By: Maj Joshua O. Garcia Rivera
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. speaks at the Air Force Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy, March 10, 2022. AFSNCOA students shared their ongoing development of an enhanced curriculum to focus on integrated deterrence. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Rhonda Smith)
Introduction and Problem Statement
The USAF has a leadership training and development gap, specifically in the low-tiered ranks (pay grades: E-4 to E-6 and O-1 to O-3). Compounding the problem and increasing this gap, many of our unit commanders lack the time to create, implement, or maintain a leadership development effort. The USAF recognized this problem and created the Airmen Foundation Courses between the years 2023 and 2024, which have yet to be implemented on some bases.[1] Therefore, we need a comprehensive but simple tool to bridge this deficiency. I want to cover what this tool looks like in this article.
My response to this problem is to create a guide to be used by unit commanders to train their troops. Three main imperatives will bound this effort:
- The guide must be a baseline for commanders to implement immediately; it must be easy to use and easy to follow.
- The guide must be flexible so commanders can tailor the content to their particular needs by either adding material or focusing on a specific subject.
- Commanders can use the guide content from 45 minutes to 1 hour per tier.
To obtain the topics for the guide, I conducted informal surveys with leaders and subordinates alike. Some were more structured than others, but centered on two main questions. The results ranged from simple things (expected to be known at this level) like communication and time management to more complex things (there is no expectation to know about these topics) like team building and strategy. Again, this training guide is built as a baseline and should be flexible and able to be further developed where needed.
A Squadron Officer School student observes his classmate participating in the Mixed Reality Learning Experience program Oct. 18, 2018, at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Two students out of a 14-person flight engage in a simulated conversation in the MRLx to experience the type of discussions they will face while in leadership positions. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexa Culbert)
The guide is organized in four quarters and, subsequently, in twelve months. Every quarter will have a theme, and a different topic will expand on that theme every month. Each topic has six sections: introduction, objectives, module preparation, module components, module conclusion, and resources and tools. For example, for Q1, the theme is Knowing Yourself, and the topics are “Developing Leadership through Self-Discovery,” “Discovering the Fire Within,” and “Leaders vs Managers.” The goal is for unit commanders to use this as a reference in their journey of developing young or first-time supervisors while maximizing the available time to train the force. But first, let us discuss the current state of leadership development in the USAF.
Background
I am sure you are asking yourself, what is the USAF doing to develop their troops in leadership roles? The answer is that we have all the proper forums in place but built with the wrong assumptions, and, arguably, these forums are designed for the wrong audience. Using a sports car metaphor as an example, it is like preparing the fastest car for a race (the development courses in place), but the driver (the Airman) is uncomfortable driving faster than 70 mph. Therefore, we need a solution to bridge the gap between courses so that when the Airmen attend them, they have the foundations to assimilate the new information.
Today, every Airmen Tier (Exhibit 1) has at least one leadership school; however, these schools’ offerings are for the last grade at the respective tier. The Junior Enlisted tier has the Airmen Leadership School offered only to E-4s (Senior Airmen) and those E-4s selected to serve as E-5 (Staff Sergeant). The Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) tier has the NCO Academy offered mostly to E-6s due to the backlog in the school pipeline, and the Senior NCO (SNCO) tier has the SNCO Academy that is provided mainly to E-8s also due to backlog in the school pipeline. On the officer side, the Company Grade Officer tier offers the Squadron Officer School exclusively to O-3s (Captains). The Field Grade Officer tier has two developmental education opportunities: the Intermediate Development Education for O-4s and the Senior Developmental Education for O-5s. The General Officer tier has the General Officer School for O-7s (Brigadier Generals). Lastly, the expectations for those who attend the schools in-residence differ for officers and enlisted. For the enlisted, everyone goes in-residence, but for officers, two schools are compulsory in-residence, and two schools are administered online and competitively selected for in-residence (only 10-20% attend in-residence).
That said, I am confident about two things: first, the schools need to be more robust and dynamic to prepare Airmen to supervise, lead, and assume risk. And second, we need to stop this gap in development until the USAF catches up with establishing formal training.
Targeted Audience
The target audience for this Leadership Development Guide is young or first-time supervisors and leaders. These Airmen need the proper tools in addition to the ones they figure out independently. However, if we give them the tools and demonstrate how they benefit from them, we could exponentially improve their performance and their team’s performance.
Methodology, Survey & Results
Before creating the development guide, I asked myself, “Should I write about the things no one told me, or should I ask the target audience and see what they say?” I determined that asking the Airmen was the best course of action for this phase.
Due to the nature of the questions and the goal of seeking candid answers, I decided to conduct informal surveys. Some were more structured than others, but mostly, all the surveys revolved around two questions:
- How is your leadership development going?
- How has the USAF prepared you for becoming a leader?
After a few interviews, patterns started emerging, and most leaned toward topics we assume people should know when they begin supervising someone else. Examples are time management, emotional intelligence, the Control, Influence and Accept Model, and effective communication. I was surprised by how many interviewees spent their day without having foundational skills, mainly because no one bothered to teach. I asked this follow-up question several times: “Did you feel prepared to supervise someone else after finishing your formal training?” The answer was “no.” One hundred percent of the time! These results tell me that we (USAF leaders) assume risk by not training young troops in foundational supervisory skill sets. Therefore, it is safe to say we are relying on sets and reps to get things done at the micro level rather than preparing our leaders by honing their competency levels.
From these interviews’ results, I derived the themes and topics for the guide (keeping in mind that these themes and topics are for establishing a baseline so commanders can add or take information from the guide as they please). More specifically, for the themes, I used the following script:
Before you can manage others, you need to know who they are and be able to manage yourself; before you can manage yourself, you need to get to know yourself.
For the topics, I used the results from the interview and categorized them into their respective buckets. For example, emotional intelligence fits in managing yourself, and communication fits in managing others.
The Guide
I organized the Leadership Development Guide to be used over a year, hence four quarters and twelve months. As mentioned before, each quarter has a theme, and each month has a topic that develops each theme. The topics will have six sections: the introduction, objectives, module preparation, module components, module conclusion, and resources and tools.
Ideally, I envisioned the guide in a binder with all the tools and associated readings attached. However, I recognize that the binder could become burdensome for most people; therefore, I will use the Microsoft Portable Document Format to publish this guide. In the future, and with the appropriate resources, this guide could morph into a smartphone application where the tools and readings are immediately accessible with one click.
Finally, I will do my best to protect the intellectual property of others by always using references and quotations, so the user receives all the information. On the same note, the guide uses various resources, including references from books, the Harvard Business Review, and online websites. I recognize there is a financial burden associated with using the guide, and it could be mitigated by using the Department of Defense Libraries; if you are a student, your college library, or if you are enrolled in IDE or SDE, you could use the Air University Library as well.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.
About the Author
Maj Joshua Garcia Rivera is an LRO serving as Chief, HQ ACC IG Logistics Readiness Inspection Section. He is a 2014 graduate of the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras and has served in a variety of assignments, including flight commands at the 5 LRS and 52 LRS, LCBP at the Ogden ALC, DO of the 388 LSS, and as OIC of the Joint Movement Control Center – Turkey, directly supporting CJTF-OIR. He has master’s degrees in Transportation and Logistics Management from American Military University and an MBA with a concentration in Global Supply Chain from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. To request a copy of the Leadership Development Guide, please email jgr06@proton.me.
Exhibit 2 – The Leadership Development Guide
Works Cited
[1] Ferguson, B. (2024, July 29). Enlisted Foundations courses ready for Airmen. Air Force.
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3854306/enlisted-foundations-courses-ready
for-airmen/
[2] Bass, J. S. (2022, May 16). The Enlisted Force Structure. Air Force Doctrine.
https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/Airman_Development/BrownBook.pdf
[3] Knausenberger, L. B. (2022, December 16). Department of the Air Force. https://static.e
publishing.af.mil/production/1/saf_cn/publication/dafh33-337/dafh33-337.pdf