Olivia: A study of airline crews found that in 77 percent of cases where captains saw a safety issue, they stayed silent to preserve team harmony. What if the deadliest thing in your organization isn't a faulty machine, but a culture of silence? Jackson: Wow, 77 percent is terrifying. That's the kind of silence that leads to disasters. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to point at, even when the room is on fire. Olivia: Exactly. And that's the core question in L. David Marquet's book, Leadership Is Language. Marquet isn't just a theorist; he's a retired U.S. Navy captain who famously took command of the USS Santa Fe, the worst-performing nuclear submarine in the fleet, and turned it around. And he did it not with new tech, but by changing his words. Jackson: A submarine captain talking about feelings and language. I'm intrigued. That’s not the stereotypical image of a naval commander. It’s usually all about orders and discipline. Olivia: That’s the paradox he lives in. He argues that the old command-and-control language is not just ineffective in the modern world; it's actively dangerous. And to prove his point, he starts the book with one of the most harrowing modern maritime disasters imaginable.

Olivia: The story is about the SS El Faro, a 40-year-old American cargo ship. In September 2015, it set sail from Florida heading to Puerto Rico, right as Tropical Storm Joaquin was brewing in the Atlantic. Jackson: Okay, I think I remember this. This doesn't end well, does it? Olivia: Not at all. The captain, an experienced mariner, had two route options. The faster, more direct Atlantic route, or a safer, longer route through the Old Bahama Channel. He chose the direct route. As they sailed, Joaquin intensified from a tropical storm into a full-blown Category 3 hurricane, heading right for them. Jackson: And he just kept going? Why wouldn't he turn back or take the safer route? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question. The book analyzes the ship's bridge recordings, and the language is chilling. The captain created what Marquet calls a culture of "prove and perform." He projected total invulnerability. Early on, he said to his chief mate, "So we’ll just have to tough this one out." Jackson: Whoa. That's not a discussion; that's a declaration. He’s basically saying, "The decision is made, don't question it." Olivia: Precisely. He’s running the old Industrial Age playbook: the leader decides, the followers execute. As the storm worsened, the crew's anxiety grew. The third mate called the captain to suggest turning south. The captain told him to stay the course. Later, the second mate called with even more urgent concerns. Again, the captain insisted they continue. Jackson: This is so frustrating to hear. Why didn't they push back harder? These are experienced sailors, they must have known the danger. Olivia: This is where the language becomes so critical. The crew was trapped by what Marquet calls a steep "power gradient." The captain was the authority, and the culture on that bridge didn't allow for real challenges. At one point, the second mate is talking to a junior crew member about a possible deviation, and he says, "He [the captain] is not gunna like this." They were more afraid of the captain's disapproval than the hurricane. Jackson: That is insane. They're literally sailing into the abyss because they're afraid of a bad performance review. Olivia: It’s a perfect, tragic example of compliance over commitment. The crew complied with the orders, but they weren't committed to the plan. They were just following instructions. Marquet even points to a metric called the Team Language Coefficient, or TLC, which measures the share of voice. On the El Faro's bridge, the captain and chief mate did almost all the talking. The junior members were virtually silent. There was no collaboration, only coercion. Jackson: So the people with potentially life-saving information—the ones seeing the latest weather charts, the ones feeling the ship start to fail—were the ones who spoke the least. Olivia: Exactly. The ship eventually lost propulsion, started taking on water, and the last words heard from the captain were a calm, "I'm not leaving the bridge." The ship sank, and all 33 crew members were lost. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that if the officers had been more assertive, the captain's situational awareness might have improved. But the language of the ship made that impossible. Jackson: That’s just heartbreaking. It’s a story about a hurricane, but it’s really a story about a communication failure. It makes you wonder how many "El Faros" are happening every day in boardrooms, hospitals, and offices, just with lower stakes. Olivia: That's his entire point. The "continue and comply" playbook is a relic of the factory floor, where you want to reduce variability. But in complex, dynamic situations, you need to embrace variability. You need everyone's brain in the game. Jackson: Okay, that's a terrifying and powerful example of what not to do. So what's the alternative? How do you fix that kind of broken, silent culture?

Olivia: This is where Marquet introduces his "New Playbook." He argues we need to get out of the old mindset and learn a new rhythm of work. He calls it the "Redwork-Bluework" cycle. Jackson: Redwork, Bluework. Okay, that sounds a bit like corporate jargon. Break that down for me. What does it actually feel like in a meeting? Olivia: It's simpler than it sounds. "Redwork" is the doing. It's executing the plan, hitting the targets, shipping the product. In Redwork, you want to reduce errors and be efficient. Think of an assembly line or a surgical team in the middle of an operation. Jackson: Got it. That's most of my workday. Just getting things done. Olivia: Right. But the problem is, most organizations are stuck in permanent Redwork. "Bluework" is the thinking. It's collaboration, reflection, brainstorming, and planning. It's where you embrace variability and new ideas. The goal of the new playbook is to create a deliberate rhythm between the two. Do a chunk of work, then pause for Bluework to reflect and improve. Jackson: So it’s like playing a video game. You have the action part, the Redwork, but then you deliberately hit pause—the Bluework—to check the map, look at your strategy, and decide what to do next, instead of just running blindly forward. Olivia: That's a perfect analogy! And Marquet offers six "plays" to help leaders manage this cycle. The first one is "Control the Clock, Don't Obey the Clock." It’s about creating those pauses. He uses the 2017 Oscars mishap as a hilarious example. Jackson: Oh, the La La Land and Moonlight disaster! I remember that. Olivia: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were in total Redwork mode. Their job was: open envelope, read card, present award. When Beatty opened it and saw the wrong name—"Emma Stone"—he knew something was off. He paused. That was his brain trying to initiate Bluework. But Faye Dunaway, feeling the pressure of live TV, was still in Redwork. She snatched the card and just read "La La Land." She obeyed the clock instead of controlling it. A simple, deliberate pause for Bluework—"Let's double-check this"—would have prevented the whole fiasco. Jackson: That makes so much sense. The pressure to just "get it done" overrides the instinct to "get it right." So how does a leader build that pause into a team's culture? Olivia: That leads to the most important play of all, which is the foundation of Marquet's own success story. It’s about shifting from coercion to collaboration, and from compliance to commitment. And he learned it the hard way on the USS Santa Fe. Jackson: The submarine he turned around. This is the opposite of the El Faro story, right? Olivia: The mirror opposite. When Marquet took command, the Santa Fe was the worst sub in the fleet. Morale was terrible, performance was abysmal. He started out as a classic command-and-control leader. One day, during a drill, he gave an order: "Ahead two-thirds." The officer repeated the order, the helmsman repeated it, but nothing happened. Jackson: What went wrong? Olivia: Marquet, frustrated, asked the officer why nothing was happening. The officer calmly replied, "Captain, there is no 'ahead two-thirds' on this class of submarine." He had been trained on a different sub. And in that moment, Marquet had his epiphany. He realized the problem wasn't that he'd given a bad order; it was that he was giving orders at all. His crew knew the order was impossible, but their culture of compliance was so strong that they were going to let him fail rather than correct their captain. Jackson: Wow. That's the El Faro story in miniature. The fear of speaking up is stronger than the desire to do the right thing. Olivia: Exactly. So Marquet made a radical change. He gathered his officers and banned the phrase "request permission to." He replaced it with "I intend to." Jackson: "I intend to." That sounds like such a small change. Does it really make a difference? Olivia: It makes all the difference. "Request permission" places the thinking and the responsibility on the leader. The follower is just asking for a yes or no. But "I intend to" shifts the ownership to the person doing the work. They have to think through the plan, consider the risks, and own the outcome. It forces them into Bluework before they start the Redwork. Jackson: So a junior officer would come to him and say, "Captain, I intend to submerge the ship and proceed to these coordinates"? Olivia: Yes. And Marquet's job was no longer to approve or deny, but to ask questions, to ensure the officer had thought it through. He flattened the power gradient. He turned his followers into leaders. The results were staggering. The USS Santa Fe went from the worst-performing submarine to the best in the fleet. They broke records for performance and reenlistment. Ten of his officers went on to become submarine commanders themselves. Jackson: All from changing a few words. That's incredible. It's not about a grand, top-down change initiative. It's about tweaking the linguistic code of the team. Olivia: That's why the book is called Leadership Is Language. The words create the culture. Phrases like "Are you sure?" or "Let's be safe" can actually shut down thinking because they imply doubt. But questions like "What are you seeing?" or "How confident are you on a scale of 1 to 5?" open it up. It’s a playbook of small, precise linguistic moves that unlock a team's collective intelligence.

Jackson: So when you boil it all down, it seems like this isn't just about being a 'nicer' or more 'collaborative' boss. The language we use literally rewires the team's ability to think and solve problems. Olivia: Precisely. Marquet's ultimate point is that the old model, the Industrial Age 'Redwork' factory model, created a rigid class system of 'thinkers'—the managers—and 'doers'—the workers. It was efficient for repetitive tasks, but it's incredibly fragile and dangerous in a complex, unpredictable world. The El Faro had a crew of highly competent 'doers,' but the ship's language discouraged them from 'thinking.' Jackson: And the new playbook erases that line. It's about creating teams where everyone is a thinker and a doer. Olivia: Exactly. The language is the code that runs that new operating system. It's the difference between a crew that silently sails into a hurricane and a crew that says, "Captain, I intend to change course. Here's why." Jackson: It makes you think about all the "small" conversations at work that are actually huge. The language that gets used in a one-on-one or a team meeting can set the course for success or failure weeks down the line. Olivia: It really does. So the one concrete thing to take away from this, a simple first step, is to just listen to yourself for a day. How often do you ask binary, yes-or-no questions that demand compliance? Versus how often do you ask open-ended 'how' or 'what' questions that invite collaboration? That small audit is the first step in running one of Marquet's most powerful plays. Jackson: I love that. A simple, practical first step. I'm definitely going to be more conscious of that. We'd love to hear from our listeners on this. What's one phrase you've heard at work that either completely shut down a conversation or truly opened one up? Let us know. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.