Retired Rear Admiral & Navy Federal Member 'Rocks the Boat' for Leadership

For Danelle Barrett, leadership is not complicated.

The Navy Federal Credit Union member came to that simple conclusion during her 30-year career in the U.S. Navy, where she learned how to be a successful leader navigating within the complex branch of the military. She served as director of the Navy’s Cybersecurity and Deputy Chief Information Officer, leveraging her talents as a technology innovator in managing the Navy’s cybersecurity strategy, policy and IT architecture supporting worldwide missions involving 270 ships, 3,700 aircraft and 93 submarines at hundreds of locations.

“In real-life situations, exceptional leadership isn’t rocket science if you just focus on what matters most,” she wrote in the preface of “Rock the Boat: Embrace Change, Encourage Innovation and Be a Successful Leader,” published in June. “In fact, it’s so easy a monkey could do it.”

That self-effacing humor and other amusing anecdotes throughout the 237-page book were used to provide, as the long-time Navy Federal member wrote, “simple, concise leadership and mentoring advice to develop change leaders who can make a better future for their organizations and those they mentor.”

Barrett decided to chart that simple course because, as a reader of other leadership and management books, many of them, she found, included complex mathematical formulas to back up leadership theories that may impress academic intellectuals but do little to inform organizational leaders who face daily, difficult challenges in a highly competitive marketplace that is changing faster than it ever did before in human history.

“For me, leadership is inherently about people and behavior, not formulas and complex theory,” she wrote. “Leadership and mentoring are about developing, inspiring and leading change with people. Management is about metrics. Thankfully, no calculators will be harmed by reading this book; we will generally avoid the insanity of leadership mathematics.”

After graduating from college, Barrett joined the Navy in 1989. When she was assigned to her first job as a telecommunications and information operations officer at her first duty station in Jacksonville, Fla., she had never heard of the $147 billion Navy Federal Credit Union.

“But I heard Navy Federal was the bank of choice there in Jacksonville, and I still use Navy Federal as my primary bank account,” she said. “They’re awesome.”

From her first job in the Navy, she advanced her career to become an assistant chief of staff for communications and combat systems, a personnel manager, and was promoted to the position of a commanding officer in 2011 for the Atlantic Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station, the largest in the Navy, where she was responsible for 2,300 people in 15 subordinate organizations worldwide and managed a $110 million budget.

In 2013, she served as chief of staff for the Navy Information Forces Command and then became director of current operations for U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Mead before retiring in October 2019 as the Navy’s cybersecurity division director and deputy chief information officer at the Pentagon.

Barrett got the idea to write the book when she began her speaking engagements.

“When you advance through the ranks of the military you just do a lot of speaking to groups on leadership and mentorship,” she explained. “And what I noticed is that I was being asked the same questions such as, how do you strike a healthy work-life balance? What do I do if my boss is a jerk? How do I communicate better? How do I handle workplace transformation with all this crazy technology that is so fast and accelerating, or how do I handle change management?”

After writing down her observations and thoughts, she had plans to write the book while on active duty, but that kept her very busy, and she couldn’t find enough time to write. Finally, during the early days of her retirement in January 2020, she found the time to write the book over the next three to four months.

She kept her goal simple: To write a book that would provide actionable and practical leadership advice and tools so that leaders and aspiring leaders would be able use them in their own circumstances in whichever industry they work in.

Her book is divided into 15 chapters that delve in how to be an effective leader in a world that is rapidly changing, why mentoring matters, managing expectations, having frank conversations, the importance of work-life balance, finding inspiration, overcoming your own biases, learning from the jerks and a leadership path for women in male-dominated fields.

Each chapter features a “Sea Story,” which are real-life vignettes that helped shaped her leadership talents, skills and abilities, and develop her three basic principles of effective leadership: Inspire and connect, find your three positives and don’t be a jerk.

Since it was first published in late June, the book has made Amazon’s Best Seller’s List in business leadership, business mentorship, and coaching and management skills.

The first-time author also received stellar reviews from the likes of Mark Ain, founder and former CEO of Kronos; Tina Swallow, sales director for McAfee; Frankie Shaw, motion picture and television director, writer, producer and actor; and Admiral Jim Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO.

“Former Rear Admiral Barrett distills plenty of Navy wisdom in this highly readable and very practical guide to deckplate leadership,” Stavridis wrote. “Of particular note are her thoughts on mentorship, a key practical skill set at the heart of servant leadership. A must-read for aspiring leaders from the world of business to the bridge of Navy ships!”

Barrett also has a Facebook page, Mentoring with the Admiral, which is updated regularly with leadership lessons and advice in plain, simple language supported by humorous, touching and practical storytelling.