Peter Scott - The silent service of submarines and leading with courage and compassion

So Peter Scott joined the Royal Australian Navy as a 17-year-old midshipman and over three decades rose to become the professional head of the Navy's elite, the submarine arm.

The reason that I personally joined the submarine arm remains extant. You know, they're a phenomenally effective, potent, capable, highly respected naval capability. My decision to join the submarine arm was different to the thousand decisions I made to stay in the submarine arm. But the answer always came back to, for me, the same three things. Purpose, challenge and people. That combination of purpose and challenge and people was intoxicating. And I note that the word toxic is in there. It was intoxicating for me and kept drawing me back. Service in the Navy wasn't, you know, it was going to demand something of me, but it was also going to demand something of other people, you know, of people around me and my family and so on. So I decided that, you know, if I was going to be in the Navy, I would provide absolutely the most effective service that I could.

Do you want to just give us a little bit of an idea about an insight into what perisher was like?

So it is a command qualifying course. There's no equivalent course elsewhere in the Navy. So there's no command qualifying course to go and drive a frigate or a destroyer or

an air squadron. Yeah.

By the time you get to something like Perish, you've inevitably spent at least 10, maybe 15 years in the Navy and probably a decade in submarines. So you know your trade. And this is about can you go out there and be the sole person in command of a submarine that's been tasked with wartime missions or whatever. As AUKUS was announced, the impact of that was that the government was now directing Australia's requirement for submarines was that we have nuclear-powered submarines into the future. Our geographic and geostrategic circumstances absolutely demand nuclear-powered submarines. There's a real and substantial difference between the option set for what you can do with a nuclear-powered fleet compared to a diesel-powered fleet.

Welcome to the One True Measure podcast. I'm your host, Blake O'Connell. We're here each week talking to some pretty exceptional guests about all things success and this concept of an individual definition, an individual measure of success, this internal definition. journey towards uh success the one true measure and this week uh i'm really excited every week i'm really excited we've got amazing guests on and this gentleman who we're going to talk to today um has been a big mentor helped me um and supported me along uh writing my own book and also been there to be able to offer advice at times when I really needed it. So really excited to talk to Peter Scott today about commanding submarines and then his thoughts around leadership in all levels. Welcome, Peter. G'day, Blake. Pleasure to be here. Ah, how's sunny Sydney today? Not so sunny over in the west today. Yeah,

no, it's breaking out sunny. It's been a bit of a grey old day so far, but it's looking good now. I might get the dog out for a little while now.

And we were talking about this before we started, but really exciting news, obviously, over the last