Leading From the Heart: Rear Admiral Shares Leadership Lessons With Embry-Riddle Community

Michael Manazir, retired two-star rear admiral and author of “Learn How to Lead to Win,” recently encouraged Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University students to embrace their potential as leaders and to reframe mistakes as learning opportunities.

“Effective leadership comes from connecting through the heart with people and not from a title,” Manazir said.

Manazir, who serves as a vice president at defense startup Hadrian and is a former vice president at Boeing, outlined three tenets of leadership that have carried him through a distinguished 36-year naval career and now into the business world: listening, empathy and inspiration.

“No matter what group you're leading,” he said. “You do those three things, and you build trust inside the organization."

Manazir addressed a capacity crowd of Embry‑Riddle students, faculty and staff during a Presidential Speaker Series event on April 15 at the Daytona Beach Campus. The event included a student-moderated discussion led by Enrique Cardenas, a senior pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Aviation Business Administration with a specialization in Supply Chain Management. Cardenas is a business advisor for the Society of Aerospace Technicians Aviation Maintenance Council competition team and a U.S. Navy veteran.

Their conversation touched on mentorship, Manazir’s motivation for writing his book, “Learn How to Lead to Win,” and the leadership lessons that have most resonated with his readers.

“I’ve been exposed to so many things that I could tell a story about to hopefully help somebody,” he said. “And stories have always been powerful, so I thought the best way to teach leadership was to tell a story about things that worked for me.” 

Over the course of his career, Manazir commanded thousands in high-stakes environments, including on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and Fighter Squadron 31. One of his most impactful leadership lessons was to learn the names of the people you lead — in his instance, every crew member he commanded.

“When you learn people's names, they know you care enough to know who they are,” he said. “As you care about people, when you ask them to do something, they will want to do more to achieve the thing you're asking them to do.”

“The only two things you need to do to effectively lead people is value them and make them part of something bigger than themselves,” he added.

A graduate of the Navy’s elite flying school TOPGUN, Manazir has also seen both failure and success up close. “Resilience comes from multiple failures,” he said.

The goal of leaders, he said, is to set guardrails for what types of failure are acceptable or not acceptable, communicate them clearly and consistently and celebrate when your team learns from its mistakes.

 “If you are trying hard enough, you will fail trying to attain a worthwhile goal,” he said. “But the more mature you get, the more you look at the backside of that failure and figure out what it just taught you.”

Embry‑Riddle’s Presidential Speaker Series welcomes industry leaders, prominent alumni and trailblazers in aviation, aerospace and related fields to the Daytona Beach Campus. Video from past Speaker Series events can be found online.