Interesting contrast. The smiling ones are the ones you need to worry about because they are only in it for themselves and trying to figure out how to use you for that purpose. Otherwise to them you are nothing. The scowling ones are scowling because they are trying to get something done in a system that inevitably screws up everything useful you try to get it to do. If you are not his present problem you’re doing just fine. Rickover was like that. When someone complained that the way he came across it sounded like he didn’t trust people to do a good job. His respone - if I thought you weren’t doing your job you wouldn’t be here.
King was a legend:
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt described King as a man who “shaves every morning with a blow torch.”
It is commonly reported when King was called to be COMINCH, he remarked, “When they get in trouble they send for the sons-of-bitches.”
When asked to state a public relations policy for the Navy, King replied “Don’t tell them anything. When it’s over, tell them who won.”