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The civil-rights riots of the 1960s marked a defining moment for Admiral Michael Mullen. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was just 19 years old at the time, says that the events he witnessed opened his eyes to a subject he knew very little about, and that fueled his desire to learn more about people and discover the importance of diversity. Before retiring at the end of September and what he refers to as “going to bed for a while,” Mullen sat down in an exclusive interview with DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti just before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Visconti is a veteran himself; he served eight years on active duty as a naval aviator, with two in the reserves, and currently is on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. He was recently appointed to the Intelligence Community Diversity Leadership Advisory Board.
Adm. Mullen discussed with Visconti his experience with diversity both in and prior to the Navy and how he has tried to nurture an environment where all people have the opportunity to excel. During his more than 40-year military tenure, the admiral has served as a cross-cultural mentor and a role model for young recruits, and he and his wife, Deborah, have been advocates of the needs of service members and their families, as well as for the equity of traditionally underrepresented groups in the Navy. Mullen’s focus on civil rights and reducing discrimination, especially toward Blacks and women, has helped the Navy reassess some of its long-standing policies.
VISCONTI: What in your early life or military career made diversity important to you?
ADM. MULLEN: Probably just growing up in the ’60s, and certainly when I came in the Navy in the late ’60s and ’70s. I was exposed in ways I hadn't anticipated to tremendous racial strife, not just in the country but in the Navy specifically. I also was raised to be very focused on people, very focused on the value of people. It was a great opportunity when I was a young officer to learn a whole lot more about people.
I actually grew up in a pretty isolated environment in Southern California, and going to sea, going into Vietnam in the Vietnam War and being exposed to other people around the world just opened up a world of both education and people from different backgrounds that I found to be very important.
I was exposed early to challenges, and I wanted to explore that space, so as a young officer, I did. In doing that, I found out that people are people, and I pretty much have been talent-driven my whole life. You need opportunities to see how people are going to do, so I tried to create as many of those for as many people as I possibly could.
Watching Watts Burn
VISCONTI: Can you think of a defining moment that made you really just have an epiphany?
ADM. MULLEN: When I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy. I finished my first year there in the summer of 1965. I came home on leave after a cruise. I lived about 20 miles from Watts in Los Angeles. I literally watched Watts burn [in the civil-rights riot] not very far from where I lived, but I knew very little about it. It could have been a place far, far away. I mean, that was a really signature moment for me; something was going on but I didn't understand. I was 19 years old at the time, but I do remember that and it pushed me in a direction to find out a whole lot more about what was going on.
VISCONTI: That’s interesting. So you saw [the riots] and understood that you didn’t understand it?
ADM. MULLEN: I clearly didn’t. But that’s about all I understood as a 19-year-old. I’d been in and out of that part of Los Angeles when I was young. I was a basketball player and loved sports, so I would go to sporting events in that part of town. I had no clue about how people lived, about what their challenges were, about the prejudices that existed at the time. It really did open up an area that I knew I needed to know more about.
VISCONTI: When I was on the Diversity Senior Advisory Group and you became CNO [Chief Naval Officer], I asked Syd Abernethy, an awarded naval commander who heads the U.S. Navy’s diversity program, “What do you think about Admiral Mullen?” He said, “He’s the real deal. I personally know several Black officers that he has personally mentored.” What created that desire for you to mentor people cross-culturally?
ADM. MULLEN: I’ve actually mentored young officers and enlisted soldiers throughout my whole career. I knew Syd Abernethy and his brother, Tom, from the time that they played sports at the Naval Academy. I was a company officer back then. I was attracted to them because of that connection. They’re terrific; they were terrific young midshipmen. I had an opportunity later on as a naval officer to cross their paths and to stay in touch. I found them with great potential; both of them did exceptionally well. The fact that they both happened to be African American was in some ways coincidental—not that I didn’t realize how important it was, but I didn’t really think about it in terms of it being cross-cultural.
VISCONTI: Making the connection between the racial strife that was in the Navy and your experiences, did you see [cross-cultural mentoring] as a need?
ADM. MULLEN: At that time, in the ’60s and ’70s, I certainly did. But in the ’80s and ’90s, when I was in a more senior position, I didn’t. I wasn’t directly tying it to what I had thought when I was younger. I just found it to be, from a leadership standpoint and as a leader, a very important part of what I did. In terms of professional development, advice, mentoring, what I learned and what I thought their potential was, it didn’t make any difference where they were from or what their ethnicity was. They were good, young people with a future, and I really tried to help them along as much as I could.
Understanding the Troops
VISCONTI: Let me make one more connection: I’ve been in a room where we were talking about diversity, and senior executives, polled with a handheld device, were asked “How many people who are not like you have you mentored?” A large percentage of people who were senior executives had never mentored somebody who didn’t look just like them. It is a natural thing to do, to select people who look like us. That’s just human nature. Something about you, the way you lead, is different. It compelled you to be equitable in the distribution of the people that you mentored—not that you singled out Black people but that you were equitable.
ADM. MULLEN: I grew up on the deck plate. I grew up in the bowels of a ship. I grew up with the troops. As a leader, I needed to understand what made them tick, and I tried to carry that with me through to this day. The separation that I now have is much more significant, just in terms of seniority, but the issue and the understanding is just as vital now as it was then.
I was very comfortable where they worked. I was very comfortable where they played when we were on liberty around the world. I was very comfortable in terms of understanding what motivated them. A lot of this for me came through sports. I mean, I played with a lot of them, a diverse group of young people, when I was in the Navy more so than when I grew up in Southern California. There's a common bond that was very easy.
So from a leader's standpoint it was just trying to understand [the troops]. I was incredibly comfortable on the one hand; on the other hand, it was an area in which I constantly wanted to learn more. I was trying to force myself, sometimes even unknowingly, to grow. I knew I needed to. I needed to know about their background. I need to know what made them tick.
A classmate of mine is Charlie Bolden, who now runs NASA [as administrator]. Charlie Bolden and I showed up at the Naval Academy the same day. I came from this nice, neat, middle-class, white neighborhood in Southern California, sort of “Ozzie and Harriet” land. Charlie came from South Carolina and struggled. We were classmates and we're great friends but from completely different environments. I wanted to understand from Charlie what motivates him, what his struggles were. It was a pretty easy conversation to have.
VISCONTI: When you became CNO, we had a meeting of the Senior Advisory Group and your vice chief came in. We had a discussion that went around the room on the definition of diversity: What do you think of the definition? I said I think it’s too vague, and the people who need to hear this the most are not going to understand what this means. Your vice chief, from our audience, a four-star admiral, slapped his palm on the table and said, “That’s right. This CNO is worried about two groups first, Black people and women, because those are the two groups we hurt the most.”
That was a moment of extreme clarity, one from which you could not mistake the direction in which we needed to go. Could you talk about that a little bit? Why is that clarity important?
ADM. MULLEN: The vagueness you just described in diversity is something that if you’re not clear then becomes all things to all people. Diversity has wonderful characteristics across a large number of fields, areas, people, whatever the case might be. I didn’t want there to be any confusion about what I was going to focus on as the CNO. I was not trying to cut out other groups. I was not trying to dis anybody in that regard. From a leadership standpoint, I thought where the Navy needed to go—and I was intending to take them there—was to focus heavily on African Americans and women. I wanted to send a very clear signal about what we were going to focus on.
In retrospect, I wish I had added the Hispanic group because the Hispanic group had not been as visible to me, as active. I hadn't been exposed to it as much, although in this job I certainly now see those who are of Hispanic heritage in all the services. They're incredible people. I wish I had been more focused with respect to that, and I actually in execution made that a priority once that light went on.
VISCONTI: I think that the discrimination of Latinos in the service, from an organizational standpoint, was not as headline-worthy as it was for women and Black people.
ADM. MULLEN: Well, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I wasn’t just trying to generate headlines. I was trying to focus on groups that I thought were very critical to the future of the Navy. In that, we were behind, even in 2005. I came from these race riots that we had in the late 1960s. We had made a lot of progress, but there was still a long way to go. That’s the reason I focused on African Americans and women so specifically: to make sure that all the leaders in the Navy would understand, first of all, what my priority was, and secondly, that I would evaluate them on their support of that goal.
VISCONTI: In reading your speeches online and the items on your website, the words “trust,” “candor,” and “reliability” are constant themes. How have you used those themes to solve management problems and improve effectiveness both within the Navy and as the chairman?
Avoiding Breaches of Trust
ADM. MULLEN: When talking about the chairman’s job, the issue of trust has been fundamental to relationship building—that is an absolute requirement globally—around the world with my counterparts in the militaries throughout the world. And not having it, whether between the military or between the countries, is a real challenge. Obviously, I spent a lot of time in a relationship with Pakistan. It really is the breach of trust with Pakistan that’s happened several times that makes that so difficult, yet it is a critical relationship.
Also part of the challenge of being chairman is having strong relationships with all my four-star colleagues in all the services. They know generally (and this is my style) that I trust them and I have expectations for them. They, clearly from my perspective, have responded to that.
I would even expand that to the candor piece. I try to be very straight, very clear on what my priorities are and in responding to questions or issues, and there are tons of them all the time. But a part of that has also been that all of us are accountable. I hold myself accountable for my responsibilities here, and I need and want other leaders, other military leaders, to do the same thing.
Those factors that you bring up are all critical from the standpoint of moving the military forward in these extraordinarily challenging times. We’re sitting here a couple of days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. We’ve been through more than I think we probably even realize in fighting two wars over the course of this last decade.
We couldn’t have done it without the great men and women, and quite frankly, I certainly couldn’t have done this job without tremendous support from the other Joint Chiefs and other four-stars. I certainly tend to trust them. I work hard to develop that trust, but I also have expectations that they execute, that we execute our missions together, and I feel good about having moved forward in these extraordinarily challenging times.
VISCONTI: To pull the threads together, the trust, candor, effectiveness and diversity, could you give me your thoughts about your development of those equitable relationships across race and gender?
ADM. MULLEN: For me, it’s so easy and so central to focus on people—that literally has nothing to do with race and gender. This is an organization, and certainly the military needs talent. I’ve also found that there’s no surefire equation that you just plug in to generate an answer for talent. Finding the right people for the right jobs is as hard as anything that I do, not just in this job. I’ve certainly come to understand that over the last 10 to 15 years in significant leadership positions. I spend a lot of time on that, and I depend on outcomes with respect to that. If I can get the right person, whatever their background is, into the right spot, I can make my organization safe. If I don’t do that, if I miss that, particularly at the senior level, I’m down two or three years of progress, two or three years of effectiveness, two or three years in my mission at the three- and four-star level at a hugely significant cost to that organization, to my organization, and to the people in it.
From the standpoint of focusing on how to make that happen, to include those who are African American or Latino, or gays and lesbians for that matter, or women, or whoever it is, I’m interested in getting the right talent, giving someone an opportunity. Then everybody gets to rise or fall based on how they perform once they’re in a position like that.
>> Watch the full-length video interview of Adm. Mike Mullen and DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti
