During a post-9/11 deployment, Becker stopped a strike on a target with families present: "Sometimes restraint is the right course of action."
About this conversation
Rear Admiral Paul Becker spent 33 years in the US Navy leading people through peace, crisis, and combat.
Then he was diagnosed with Stage IV bone marrow cancer and applied the same framework he used to lead teams through war to survive it.
In this episode of The Cynthia Manion Show, Paul shares what three decades of notebooks distilled into three words: Teamwork, Tone, and Tenacity.
The Naval Intelligence Community honored that framework in 2016 by naming a new leadership award in his honor.
He also shares the Afghanistan moment when he had to tell fire-breathing naval aviators they could not strike their target because there were families in the pass, the combat deployment he almost missed because he failed his pre-deployment evaluation, and why he believes leadership is not a title but a process.
"It is a process of working with others to influence them to achieve a positive common goal. Anyone can manage. Leaders change things."
