Being the captain of a warship can be a lonely existence. Eating, chilling out, watching tv and resting in isolation will impact different people in different ways. Regardless of where a captain sits on the intro-extravert spectrum however, s/he needs some sort of trusted sounding board to ‘download’ on.
As you might expect its completely commonplace for people in a ship to ask “how are ya Boss”? It’s just normal superficial social conversation and like any senior leader, I’d answer with energy and enthusiasm. During one of my commands we had some pretty significant events occur and these things can take a while to process. Fortunately, I had a highly perceptive officer in this team who often inquired one layer deeper than the others.
After my usual robotic response of “I’m doin’ great thanks Robbo” he’d sink into a chair before saying “I’m sure you are Sir, but it’s been frantic and so I’m really asking; How Are You?” As soon as I read his genuine authentic tone it gave me license to remove my invincibility cloak and start to discuss the way I was feeling about this, that and the other. It was tremendously heart-warming to know that someone was deeply concerned and interested in my mental state and in some ways, it made the loneliness of command a bit more bearable.
When you ask people the question RUOK?, don’t settle on the initial answer. Go one layer deeper and see what happens.
