BONUS: Captain David Marquet’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Best Coach

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Captain David Marquet, Former US Navy Submarine Commander, Author
Release Date: August 24, 2025

Episode Overview

In this insightful bonus episode, Vasco Duarte welcomes back Captain David Marquet, renowned for transforming the leadership culture aboard the USS Santa Fe and author of the newly released book How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions. Together, they delve into the psychology of decision-making, the practice of "distancing," and the necessity for leaders—especially scrum masters and agile coaches—to become their own best coach. The episode is packed with practical strategies, memorable stories, and straightforward advice for reframing how we approach leadership, retrospectives, and personal growth.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins of "Intent-Based Leadership" and the Power of Thinking (03:00–06:13)

• Captain Marquet shares the lesson learned on the submarine: True leadership comes from enabling the crew to think for themselves, not merely follow orders.

  • “When you start giving people orders, you give them a pass on thinking… My commitment was to stop giving people orders.” (03:17–03:32)

• He moved decisions as close to the front line as possible, with the team presenting their “intent” rather than waiting for orders.

• Vivid Anecdote: When Marquet asked an officer to sit in the captain’s chair and reconsider a decision, the officer’s perspective shifted—it’s not only the position, but the mindset that shapes quality decisions.

2. Psychological Distancing for Better Decisions (06:16–15:11)

• The Distancing Process:

  • “Be someone else, be somewhere else, be sometime else.” (10:52)
  • Our immediate, “immersed self” is ruled by short-term pressures; distancing helps us see with clarity and align with our long-term values and identity.
  • Example: Jeff Bezos’s “regret minimization” framework—imagining himself at 80, looking back—enabled a bold, value-driven decision to start Amazon. (07:51–08:43)
  • “When you think about it from the vantage point of your future self, you’re now looking back on the decision… your brain thinks about it like regret. What did I miss? What could have been?” (08:53–09:13)

• Practical Application for Scrum Masters:
  In retrospectives, ask the team to imagine describing improvements for a future team in a distant location—this helps reduce defensiveness and increase honesty. (10:39–12:38)

• Support from Psychology:

  • Referencing studies, Marquet explains that simply imagining yourself physically far away (e.g., in another city or country) improves the quality and objectivity of decision-making.

• Quote:
  “Being physically separated improves decision making. It has the same impact as that temporal separation, or thinking about it from the position of someone else.” (12:53–13:11)

3. System One vs. System Two: Slow, Reflective Thinking (15:11–18:48)

• Tapping Into “System Two”:
  Vasco draws parallels to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow; distancing strategies shift us out of quick, biased response and into deliberate thought.

• Marquet’s Insight:

  • “When you’re not you, you simply see things differently… your brain… attends to all things that prove you’re right and ignores all the things that prove you wrong.” (17:11–17:43)
  • Our self-image and past choices tend to bias us; substituting another perspective helps cut through this cognitive noise.

4. Why Is Distancing So Hard? (18:48–23:59)

• It’s Human Nature to Be ‘In It’:
  We default to experiencing life as ourselves (“I did this… I went there”). It’s effortless—like water for a fish.

  • “It takes effort. It takes effort. So I was a physics Major… it's a lower energy state. It takes no effort to just be you. It takes effort to imagine you’re not you.” (20:04–20:34)

• Powerful Business Example:

  • Intel’s Andy Grove and Gordon Moore struggled for a year to abandon memory chips due to their entrenched identity—until Grove asked, “‘What if we got fired, and the board brought in new people to run the company? What would the new people do?’” (23:44–23:58)
  • Instantly, the right move became clear: focus on microprocessors (leading to Intel’s ascent).

• Lesson: Viewing your situation as if you were an outsider releases you from the baggage and blind spots of your own history.

5. Becoming Your Own Best Coach (25:29–31:47)

• Leadership Starts with Self-Coaching:

  • “I get really frustrated dealing with leaders who describe the problem as everybody else… Well, what have you changed recently? …Start with changing yourself.” (26:18–26:50)
  • Leaders must embody the change they wish to see—credibility and understanding arise only when you yourself have experienced transformation.

• Coach’s Perspective Analogy:

  • “The coach is sitting on the corner… looking down, they see the whole field… When the coach says—you run off the field, you meet with the coach, and the coach is, ‘what are we going to do next to win?’ …They care, but they don’t care. They didn’t feel it.” (28:21–29:14)
  • This perspective allows you to prioritize outcomes over immediate feelings, and to hold yourself accountable.

• Practical Tip:

  • Try writing an email from two perspectives—yours and a coach—see how the content and tone changes (30:35–31:47)

6. Language Shift as a Powerful Leadership Tool (31:47–33:08)

• “The moment we change the language, we change how we think, we change what information we consider, we change how we communicate.” (30:35–31:47)

• Speaking/writing in third person or addressing yourself as “you” (vs. “I”) can increase performance and insight:

  • “The people who said ‘you can do it’ exerted more energy, felt a little bit better than the people who said, ‘I can do it,’ because ‘I can do it’ immerses yourself in the situation, whereas ‘you can do it’ tends to separate yourself and you have a little bit more distance to see what’s really going on.” (31:53–32:25)
  • Caveat: In dangerous, technical, or highly focused moments, staying immersed may be necessary.

7. Stopping Time: The Power of the Pause for Reflection (34:01–38:11)

• Create Intentional Space for Reflection:

  • “Once you start sliding into an immediate, reactive, immersed self, it’s really hard to then climb out. ...The system one self isn’t going to pause itself, because it takes system two override to pause the system one.” (34:01–34:50)
  • Plan your pauses BEFOREhand. Agile works because regular retrospectives inject systematic, scheduled reflection points.

• Implementing in Practice:

  • When making decisions (personal or organizational), tie them to a scheduled pause or review—this builds in permission to both fully commit and later reconsider.

• Retrospectives, Public Evaluation, and Defensive Mindsets:

  • Defensiveness is natural under scrutiny; using distancing and pre-planned pauses can reduce “exposure anxiety” and help teams and individuals focus on genuine improvement rather than self-justification.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Psychological Distancing
  “The problem with your decision making calculus isn’t you don’t have enough information... The problem is your internal, your egoic biases that just come from the fact that you view the decision from inside your own head.” (10:44–10:59)

• On Retrospectives
  “If you say, ‘let’s talk about what we could have done better on this retrospective,’ that’s immersing you right now in you, and it’s activating this defensive thing. If you say, ‘imagine a team in Singapore doing this next month…’, you’re doing all three [distance techniques].” (12:10–12:39)

• On Change and Self-Coaching
  “If you want people to change, I want you to change yourself. Because if you don’t do that, you have no credibility, no sense asking other people because you don’t know what it takes and you don’t know how hard it is and you can’t do it.” (26:38–27:03)

• On Language Shifts
  “Shifting it from ‘I’ to ‘he’… or, if you’re running, saying ‘you can do it’ instead of ‘I can do it’—you have a little bit more perspective.” (31:47–32:18)

• On Action & Mindset
  “We act our way to new thinking. You want to do different things, not… And we act your way to a new mindset. You don’t mindset your way to new actions.” (39:20–39:32)

Practical Takeaways for Agile Leaders

• Schedule Your Pauses: Build reflection points into your process before you need them, especially after major changes or strategic decisions. (34:01–35:30)
• Practice Distancing in Retrospectives: Frame conversations about improvement as advice to another team, in another place, in another time to trigger more honest, objective discussion. (10:39–12:53)
• Be Your Own Coach: Before seeking change in others, actively change and coach yourself. Use language and techniques that position you as both player and coach in your scenarios. (25:29–29:14)
• Experiment with Perspective-Shifting Language: When stuck, journal or communicate in third person or as though coaching yourself. Notice what emerges. (31:47–32:49)

Where to Learn More

• David Marquet’s website: davidmarquet.com
• LinkedIn: Regular updates and leadership articles
• YouTube: Leadership Nudges – 500+ short videos on practical leadership tips
• Book: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions – available wherever books are sold (38:50)

This episode is essential listening for agile practitioners seeking to improve their own judgment, break out of default patterns, and lead by reframing decisions—starting with themselves. Marquet’s methods provide actionable ways to foster clarity, accountability, and coaching, both for yourself and your teams.