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Employees at Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport who want to see firsthand what it’s like being a command senior leader can do so through the Leadership Shadowing Program Pilot.
The new pilot allows high-grade employees—those at the GS-14 or equivalent level or above—to shadow a senior leader for a week to get a feel for the roles and responsibilities of a senior leader, gain advice and guidance on leadership strategies, and build their professional networks.
"The goal is really to prepare and give exposure to some of our people to see if following somebody around would give them a good perspective on the job and whether it might be something they'd like to grow into, aspire into," said NUWC Division, Keyport Technical Director Michael Slater, who is among the 12 senior leaders currently serving as shadow hosts for the program.
These hosts come from various departments across NUWC Division, Keyport, ensuring representation from all areas of the command. Each applicant chooses which host they want to shadow and submits a written statement explaining their choice. Applicants are free to choose hosts from their own departments or others, depending on their personal interests and professional development goals.
"It's been really interesting to see the rationales that folks have been submitting with their applications so far,” said NUWC Division, Keyport Acting Strategic Planning Officer Melissa Berry, who is overseeing the facilitation of the pilot. “And we've had a mix. We've had people who have stayed within their own departments and then we've had people who have gone outside. We've seen really good and varied justifications for why folks want to shadow specific people and I am excited to hear feedback from the participants on their experiences with the program."
The shadowing experience lasts a full 40-hour work week and is conducted in person. Shadows are expected to participate in and contribute to challenging projects and assignments and attend as many of their hosts’ meetings as is feasible, though there may be some they can’t attend depending on the sensitivity of the topic, said Berry.
This pilot is the brainchild of NUWC Division, Keyport Deputy Technical Director Bill Carlson, who sees it as a way of ensuring that the command always has enough qualified individuals to replace senior leaders as they retire or otherwise leave the command, said Carlson.
Carlson wants to avoid a repeat of the experience gap he and other NUWC Division, Keyport senior leaders saw emerge in the 1990s, after the command underwent a prolonged period of limited hiring as part of a reduction in force. “We had this big sort of bubble where we would normally have hired people throughout that time period, and then we did not,” said Carlson. The result was that as senior leaders retired, there weren’t enough experienced individuals at the command to replace them.
Carlson came up with the idea for the current pilot after participating in another shadowing program in which he followed Deputy Technical Directors at various other commands. He found that the opportunities for firsthand observation and real-time questioning afforded to him by this earlier program greatly accelerated his learning curve.
“What I realized was that [while] shadowing, I learned more in a week than I would have learned in a year of trying to do it any other way,” said Carlson, adding that the experience was “like taking a very intense class.”
The benefits of leadership shadowing programs go well beyond simply preparing the next generation of leaders. These programs also have benefits for individuals currently in leadership roles, including the opportunity to make valuable network connections, said Slater.
While this particular pilot is limited to high-grade employees, Slater said he's hoping it will pave the way for a future shadowing program targeting a broader section of the workforce.
“What we're hoping happens,” said Slater, “is that it kind of catches fire a little bit and the Division Heads and the Branch Heads can then recognize that, hey, this is a pretty important deal—maybe we ought to be doing it for the people who want to be a Branch Head or a Division Head and see what that day-in-a-life is like."
For those interested in applying, Slater’s advice is to go for it. He added that very little preparation is required and the downside of participating is “pretty low,” with a high likelihood that participants will learn a tremendous amount and be able to build their professional networks.
-KPT-
About Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Keyport
NUWC Keyport provides advanced technical capabilities for test and evaluation, in-service engineering, maintenance and industrial base support, fleet material readiness, and obsolescence management for undersea warfare to expand America’s undersea dominance.
| Date Taken: | 06.15.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 06.15.2023 18:31 |
| Story ID: | 447338 |
| Location: | KEYPORT, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 139 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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