With more than 25 years of senior leadership in high-stakes environments — including the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Air Force — Rachel Dunlap knows what it takes to lead through complexity. Now an executive coach, she shares hard-won lessons on strategic planning, managing up, protecting your team's capacity, and why the best leaders know when to stop giving everything to the job.

Transcript

Rachel Mandell (00:00)

Today, I am thrilled to welcome Rachel Dunlap to our FemmeFactor Conversations. Rachel is an executive coach with more than 25 years of senior leadership experience in high-stakes environments, including the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Air Force. She now works with senior executives to strengthen leadership capability, emotional intelligence, and change management. Rachel, welcome. We're so happy to have you.

Rachel Dunlap (00:25)

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

Rachel Mandell (00:27)

So you have a lot of extensive leadership experience and served as a principal advisor to the commander working in lockstep with the chief of staff. Can you describe this role to us and what it meant to advise on issues affecting an organization of roughly 1,200 personnel?

Rachel Dunlap (00:45)

Yeah, of course. So serving as that advisor was a role defined by strategic integration and anticipation. Working closely with that chief of staff, I acted as that connective tissue between the commander's vision and the operational reality of 1,200 personnel. I viewed my role as that steward of organizational health. This required me to stay informed across a wide breadth of functional areas. And while I wasn't the expert in any of them, I maintained that horizontal view of the enterprise. And then I also served as that necessary sounding board. I took the responsibility of being the voice of the workforce seriously. Sometimes I had to bring things forward. It was pretty uncomfortable. Like, this is what people think. We're going to have to figure something else out about this. And by building those deep relationships across the broader DLA enterprise, I was able to navigate complex dynamics and facilitate the cross-functional collaboration needed to move organizations from reactive management to proactive transformational growth.

Rachel Mandell (01:42)

That is an intense job. It's a lot to manage, especially because you are in between the leaders and everyone else. I'm curious, you mentioned a little bit about strategic messaging and being in charge of performance frameworks, plus long-term organizational direction, which is in and of itself important and a lot of work. So how did you approach building a strategic plan in such a complex environment when you were at the Department of Defense?

Rachel Dunlap (02:20)

It is very complex. There's multiple layers that have to be woven together. I shifted our paradigm from incremental updates, which is what had been done in the past, into a completely different focus. We did it more as a mission-centric approach. So we looked at our customer strategic goals. We actually went to the combatant commands, the services and looked at their strategic documents. And again, the big DLA looked at all of those strategic documents and decided where were our gaps? Where did we fit in and where were those critical gaps? And in the end, we were able to build that framework that was both resilient and fully integrated.

Rachel Mandell (02:59)

It's super interesting because what you're saying applies not just to federal agencies and the management of them, but it also applies to running larger organizations and even smaller organizations in the private sector where you have a corporation. You're saying, look, we talk to the customers. And it really is the best way to identify our gaps and then incorporate them into our plan and our next steps. So really what I think of, because I've only been private sector, is you are constantly managing innovation. You have to execute, but you have to innovate. I wonder, how did you encourage people to do this? So you came in and you made some changes. What did you do to help the people who were working under you think beyond what they were used to and sort of prepare for scenarios that didn't even materialize yet?

Rachel Dunlap (03:54)

Yeah, so one, I brought a lot of spunk. I brought a lot of spunk and I was willing to be wrong. So that's a big thing is that I'm willing to throw out ideas and be like, we may not know the answer, but we do know we need to change. And how can we support our customers if we don't know what they're doing? And so that was a big part of changing that dynamic. And also I had to create that environment where that first draft was just that, it's just that first draft. And it's okay if it's not the final product and we're gonna keep making changes to it. And I gave, especially for my team specifically, I gave them that chance to experiment and try new things. Like, give it a try. If it doesn't work, we'll just do something different. It's okay.

And what I also would do is look at things as a continuous audit, a value audit. Do we still need to be doing this? So what did end up happening is we also got new commanders and new directors on top of that, who had a completely new vision. So that worked in our favor too. But we created a new process. I led the integration team for what we called 4P, because we had four principles that we were going for. And we did it as a bottom-up approach, which we'd never done before. So we got our workforce to get engaged, because if they know what the mission is, they're going to come up with good ideas, because they're engaged in the process also.

A couple other things I do to get them forward thinking — I'm willing to be the one to write the first draft, the first page of something, so that it is not a blank document. I had to put together a 120-day assessment for the commander to present to the director. And in order to do this, I talked to each of my peers. I had them come in and I'd sit down and talk to them because you get a lot more when you're having the conversation. But I was able to pull that together — had I tasked it out and said, hey, I need you each to provide me something, I probably wouldn't have gotten very much. And I probably would have gotten things that they've already used. But by having the conversations, I transformed it. And then they could critique it all they want. That's okay. But having that non-blank piece of paper is a good starting point.

Rachel Mandell (05:54)

I love what you're saying — the continuous audit, the communication with folks at your level, and then kickstarting the team with non-blank paper. Because I think that is not a small point for anyone. Staring at a Google Doc is very intimidating and getting started in anything I think is the hardest part. It makes a lot of sense to say, here's my take, here's a draft, go in and do what you need to do. I wonder if you could provide an example of a scenario that was changing or something that you had to adjust to while you were managing these moving parts.

Rachel Dunlap (06:36)

So some of the things that I had to adjust to — every day it was new priorities. That's a regular basis. But a big thing I had to do was change a command ceremony and our Hall of Fame ceremony, along with our day-to-day tasks, both at the same time. And what I've realized from that is that's too much. You can't do that all. So it's really been through hindsight that I'm like, my goodness, I can't do that all. And when I do that all, because I'll go and work 12-hour days and work on the weekends because that's what I did, I made my team do that too.

I would never have said, I need you working 12-hour days, or I need you working on the weekends. But because I was, some of them did too. And by me doing it, I applied that pressure to them without realizing that I was. And I feel like that's a lesson learned that I've had since I've left — I shouldn't have done that. In order for leaders to protect the capacity of their own workforce, they need to be aware of that too.

Another big change was when we switched our telework schedule. All of a sudden we had to put together a crisis team to figure out where we're going to put all of our employees to be in the office three days a week. I led the team to do that. Go through the discussions on what are they going to do for childcare, the differences of having to do it more days out of the week than what they were doing, how are you going to get to work every day, what are the hours and the flexibility we were going to give them. That was a huge undertaking of a high-stress situation. That was also very emotional for the employees because it was a change to their lifestyle. And realizing again, I'm giving everything for these opportunities and maybe I shouldn't be. But that again, I only realized after I left. So now that's a cornerstone of my philosophy — I should have prioritized more ruthlessly. I should have not given everything that I had to the job. And that would have let my team have that permission to do that too.

Rachel Mandell (08:38)

I really appreciate that point because if you're in a leadership position, a lot of times you've gotten there by really pushing yourself and that aligns with your personality in some aspects. But your example is how people are going to behave — how you model your work ethic and your work hours is also how people are going to behave. It's a helpful reminder because it's also a reminder to take care of yourself.

Rachel Dunlap (09:07)

Yes, I did go years ago to a class for a month and that was a whole big lesson from that class — if you're not taking care of yourself as a leader, you can't take care of your employees. And I brought that lesson back with me. I had a note on my wall to leave by 5 p.m.

Rachel Mandell (09:23)

I think it's also important to be honest about how challenging that actually is. Balance is not something that we can all achieve, especially not consistently. One of the interesting aspects of your job, at least from my point of view, is that you were really in an advisory capacity and had to filter out the information you were receiving on behalf of the commander and the deputy commander. What made you decide what mattered most, what they needed to see, and when to bring an issue that was maybe unexpected forward?

Rachel Dunlap (09:56)

So I did try to look at things — whether it was the impact, the urgency, and the sensitivity. And I tried to keep the routine friction down at my level so that I wasn't bothering them. When I had to bring it to their attention, that meant they really did need to be involved. They were the only ones that could answer the question or at a minimum they needed to be aware so that they weren't going to be blindsided by anything. And what I also did as part of that was create new tools to track tasks so that we were not losing anything. I also had eyes on any of the monthly or weekly reports that were sent up to the front office so that they were going up with good products. If there was something that did go up, I knew it and could give them at least the framework — this is the situation, this is what's already been done and you can go from here.

Rachel Mandell (10:48)

I think it's an important point for people to understand that in order to run a smooth operation and be the filter for someone in a higher position or someone that has really limited time, there is a lot of work that goes into making sure that they are getting the right information and not getting inundated with the wrong information. Having a really organized operating structure where you can know where all the tasks are and prioritize them accordingly directly impacts how the executive values your contribution. I think that's a really important point because there's so much work that goes under the surface to make these really fine, clear points at the top.

Rachel Dunlap (11:29)

Yes, absolutely. Because there's so many things to set up to have time to synthesize information, which is what my office did too — to get it to the next level or to be done with it, whatever needed to be done.

Rachel Mandell (11:40)

Any tips on the synthesizing aspect? I'm curious.

Rachel Dunlap (11:44)

It's definitely a lot of connections and communication. My method is if I didn't have it on time, I made a lot of walking around the building to go visit people and be like, hi, I don't have this from you yet. And I would sit down with some of them too. And I know they appreciated that extra effort, and it made it easier sometimes the next time. So then they would know what I was looking for. And by me asking questions, I could get what I wanted and it would take five minutes. That's where that breadth of knowledge across the board comes in — trying to stay in tune with everything that's going on enough that you can synthesize the information and read it and be like, this was about this and this was about this and this is how those two pieces fit together.

Rachel Mandell (12:23)

Yeah, it makes me think about a piece that someone just submitted about really tailoring your content to the audience. You're collecting information from a variety of different people with a variety of different expertise. And then you're synthesizing all of that. Did you have any tips or tricks in how you approached or spoke or requested types of information from the people below you or their specific areas?

Rachel Dunlap (12:50)

So let's see, we had to do a lot of things for the director. When we would provide input for speeches for him, sometimes the level of input that people would provide me — I was like, the director's not going to talk about that. So those would be the ones where I'd say, okay, let's think of who's going to be speaking and let's give it at a level that he might want to speak at. He doesn't need to, for example, give a specific contract number, because no way would he say that. But what is the use of that contract and what is it going to be used for? That is something he could talk about.

A lot of times people will give you what they think is great. It's very exciting. It's very useful. But someone who's technically an expert in an area — three levels up is not going to be speaking at the technical level because if they get asked a question, they're not going to be able to answer. They're going to talk at a strategic level. So speeches were a big one as far as giving information on topics that we were working on.

Rachel Mandell (13:50)

It's very difficult to train people on content if content creation is not their expertise. And to your point, the audience is always the most important thing, but you've got to know the audience to make the audience useful. I think that's a great example because it does go across any industry. There are teams at companies — product teams, development teams, marketing teams, creative teams. And each one has a different area of expertise, communicates in a different way, and would share information in a different way. And what you're saying at your level is that there is a training, a coaching, and then ultimately a synthesizing that goes on to really get the message to the point that it's appropriate for one, the director to say, and two, for his audience to then consume.

All right, so you've been in a lot of different scenarios. Certainly in large federal agencies, there's a lot going on. We've talked about a lot of change, but there's also a lot of high pressure. Can you share an example of a time where your leadership was really tested and you learned from it?

Rachel Dunlap (14:58)

So a time when I was really tested is when I moved into this new position. I had three disparate teams that were coming together for the first time working for me. And honestly, they hadn't been told that they were all coming to work for me. So I had to help them understand why they were coming to work for me and why we were becoming one. I had one member of my team who was fantastic at graphics. So he created me a tree. I thought of our office as the roots of the tree because without us, the tree doesn't grow. We were the roots, we were the support for the organization. And I was really able to articulate how each team member and each specific office did fit together. So not only do they have a new boss, they have a new organization. And for two of them, they have a new layer between themselves and the commander. So that was definitely a big leadership challenge. In the end, I think they grew to like me and could see the direction that I was trying to get them in.

Rachel Mandell (15:58)

But it's certainly hard to go into a new job as you're explaining and have that new job sort of undefined with a bunch of folks under you who are also unclear on what the future looks like. I think more often than not starting a new job, especially at the leadership level, kind of looks nebulous and there's a lot of folks waiting and judging with these preconceived expectations. And you really have to take the time to demonstrate your leadership. And I guess that's only fair, but it is also extremely challenging because just a regular old straightforward new job is hard enough.

I think your attitude about it is the right one, where it's like, okay, yep. Sounds good. Resistance is not going to make this easier. So let's move on. Let's do it. All right. So let's talk about your latest chapter. You've recently left the federal workforce. You were there for decades and you've transitioned into executive coaching. Can you talk to us about the shift? How did your identity evolve? And I know this transition's ongoing, but I'd love to hear how it's been so far.

Rachel Dunlap (17:14)

Wonderful, in one word, wonderful. So yes, I was definitely fortunate over the course of my career to have the power of coaching firsthand a few times. It was a transformative tool. I loved it. I had always thought, I think I'd like to be a coach. But I hesitated because I had that safety net of the federal government. And I was like, no, I'm not going to invest in myself in that way. But then this opportunity came up to leave early from the federal government and I jumped at it. And now I have the opportunity to become that executive coach I'd always looked at. It was always sitting in the back of my head, just hiding, waiting to jump out.

My identity has definitely shifted. I've moved from being the person with all the answers — or what I thought were all the answers — to the one with the right questions now. And there's definitely humility in this evolution because it's all new. And realizing also how much more effective and how much better of a leader I would have been had I had more of this coaching mindset when I was actually in the positions. Because I wouldn't have answered as many questions. I think I would have asked more questions. I would have been more curious. I would have set better boundaries. I would have learned so much more. So I want to use those tools now to help other executives and leaders so that they can learn from my mistakes a little bit earlier.

Rachel Mandell (18:30)

That's part of the reason we started FemmeFactor — when we're in our career, a lot of us from 30 to 50 are raising children at the same time. So the idea of investing more in our work when we're already working a lot, and in ourselves and coaches and mentors and networking, just doesn't happen. I really appreciate you seeing an opportunity and seizing it, because I do think there are so many women who can benefit from executive coaching, particularly from women who have been there and done it for decades like you have, and really have seen organizations change, have really felt the pressure, learned trial by fire. There's just so much knowledge that women collectively have that isn't being shared. I'm always excited to hear from someone like you who's decided to go in that direction. So thank you so much for sharing your story, your expertise. It was so nice having you on here. Can you let our listeners know where they can find you?

Rachel Dunlap (19:29)

Thank you. They can find me on LinkedIn — Rachel Dunlap on LinkedIn.

Rachel Mandell (19:42)

Okay, great. Well, it was a pleasure. We will be in touch and you guys will be hearing from Rachel in our weekly newsletter in the near term. So pay attention. 

Rachel Dunlap (19:50)

Awesome. Thank you so much.