Phillips served as command grasp chief, U.S. 2nd Fleet and senior enlisted chief, Joint Pressure Command Norfolk for his final project.
Vice Adm. Daniel Dwyer, commander, U.S. 2nd Fleet, presided over the ceremony that hosted a number of the Navy’s highest management from the officer and enlisted ranks. Dwyer defined what Phillips meant to not solely the 2 instructions they led collectively however the Navy as an entire.
“To summarize what Fleet Phillips does each day, I can solely share with you one phrase: affect,” Dwyer mentioned throughout his speech on the ceremony. “He impacts each particular person he comes into contact with on the deck plates and makes them higher, and I rely myself amongst them.”
Vice Adm. Alvin Holsey, navy deputy commander, U.S. Southern Command, was among the many distinguished leaders in attendance and served as a visitor speaker. They beforehand labored collectively on Activity Pressure One Navy, a program created by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday to determine and take away racial limitations, enhance inclusion efforts, create new alternatives for skilled growth and get rid of obstacles to enter the Navy.
“Exhausting doesn’t imply unattainable. The query you must ask your self is ‘what does arduous imply to you?’” Holsey mentioned. “I don’t assume arduous is even in Huben’s vocabulary as a result of for him, it positively doesn’t imply unattainable. There are some who say it could have been unattainable for somebody like him, who was born in Lexington, North Carolina, to blaze the path that he’s blazed. I’ll share with you that it’s generally higher to stay the unattainable than to query what might have been.”
Capt. Gavin Duff, commanding officer of the plane provider USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), one other visitor speaker, spoke on the constructive impacts of high quality management and the way Phillips’ service within the Navy will assist into the longer term.
“Management have to be primarily based in good will. Good will doesn’t imply posturing,” Duff mentioned. “President Truman mentioned it like this, ‘All the time keep in mind that management is a privilege. When you’re in a management function, your affect might have an effect on the trajectories of different folks’s complete careers.’ Your legacy will outlive your years of service.”
Phillips mentioned his perspective on essentially the most difficult and vital a part of main in navy service: the folks.
“Individuals ask me, what’s the toughest factor about your day, and I feel, nicely two issues: folks and folks,” Phillips mentioned. “As a result of in the event that they had been low, I’d work actual arduous to drag them up, and in the event that they had been excessive, I might work arduous to attempt to get to their stage to attach and affect them.”
Phillips continued by reflecting on his lengthy profession as a person humbled by his experiences all through.
“I stroll away from the Navy as a person with many life experiences,” Phillips mentioned. “For all of the members in uniform I ask that you just replicate on who you’re. Not the person or the girl in uniform, however you. The one you stare at within the mirror. Our rank, our titles, our positions merely state what we do, not who we’re. I’ve discovered many issues in my tenure. However three are what I take into consideration each single day. One is endurance is its personal reward. That was arduous for me, I’m not very affected person… [Two], I discovered there’s a unsuitable strategy to do the proper factor. That was arduous, as a result of morally I felt like I used to be proper so subsequently everybody ought to see that I used to be proper. And most significantly, the largest barrier to progress is oneself.”
Phillips is succeeded as command grasp chief for U.S. 2nd Fleet by CMDCM Jason Avin, who beforehand served as pressure grasp chief for Commander Submarine Pressure, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Honolulu.
U.S. 2nd Fleet, reestablished in 2018 in response to the altering international safety setting, develops and employs maritime forces able to battle throughout a number of domains within the Atlantic and Arctic as a way to guarantee entry, deter aggression and defend U.S., allied, and companion pursuits.
