So who’s the third person in the room?
Further proof that the Hackman character is a jerk.
I served aboard USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) what I was told was that all carrier skippers were avaitors. As an enlisted man the one and only time I interacted with the captain was when he went down the line and shook my hand at a promotion ceremony.
The XO had a knack for showing up in the damndest places at the oddest times, most notably about 2am when I was wedged up/under/around some piping installing a new pump in an AFFF station. All I heard was some wise ass asking how’s it coming under there? Cramped in places I didn’t know I had and losing feeling in my arms from working at an akward angle my response was ** insert swearing like a sailor here.** Peeking through the pipes I saw kakhi pants and brown shoes and thought to myself oh fuck I’m getting written up for this. He roared in laughter and left.
Pshew.
I found the source of my original misconception - a quote from Poul Anderson’s “Tau Zero” which I must have read in 1977 or so:
“The human animal wants a father-mother image but, at the same time, resents being disciplined. You can get stability like this: The ultimate authority-source is kept remote, godlike, practically unapproachable. Your immediate superior is a mean son of a bitch who makes you toe the mark and whom you therefore detest. But his own superior is as kind and sympathetic as rank allows.”
In the USAF it’s similar (no surprise) to what folks have described above about USN & USCG. Officers will meet their chain of command promptly upon arrival at the unit. It’ll be pretty formal, resembling an interview, although HQ’s decision to assign you to that unit is pretty much beyond the CO’s purview. This becomes less true as you get farther up the food chain. 4-star generals don’t take just any 3-star they happened to send over. At that level everybody already knows everybody, at least by reputation.
The standard USAF description of CO & XO jobs is that the CO faces upwards and deals with all the higher headquarters relationships. His main job is dealing with *his *boss. The XO stands back-to-back with the CO facing downwards and deals with everything below there. The XO’s job is dealing with *his *subordinates. The XO is really in a mind-meld with the CO and should largely submerge his/her personality. His/her job is to channel the CO’s approach.
Almost nobody becomes a CO without being an XO first. It’s considered great training. The CO you’re paired with may or may not do the job the way you would in his/her shoes. But even a bad example is a useful learning example.
Hint: XO is really, really hard. CO is a lot more fun. Unless something goes badly wrong.
My personal experience was only as a lower-level OIC. But I did “interview” all my enlisted shortly after I or (later) they arrived at the unit. The goal is as described by others above: This is my approach; this is the rules of the road; try to do the right thing and I’ll back you to the hilt; try to do the wrong thing and I’ll have your ass in a sling by sundown. …
I’d say it’s good practice in civilian life as well; expected, even. Both for new managers being assigned to a team, and for new team-members being assigned to a manager who didn’t pick them. Those “get to know you” interviews have both a PR purpose (specially in the first case) and a more-practical one of figuring out who will be the best people to get assigned all those little tasks which need doing but aren’t part of anybody’s job description (for example, running the purchasing paperwork for a laboratory).
A new manager who arrives and starts reorganizing things without asking “how do you do it now?”, or one who doesn’t introduce himself to every team member (including those with inconvenient working hours) within a week of arriving, isn’t just starting on the wrong foot but on the wrong leg.
The legendary Hyman Rickover was notorious for his interviews of potential captains for his fleet of nuclear submarines. Jimmy Carter even talked about.
There’s lots more on ‘The Rickover interview’ available through Google if anyone’s interested.
But Rickover was in a position where he was actually choosing the officers assigned to jobs. The captain of a ship doesn’t get a veto on an executive officer who’s been assigned to him (by somebody like Rickover).
But the captain does have real power over his XO. The captain will be the one evaluated the XO and writing his fitness reports - and those will be the basis on which admirals will be making their decisions over who gets promoted to commands.
My understanding is the system is deliberately set up so there are always multiple candidates available for any command position - so a single black mark like a mediocre evaluation will deny an officer a command.
So the purpose of the interview is to establish what the captain wants from his executive officer. And the implicit threat is that if the executive officer doesn’t do what’s expected, the captain can kill his career.