work, I think that's something that a lot of leaders can learn from. Um what sort of things do you see leaders getting bogged down in, just in general, for$5 an hour work, when you say that versus looking at the big picture stuff.
SPEAKER_00:So what I see is people doing what they're comfortable with. And like if they were a technician starting out, um, they become the super technician. Where I really see this is in sales. That a person who is a great salesperson becomes the head of sales and then they become the super salesperson, and that no deal can close unless they're involved in it. So they're they're having to get involved in every deal instead of focusing on how to bring in future deals, let your sales force execute on the deals, you focus on bringing in future deals.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. There's an article I read a while back, and it was a kind of an old Xeroxed, that's how you know how old this thing was, a Xeroxed piece of paper, but just said how your your best salesperson is going to make your worst manager, most likely. And I would imagine it's from that principle, I'm gonna steal that super salesperson that just all deals must go through this one individual.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm not here to badmouth my predecessor, but my predecessor was a nuclear-trained engineer and probably the smartest nuclear-trained engineer the Navy ever produced. And yet when he took command of the ship, instead of becoming the captain of the ship, he became the super chief engineer and had to do everything himself in the engineering department. And as a result, people stood back and said, okay, you do it. Nobody took ownership, nobody took responsibility. And USS Benfold became the first new construction ship in the history of the Navy to flunt their first engineering certification. And that's with one of the smartest nuclear-trained engineers we ever produced. So the lesson that that taught me was you know, you get promoted and then you tend to focus on what brought you there. That's not why you're getting promoted. It's to get the organization to that next destination.
SPEAKER_01:And that's that thinking bigger. Um, not thinking what is easy for me to do, what do I like to do, but what is the big picture? Doing what only you can do. Exactly. It's beautiful. Thank you, Mike. I I absolutely uh really enjoy that just pathway because I think so many people can can learn a lesson inside of that. So as you think about your ship and what you're able to do, uh, and I don't know if I can plug your book enough because I I really truly think any leader needs to read it. It's such a great, uh, a great book about empowering your team and the people that you're meant to lead. Um, you mentioned something earlier about seeing your purpose. That is, once they saw your purpose, they were able to align and get behind it. And I'm wondering, what did that conversation look like with getting people in line? Like, what was your purpose on the ship? And how did you go about that? Because I'm thinking about me in the Navy, you know, I was in the Marines, but being on a Navy ship, it was really daunting when you see higher-ranking individuals kind of stiffen up a little bit. And, you know, what I'm imagining what this conversation would have been like had you said, hey, this is, you know, what do you want to get off this ship? And I would have probably said something about, you know, at the time, 21 years old, 22 years old, you know, let's play more video games type of thing. Uh, what would you have said as your purpose and how do you get people aligned with it?
SPEAKER_00:So our purpose was keeping our fellow citizens safe.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And everything we did from you know practicing um launching Tomahawk cruise missiles down to shining a brass fire station was contributing um to that mission. And um what you bring up the story about being afraid to talk to senior officers. Um to me, my crew were my VIPs. And when admirals and generals and ambassadors came on board our ship, um, I had um junior enlisted E3s take um the four and three stars around the ship and give them a tour. And uh one of them was uh uh Marine Corps four-star general Anthony Zinny, who was had command of the Central Command. And he came on board with the three-star fleet commander and with the U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain. And uh I had a uh E3, his name was Michael Cotton, who had just uh achieved a certification. And Zinnie comes on board and I said, General, you know, welcome aboard the best damn ship in the Navy. Fireman Cotton is going to give you a tour around the ship. And you should just see his eyes like bulge out. He looked at the Admiral Fargo, who was the fleet commander, and he he went like this. And so Fireman Cotton gave uh General Zinny the tour of his life. And um Zinni was in Bahrain for the Marine Corps birthday ball, and he ripped up his speech, and all he talked about was leadership on USS Benfold and getting this tour from Fireman Cotton. So I did not want, I wanted my chain, I wanted my crew to respect the chain of command. I didn't want them to fear us, and by putting them out in front when dignitaries came, um, they were very comfortable around VIPs.
SPEAKER_01:I would imagine so. Well, because you you give them the the power to take control of the situation, and I would imagine there was some teaching and some support there of what that looks like to walk a four-star around the ship. But it's a big honor. I mean, I would imagine they bragged about it, but they bragged about it still to this day.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And like to most commanders use that time as Schmoo's time to uh ingratiate themselves with the chain of command. The way I'm gonna ingratiate myself with the chain of command is by putting my people first. And Zinny was smart enough to figure that out and that he had never seen it before, but uh he liked the he liked the style.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it it just hit me, and this is kind of a older, older memory for me, but just being overseas in in Iraq, you know, we I did the initial invasion in Iraq uh back in 03 and went back again 04-05. And I remember specifically different instances where we would be doing what our team needed to do, and then you would watch some officers kind of step in and kind of take over. And and to that assert themselves in that, you know, to use your example earlier, that super salesperson, where if there's a call for fire mission that we were more than capable of doing, it it was almost it created this bad blood because the officer would come in, take over, do the thing, and kind of get the credit for it. And that's how we felt. Like, oh, they just want to get the credit for for doing that. But it it really stepped out on our toes, and it, you know, I could see just real time for us how that was impacted us in a negative light and created just not a good relationship between officers and enlisted. Where do you see oh, what's that?
SPEAKER_00:On Menfold, the crew were the VIPs.
SPEAKER_01:It's amazing. Where do you see a lot of leaders? And just I know you you speak to just tons of organizations, tons of different industries. Where would you say a common thread is of of why leaders tend to struggle if they are struggling with it? Like why is that, and and what advice would you give to them?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I honestly think that people in business today are um over-tasked and overworked and probably under-resourced. Everybody's doing more with less. So it's not like people wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna be a bad boss. It's they're under a tremendous amount of pressure. And so, but the challenge is okay, how do you how do you uh succeed while maintaining a decent quality of life for yourself so that you can go home at night happy? And so to me, the only way to do that is to develop your people and uh and train them to take burdens off your shoulders. And so I realized I don't have to do everything myself. Train people, delegate the lesser important responsibilities. I had a I had a line in the sand on the ship. If what you're doing could kill somebody, injure somebody, waste taxpayer money, or do damage to the ship, don't go there without me. But if what you're doing and run short of my line in the sand, man, I hope you're perfect. But you know what? I'm I'm not perfect, and I'll never do it perfectly. As long as you can do 90% of it and I don't have to get involved, I'll take that all day long. And so the key is to keep your focused on what the important things are and find somebody to do the things that have to get done, but don't necessarily require your level of uh intervention.
SPEAKER_01:That makes a ton of sense. And it just hit because we I know there's this tends to be a dividing line. You might as well just open up the political uh box here uh with when to set up a Christmas tree or not. And so, given that this is a couple days before Thanksgiving, half of the listeners are gonna think, oh no, he's that person. And I am, I like to set up Christmas early, but we did actually put ornaments on the tree last night, and it was a beautiful thing watching my wife let the kids, we have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old, they just wanted to put ornaments on the tree. And they put up probably 90-95% of the ornaments, and it just got done really quickly. Whereas in my mind, I was thinking, oh, where could we put it? What do we need to do? Where does each one need to go? But the fact is, it got done really quickly, and maybe we readjusted one or two, but they had a blast doing it, and it just got completed so fast. And I know it's a kind of a strange example, but I'm thinking about you know doing something on the ship to your point. Man, if you're getting it done 90% and I didn't have to touch it, that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. So I I love that example of it, um, and just empowering and developing your people to be able to do those things. So that's what a great, great piece of advice. So as you think about developing um just people in general, you give so many good principles in your book and good examples of of where you empowered your people. And I I firmly believe that there's some baseline stuff that kind of a foundational level, if you will, that are more important than others. I say more important loosely, just that some stuff builds off of other items. What would you say are some basic principles that you would put as foundational things first that we would build upon as it relates to leadership and just empowering your people? Where would you start with that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you have to be technically competent at whatever it is that you're doing. So um people need to have confidence that you've got the experience and the wisdom to get you where you need to go. And the way you do that, you know, we don't go out and hire admirals and generals off the street. You've got to work your way up and take on increasingly complex uh positions as you climb the ladder. And so, but you would never get that if you weren't competent at that entry level. So technical competence is first and foremost, and then um it's being able to lead greater numbers of people and greater comp complexity of systems and and also influence outside uh your immediate sphere. And so it's not enough just to get your job done. Um if you can influence outside um your area and get them to work and collaborate uh better as a team, then that's that's more foundational building blocks. It's about influencing others and influencing customers. Uh the most important thing is you want to make your customers look good to their chain of command as well. And so um uh everybody is under pressure today. In your organization, in your customers' organizations, they're under pressure. Make them look good, and you know, that's how you um develop your professional reputation. I I worked for a two-star one time, and he he said, Mike, the most important thing is your professional reputation. He said, Don't ever squander it, uh, don't ever take it for granted. That will be the thing that gets you your next assignment. And so be thinking about what your reputation is, and is it something that people want to be a part of and and and and work with, or is it something less? And uh your professional reputation leads to trust. Uh, people will trust that you will uh deliver excellence for them. And so uh those are the foundations um uh upon you upon which you build everything else.
SPEAKER_01:I could see that just as you mentioned reputation, that just kind of put that all together, overlaps with kind of what we were talking about earlier with empowering your people and just what I shared of of interacting with officers that kind of take control of things versus, to your point, giving control. What an amazing reputation in those spheres of influence, kind of, you know, outside of your sphere. You know, as you get down to other individuals, let's say on the ship, for instance, that reputation builds really rapidly. So I could see how those overlap uh inside of that.
SPEAKER_00:And I found that the more control I gave up, the greater command over the ship that I gained.
SPEAKER_01:Well, tell us some more about that.
SPEAKER_00:So if I gave up control, you know, to in and delegate, and uh people started um enjoying success at a at a higher level for them, then they become more loyal and dedicated and committed, and they tend to follow you more and and and believe when you say this is where we need to go. And so when people trust you um and they feel empowered, uh they become more engaged and um they tend to um obey the the direction that you're setting for the organization, as opposed to you know complaining about it or not supporting it or slow walk. Slow walking it, they buy into it. And so what you want to do is to get people to buy into your vision. And to me, that's like Dan Campbell of the Detroit Lions. I mean, to me, he's an inspirational leader that people want to buy into. And um and um and you can see the enthusiasm and you can see the dedication of his team. Um so he's to me, he's one of the best leaders in the uh in the NFL today.
SPEAKER_01:That's an just an incredible way to look at it too. And I love that just giving up more control gives you more command. And what a powerful thing. I don't know that I've I've uh I recall hearing that, but I absolutely love it. Give up more control, get more command. And yeah, I'm still mentally just processing that because it's it's a really powerful thing, and really just empowering your people to take control. And there I could see that where they're gonna have success, they're gonna get credit, you know, to your point, B V IPs, they're gonna come to you for like, give me, hey Mike, can I have some more of that? And you know, it just it it seems like the next bit of that evolution is they're gonna come to you for more of it, which becomes more command that you get.
SPEAKER_00:So um one of the things that the crew did complain about was you know, we're in the Persian Gulf busting our butts for you know five months, you know, six hours on, six hours off, and people get tired. And then it's time um to leave the Gulf and head home to San Diego. But we were going via Australia, and um, on the first day after we left the Persian Gulf, uh, I gave everybody the day off. But on day two is when we started preparing for the next deployment that we would see a year away. And the crew was um complaining about it that they didn't get any time to decompress and starting um uh to prepare for the next deployment. And I kept telling them this is about controlling our own schedule. If we drive the training, then the Navy isn't gonna force us down, force it down our throat. So there was um whining and complaining about working hard even after we left uh the Persian Gulf. Um but prior to getting prior to going on our next deployment, you have to go through a six-month certification process. And most of the six months is spent at sea. And at week one, um, the Navy sends the assessors on board, and we have 24 mission areas that we have to get certified for before we can go uh on our next deployment. So at week one, the Navy assesses your baseline level of performance, and then they figure out how to tailor the training for the next six months. And at week one, I asked to take the final graduation problem that we would see six months down the road. And everybody thought I was nuts. The assessors came on board, hell bent on making sure that we failed. But at week one, we passed all 24 uh milestones, which had never been had never even been attempted. Nobody ever even thought about it. So um I called my admiral was deployed, and so I called the three-star uh and I said, Hey, we just validated you know the six months at sea. He said, No, you didn't. Nobody's ever done it before. We're not set up to allow you to do it. You got to do the six months anyway. And I said, think about this, Admiral. It gives us no incentive to keep our readiness at a high level. You gotta give us uh an incentive to stay, you know, our keep our performance at a high level. And he said, How about three months at sea? I said, How about two months? He said, Fine, just don't call me again. So over the next two months, we visited Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, San Francisco, and Vancouver, and nobody could figure out why Benfold had the highest morale of any ship in the Navy. And the crew finally got it. We are in control of our own schedule. And it goes back to taking one day off, but then preparing for the future and raising the bar, training those next levels of leaders who are going to take the ship on the next deployment. So it's about always prepping for the future and building that bench strength so that when senior people transfer, you've got somebody already trained to step in. And as a result, the crew found out what it was like to control your own schedule, and the Navy leaves us alone. We do what we want.
SPEAKER_01:That at a foundational level makes me think of just controlling the controllables. But you said it earlier to just control your schedule so that nobody else tells you what to do with your times. Because if you don't take control of your schedule, somebody else is going to. Exactly. And what a great example of doing the work on the front end. And then we had a really good time. Or you guys had a really, I would imagine those were not horrible stops. There was not a lot of complaints at that point in time.
SPEAKER_00:They were all we were the envy of the Pacific fleet.
SPEAKER_01:I I bet you were. People wanted that to be longer than two months, I'm sure. We don't have to go back just yet, Mike. Right. That's I really enjoy that. Just take control of your schedule so that somebody else doesn't. And yeah, powerful stuff. So as you build on that foundational piece right there, so knowing knowing your task technically was one of the ones that you mentioned, which I can see if you understand that, that's gonna make it easier to do that thing that you can do. Because as you shared it a little bit earlier, of knowing what your job is on a base level, because if you don't, if a leader steps into a role, doesn't understand it, I'm gonna be more inclined to go back to again using that sales example that you mentioned. If sales is my favorite thing to do and I go, I'm now a manager, but I don't understand what a manager is supposed to do, of course I'm gonna lean in and become super salesperson or super insert, whatever that role is, versus knowing the job there, and then working on your sphere of influence and what your reputation is. What else would you stack on top of that as as far as low-hanging fruit for leadership?
SPEAKER_00:So as I told you, we have to work our way up to be to get selected for commanding officer. And my first department head tour, um, I was not as technically competent as I should have been. And it was probably laziness on my part. And we're at sea, I was one of the three department heads standing shift work running the ship at sea. And uh it was six hours on, twelve hours off. And I was not prepared to run a watch team uh on this level of complexity of ship, and I was flailing um the first two or three days, just trying to get through my six hours. And then finally the commanding officer brought me into his cabin and said, Mike, it's not enough for you to get through your six hours. He said, You need to spend your six hours preparing for the next guy to do his six hours. And if he spends his six hours preparing for the guy after that, then all you do is show up and prepare for the next watch because your watch has already been taken care of. So it's something that I've thought about a lot, is it's not enough to do your job. You need to prepare for the next person coming behind you. And so I've often thought that a commanding officer's final fitness report should not be the day you leave, but should be six months or 12 months down the road. Did you leave the organization in a way that is self-sustaining, or does it fall apart the minute you leave? And I've seen ships fall apart the minute a commanding officer leaves because it was being held together by the willpower of one person, and that's not sustainable for the long term. So you spend your watch preparing for the next watch so that the person who relieves you doesn't have to lift a finger. And so that's why it was important for me that Benfold won the award for best ship in the entire Navy years two and three after I left, because that showed that it to me that I was focused on the right thing, the long-term health, instead of just short-term performance gains.
SPEAKER_01:Right, it wasn't about you, it was about putting the ship in control of its own destiny. Exactly. Which in the end, and I think that's the the irony of it, and the beautiful piece of it is that uh giving up that control, so to speak, you still are this amazing leader in so many people's eyes. You know, I've met people from your ships, and everybody looks up to you uh and puts you in such high regard that you don't lose leadership by giving up control, you actually gain it, which is a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Um, thank you so much for taking some time and just being here to chat with us about it. Um, I'd love to ask you one final question as we step out of here and just close this up. Um, as you think about it, I think hindsight is kind of the biggest teacher, and you wrote about it in your second book. Um, It's Our Ship, kind of changing the verbiage a little bit, which I also would recommend people go check out. What are some things that you look back on in your career, just in the Navy, your career speaking? What are some lessons that you've learned, or one big lesson you've learned that in hindsight you wish you would have done differently, or you look at just through a different light?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's a great question. For the Navy, it would have been to collaborate more with my fellow ship captains. And it wasn't until after I got out that I realized that Benfold was one ship of a 10-ship aircraft carrier battle group. And in two years, I didn't do one thing to help a fellow ship or help a fellow ship captain. And it hit me, you know, if the aircraft carrier had gotten sunk because one of the other ships didn't do their job, it would not have mattered that we were the best. So um it would have been to take a more global view of things and realize that you know you may be the best in your little wicket, but if the rest of the fleet is sinking, um, you know, it's gonna be life is gonna be tough. So it would be to have a greater, a bigger view and see how you can support other functions within the organization so they all work together better as a team to be a better overall organization instead of just an individual unit.
SPEAKER_01:That's really, really powerful stuff. And I think internally, just as you look at it, you could you saw what you could do on your ship or y'all's ship uh that that you took control of and just looking at the power and what you could have changed uh more globally. So, Mike, always incredible to sit down. I really enjoy anytime I get to to listen to you talk or just have a conversation with you. I really appreciate you and taking some time today.
SPEAKER_00:My honor. Happy to be here.