Turn the Ship Around! What the Research Says About Leader-Leader

What the book is

Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders is a book by L. David Marquet. It was first published in 2012 by Greenleaf Book Group Press; the Portfolio/Penguin edition most readers know, with a foreword by Stephen R. Covey, carries a 2012 copyright and notes the Greenleaf original (Marquet, 2012). Library catalogs list xxxii plus 236 pages (Marquet, 2012). The publisher's current listing gives 272 pages and a 2013 date (Penguin Random House, n.d.), and a UK edition followed in 2015 (Internet Archive, n.d.). The book's four parts are Starting Over, Control, Competence and Clarity (Marquet, 2012).

Marquet is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. The publisher says he commanded the nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe from 1999 to 2001 (Penguin Random House, n.d.). His website says he spent more than a year preparing to command a different submarine, USS Olympia, before he was unexpectedly diverted to command Santa Fe instead, and that he retired from the Navy in 2009 (Marquet, n.d.).

The story, as Marquet tells it

Every claim here about the ship and its results is Marquet's account or his publisher's.

The publisher's description says Marquet had been trained in a leadership model where the person in charge knows everything and tells everyone what to do (Penguin Random House, n.d.). His website says Santa Fe was the worst-performing submarine in the fleet when he arrived, and a different type of submarine from the one he had studied (Marquet, n.d.). The publisher adds that the crew had poor morale, poor performance and the worst retention in the fleet.

The turning point, in both accounts, came early. His site says that less than a month after he took command, the crew ran a drill simulating a reactor fault (Marquet, n.d.). The publisher's description says he unknowingly gave an order that could not be carried out, and that his crew tried to follow it anyway. Asked why, the answer was "Because you told me to" (Penguin Random House, n.d.).

My view: that moment is the hinge of the book. In Marquet's telling, a new commander, trained for a different submarine, was giving orders, and the crew was following them. The publisher says Marquet responded by pushing for leadership at every level. The Submarine Review describes the goal as moving the crew from leader-follower to leader-leader (Hilger, 2013).

On outcomes, the publisher says the ship went "from worst to first in the fleet" (Penguin Random House, n.d.). Marquet's site says Santa Fe reached the highest retention and operational standings in the Navy, and that after he left it continued to win awards and to promote more officers and enlisted sailors to positions of increased responsibility than any other submarine, including ten later submarine captains (Marquet, n.d.). I could not check these against Navy records, so I present them as his.

The advice, in plain words

A review in The Submarine Review, the Naval Submarine League's journal, summarizes the method well (Hilger, 2013). In my words, it comes down to four points.

First, move the decision to the person with the information. The book's case is that the people doing the work often know things the person in charge does not, which is exactly what the drill exposed.

Second, control alone is not enough. The review stresses that pushing decisions down also means pushing down competence, so that junior people understand the full consequences of what they decide. Marquet pairs control with competence and with clarity about what the organization is trying to do (Hilger, 2013).

Third, change the language. The review credits the book with explaining where the phrase "I intend to…" came from and the thinking behind it (Hilger, 2013). As the phrase suggests, the person doing the work states the plan instead of waiting to be told, which moves the thinking to them.

Fourth, treat mistakes as material for learning rather than occasions for punishment, which the review also emphasizes.

Why it became popular

I could not find an independent count of copies sold. The publisher's page carries a "Best Seller" label and quotes praise from USA Today and Fortune, which called it the best how-to manual for managers on delegating (Penguin Random House, n.d.). Those are the publisher's selections, not an independent measure.

Two sourced reasons stand out. One is Covey. Marquet's site says Covey called Santa Fe the most empowering organization he had ever seen, a library catalog summary uses nearly the same words, and that summary frames the ship as a source of Covey's inspiration (Marquet, n.d.; Marquet, 2012). The other is that submariners vouched for it. The Submarine Review reviewer, Lieutenant Ryan Hilger, wrote that calling it the best leadership book he had read would be an understatement, and said its stories would resonate with submariners (Hilger, 2013).

My view: a clear before and after, told by the person in charge, plus one phrase a manager can use on Monday. That combination travels.

The main criticisms

I could not find a published critique of the book itself in a research journal or major review outlet. The concerns below come from the evidence around it.

It is one case, told by its leader. The book is a first-hand account of a single ship. The outcome claims come from the author and the publisher. A single case can show that something is possible, not how often it works or which part did the work.

The shift is fragile and slow. The Submarine Review piece notes that on an earlier submarine, the ballistic-missile boat USS Will Rogers, Marquet's attempt to empower his engineering department collapsed after a single mistake by junior personnel, and he went back to the old ways for the rest of that tour; it adds that the Santa Fe change took time and needed a supportive chain of command (Hilger, 2013).

Handing over decisions can be a burden. A person handed authority they are not ready for may feel strain rather than freedom. The research below speaks to this.

My view. The book's own pairing of control with competence is the condition that makes the rest work, and a submarine crew is a group whose training is built in from the start. In an organization where people have not been trained to the level the decision requires, moving decisions down without that step is not leader-leader. It is abdication.

What the research says

There is no study of Marquet's method as a package that I could find. There is a large body of work on empowering leadership, which is close to what the book describes: leaders sharing authority, encouraging people to make decisions, and expressing confidence in them. Four studies are most useful here.

The broad picture. Lee, Willis and Tian (2018) ran a meta-analysis of 105 samples. According to the abstract, they found empowering leadership linked to better performance, organizational citizenship behavior and creativity, at both the individual and team levels. They also examined whether it adds anything beyond two other well-studied approaches, transformational leadership and leader-member exchange; the abstract names that test but does not state its result. At the individual level, trust in the leader and psychological empowerment mediated the effects. That is support for the book's direction, from pooled evidence rather than one ship.

The "too much of a good thing" question. Sharma and Kirkman (2015) reviewed the empowering leadership literature. According to their abstract, they called on researchers to study why leaders empower in the first place, and to look for less positive and unintended negative outcomes, using perspectives that include followership theory and the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect.

Two faces. Cheong, Spain, Yammarino and Yun (2016) took up that question. According to the abstract, as summarized on the authors' university page, they proposed two processes. In one, empowering leadership raises people's confidence and performance. In the other, certain empowering behaviors raise job-induced tension, which weakens the gain in performance. Their results largely supported both. Empowering leadership can lift performance through one route and, through some of its specific behaviors, weigh on it through another.

A slower start. Lorinkova, Pearsall and Sims (2013) studied 60 five-person teams of senior undergraduate students working through a three-hour computer simulation, so this is a laboratory study, not a workplace one. Teams with a directive leader performed better at first. Teams with an empowering leader improved more over time, which the authors linked to more team learning, coordination, empowerment and shared understanding of the task. The authors also note that a single snapshot of final performance would have shown no significant difference between the two styles. My view: for a manager, with the caveat that this was a lab study, expect a slower start before the gain.

Taken together, these studies suggest the core idea has support, and that the conditions in the story (competence, clarity, time, a backing chain of command) are where the effect can fail.

A balanced verdict

What the book is good for: making a clear case that the person closest to the work often has the information the decision needs, and giving managers a concrete habit, the "I intend to" statement, to start moving decisions toward that person.

Where it misleads, if read quickly: the story makes the shift look faster and surer than the research suggests. The outcome figures are the author's own. And the method, by the book's own framing, depends on competence, which many organizations would need to build first.

The best use I can suggest is for managers in the middle of an organization, who both receive decisions and hand them down. Pick one recurring decision your team escalates to you. For the next month, ask the person who brings it to state what they intend to do and why, and confirm or question it rather than deciding for them. Check after a month whether the decisions held up and whether the person found it freeing or heavy. For more on that layer, see middle managers, and for books that sit alongside this one, see the reading list for new and middle managers.