The Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Award for Inspirational Leadership is a United States Navy award established in 1980 by United States Secretary of the Navy Edward Hidalgo to honor the inspirational leadership of James Stockdale, a Medal of Honor recipient in the Vietnam War, who exhibited exemplary leadership while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for nearly eight years.
The award was first presented in 1981.
[1] Each year two commanding officers of either a surface warship, aviation squadron, submarine, or SEAL team below the grade of Captain are selected, one for the United States Atlantic Fleet and one from the United States Pacific Fleet.
A board of peer-nominated officers, one from the Atlantic and one for the Pacific, select the winners, based on the five criteria of inspirational leadership that Vice Admiral Stockdale identified in his writing and teaching on leadership.
[2] These criteria are: