Learning is one thing that you should never stop.  I’ve lost track of how many courses I’ve attended in my 34+ years in the Air Force, but the most entertaining one had to be “Public Affairs Training for Senior Leaders”.

I was a brand new Operations Group Commander and the PA office was really pushing me to go so, in spite of a busy deployment schedule, off I went.   I flew down to Atlanta with my PA “handler” and we made the painful drive to Robins the evening before the one day class started.  We showed up the next morning at the proper time and location and I was whisked into a small classroom with a table in the center and chairs along the walls.  I’m not the kind of guy that likes to sit in the front of the class, I tend to block the view for the rest of the class with my big noggin, so I headed for a chair along the wall.  I didn’t get far.  The instructor snagged my arm and steered me to the seat at the head of the table.  She smiled sweetly and said, “We’d like you sit here, at the table, sir.”  I’m used to doing what women tell me to do so I sat down and made myself comfortable.  At this point I thought it a little odd that the other students hadn’t shown up yet so I asked her if we were going to get started soon or wait for everyone else.  Here’s where my dreams of blissful anonymity in the back of the classroom ended.  “No sir, we’ll get started right away.  You’re the only student.”.  Really, a class of one?  And as it turned out, at any given time there were at least three instructors in the room.  Nothing like being the center of attention.

They spent an hour or two teaching.  It must have been about Air Force policy, but I can’t say I recall any of it.  Remember, policy is what we do in place of common sense.  I recycled some coffee and we moved on to the “fun” stuff.  For those that haven’t attended the course, they set you up in five different public affairs scenarios.  They use all of the equipment and studios you would use in the real situation and they “play act” the part of reporters and hosts and audiences.  They actually do a nice job.

The first scenario was a remote feed interview with a national media outlet.  You sit at a desk with an unmanned camera pointing at you and talk to the voice in your earpiece.  Pretty straightforward.  I was instructed to build a rapport with the reporter prior to the live feed starting so I dutifully talked about the trip down and family and then I commented on the weather in Macon which I described as “sucks”.  We did the interview and then it was time for the debrief.  For every event debrief they started with the same question, “How do you think you did?”.  I hate that question.  And every time my response was the same, “You’re the experts, you tell me”.  They told me I did great, I was engaging, funny but on point, but………, there are words that are acceptable, words that are unacceptable and “sucks” falls in the gray area between the two.  They really would prefer we not use it.

Well, I apologized profusely.  I didn’t realize it wasn’t part of Air Force approved vernacular and I would certainly be more careful.  At least those were the words that came out of my mouth.

For the rest of the day, I found a way to interject the word “sucks” into every event and in nearly every context the word can be used.  I talked about how the pump “sucks” the chemical from the tanks during aerial spray, how high fuel costs “suck” the money out of our budgets and, finally, during a simulated aircraft crash press conference, how it “sucks” when airplanes crash.  HQ types don’t have much of a sense of humor.  It took them two more events to realize I was messing with them and from then on I just got eye rolls when I said it.

I guess I passed.  They took me aside after one event and asked if they could keep the tape and use it for future classes.  “As an example of what not to do?”, I asked.   “No”, they said, ”It was the best we’d ever seen!”  I guess we had some pretty sucky communicators in AFRC if I’m the best they’d ever seen!

p.s.  For years people have been coming up to me at conferences and saying they recognize me from somewhere and It took someone remembering where for me to find out they really were using my video for training.  They must have stopped using it at some point because last month HQ called my PA shop and asked when I would be attending the PA course.  They suck!

“Civic Duty”

I was really excited the first time I was picked for jury duty.   I saw it as an important part of my civic duty and, since I’d never really been in trouble, I didn’t know much about the legal system.  So when I got the letter in the mail explaining the “one day or one trial” system in Allegheny County I couldn’t wait to see how it all worked.

The first time I was tagged it was for Civil court.  I spent the day being herded from room to room, being asked seemingly meaningless questions and by the end of the day, feeling rejected.  I took my $8.65, which didn’t even pay for parking, and went home.

2-3 years later I was called again and, again, it was for Civil court.  However, this time I had done my homework and talked with lots of people who had been there before and, apparently, they don’t really want you to know anything about anything.  This time I took lots of reading material and upon arrival parked myself next to a middle-aged man in a nice business suit.  We immediately struck up a conversation and he told me that he could predict with 100% reliability who wouldn’t be selected for Jury duty.  This of course peaked my interest.  He said that neither he nor I would be selected since we were both middle aged working men.  He said that race didn’t matter at all, he was African-American, if you had a job, chances were you probably had an opinion, and/or, knew a little about a lot or were an expert on something.  Either way, they weren’t interested.  On the other hand, if you were an old man, you might get picked because they figured they could manipulate you into believing just about anything.  I was really get to like this guy!  Finally, he said that non-working women had the highest chance of getting picked, regardless of age, which he called the Oprah factor.  As far as working women were concerned, it was all based on what they did for a living.

By the end of the day his theory was proven, at least by one day’s worth of observations!  I had lunch with a group of ladies from my jury pool and they reinforced the theory.  One of the potential jurors was a flight attendant and even though she had a Master’s degree in education, she guaranteed me that she would be selected because of her current job.  She was right and she smiled and winked as they marched her and her 12 new best friends out of the courtroom.  At the end of the day I again felt like a bastard step child.

My next selection didn’t come for 5 years and by then I thought they had just given up on me.  I figured I’d get my one day of rejection and, since it was the day before Thanksgiving, I’d be back to work on Monday.  The only difference this time was that it was Criminal court.  There’s a job in the court called a Tipstaff and if I ever had to work in a court, I think I’d like to sign up.  As best I can tell, he’s the guy who herds the jurors and makes things work behind the scenes.  So when I showed up for criminal court, the system worked a little different.

I ended up in a jury pool for a murder trial and they were a bit more, shall I say, serious.  We were herded into a very quiet court room and led one by one through a door.  Once someone went through the door, they never came back so what happened in the next room was a mystery.  After two hours it was finally my turn.   In the room was a table with, obviously, a lawyer at each end and in the middle, a sleazy looking guy in a bad suit.  The Tipstaff asked me to take a seat across from the sleazy guy and the fun began.  I was told that the accused killer was the guy in the bad suit.  They then asked me where I lived, if I was married and what my wife’s name was, did I have any kids and how old they were.  Not comforting questions to answer sitting across from an accused murderer!  Luckily, he didn’t look like the sharpest tack in the box.  They started down the list of boring questions and I dutifully answered where I went to school, how long I had lived at my current address, if anyone in my family had been a victim of a crime.  Everyone seemed bored and I got the impression that this wasn’t there first day of this.  The boredom ended when they asked the next question.  It was, “Do you know anything about guns?”.  Now that was a good question.  With a straight face I answered, “I’m an expert marksman (at least by Air Force standards) with a .38, 9mm, and M-16”.  The conversation perked up significantly and I explained that I was in the Air Force.  They wanted to know what I did so I attempted to describe the Stan/Eval process and how the job was about having high standards and holding others to those standards and busting even your best friend if he screwed up.  I was on a roll.  I figured that they’d be terrified of having someone on the jury who had any kind of personal standards let alone high ones and that they’d want someone who knew nothing about guns and could be manipulated.  Home free, Thanksgiving turkey!

I joked a little with the defense attorney who was prior enlisted in the Air Force, and the Tipstaff directed me into the next room.  The door closed behind me and I heard lots of laughing through the wall.  30 seconds later the door swung and the Tipstaff hopped through with a big smile on his face.  “You’re in!” were the first words from his mouth.  Flabbergasted I asked, “How’d that happen?”.  “You said all the right things!  They loved that stuff about busting your best friend if he screwed up and being objective is what your job is all about.  You gave the best answers I’ve ever heard.”   As it turns out, they’d been at it for three days and I was the last one to get selected.

They let us go for the weekend and, luckily, the courts aren’t open on Black Friday.  So Monday morning we all showed up ready for the long haul.  But, after a three hour wait in a tiny hot room, we were told that the star witness had jumped from a second story window when they went to pick him up and they couldn’t find him.  The trial would have to be rescheduled.  They thanked us for our service and sent us on our way with $17.30 and a new appreciation for why government is not the solution for the human condition.

“All the pilots were terrified to fly with Kenny”

Ken really wasn’t, nor isn’t, a scary guy.  He had been at Youngstown, as best we could figure, forever.  He had been an A-37 guy and when the painful transition to C-130Bs had been thrust on them and most of the other fighter, and I use that term loosely, pilots had retired or transferred Ken had stayed on.  I think he was looking forward to flying an airplane that could outrun the super Tweet!

When I arrived in 1984, Ken was the chief of Stan/Eval and I think that was the job God put him on this earth to do.  For those that have held that position you know that you need to be not only objective, but you have to know the books better than everybody else and live by them.  Ken was the epitome of that guy.  Even when you weren’t getting an evaluation, Ken would be sitting in the other seat quietly reminding you what your airspeed should be, how a standard traffic pattern should look, what the books said about flying a circling approach.  He never yelled or even raised his tone, just the quiet voice of reason.  And most guys couldn’t stand it.  It used to be that we were taught to leave our egos in the squadron when walked out the door to fly and that we didn’t have time in a 250 knot, 300 AGL world to worry about feelings.  I don’t know if that construct is in step with our current society but I hope it is.

The problem is that most people have a problem separating constructive feedback from personal criticism.  We think we’ve evolved into a kindler, gentler Air Force/society, but we do ourselves and others no favors by not giving them the professional, and maybe personal, feedback that they need to make better decisions.  Contrary to pop culture and current political opinion, there is a lot more black and white than grey in the world.  By blurring the lines between what is acceptable and what is not we risk devolving into a narcissistic society where we all do what we feel like no matter the cost to others.  The right thing is the right thing whether you like it or not.

What really made Ken a great evaluator was that it was very clear to him the difference between procedure and technique.  He knew exactly what the book standards were and, although he held himself to higher ones, he would never bust anyone who stayed within them.  Personally, I liked to fly with him and when I upgraded to aircraft commander he gave me the most interesting checkride of my life.  The checkride started at Kelly AFB on a weekend cross country and when we got the engines started and were ready to taxi out, Ken said, “OK, I want you to taxi out to the runway, line up for takeoff and you can’t touch the nosewheel steering”.  The nose gear is the weak link in the C-130 landing gear system and there are lots of limitations on what you can and can’t do to keep from damaging it and he just wanted me to see that you can do everything you need to do without using it.  I’ve taught that to every new guy I’ve ever flown with.  Would he have busted me if I couldn’t do it?  Of course not, but it was a great way of passing on his decades of wisdom.

Don’t be afraid to correct.  Don’t forget to teach.  Never stop learning.  And for the thin skinned out there, grow a pair.

“Who are you, who, who, who, who……”.

I’m one of those people who always has a song running around in his head.  It’s usually kick started by something somebody says.  Just a phrase or a few words and a song pops in and it’s stuck there for the rest of the day.  I’m not a big CSI fan, in fact, I’ve probably only seen 1 or 2 episodes and I don’t remember if they were the ”NY” or “Miami” or original versions, but the theme song is a great grabber at the start of the show and who doesn’t like “The Who”.

I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the last 34 years.  From 17 year old student hires to squadron commander candidates and everything in between.  I enjoy getting to know people, but it’s hard to learn what someone is really like during the process.  I’ve used the standard interview questions like “Why are you the best candidate for this job?”, or “What are your strengths?”, followed by “What are your weaknesses?” but most folks are prepared for these questions and you hear the same stuff over and over.  If they’ve practiced, you see a polished presentation, but is that what you need, a good actor?

So, I started asking some questions that I thought might get interviewees to open up a little and give me a better idea of how they would be as employees.  I started with this one, “Milk chocolate or dark chocolate?”.  The results were, let’s say, interesting.  Some thought that there was a right and wrong answer. (There is, but I didn’t hold it against them if they didn’t like dark chocolate.)  Some had to ask for clarification.  Some tried to be creative and, no, white chocolate really isn’t chocolate!  The question served its purpose because no one expected or prepared for it and it always got them to loosen up a little.  But after trying out a couple more, I finally settled on my current favorite, “Who are you?”

It sounds like a simple question, but how you answer it, how you immediately describe yourself when asked, is a good indicator of where you really are and where your priorities lie.  I’ve had answers describing accomplishments, what they’ve done for a living, how much education they have, who they want to be, but rarely do I get the answer I’m looking for without doing a little digging.

How would you answer the question?  Who we are isn’t what we do, or it shouldn’t be.  What we do for a living will end some day and if we don’t have a deeper sense of who we are, defined by our faith, and family, and dreams, then when our career ends our sense of self ends as well.  We all know people who, after they retire, can never get their heads around what happens next.  Loving what you do is important and if you love your job then it’s really not work, but there’s much more to love out there, find it and make it who you are.

I’ve talked the last couple of weeks about commanders that have taught me important positive lessons about leadership and integrity, but this week I’d like to take a turn onto a darker street and talk about how you can just as easily learn lessons from commanders who, let’s just say, aren’t the best the Air Force has to offer.  It’s just as important to figure out what attributes not to emulate as it is to figure out which ones to emulate.

Here’s where the “Hovering Over Send” thing kicks in.  It’s easy to talk about the good and not hesitate clicking that “Send” button, but today I might “Hover” for a few extra seconds.

To AFRC’s credit, their choices for Wing Commanders have been getting much more consistent (and competent) over the last 10-15 years.  As an OG, I’ve worked for 7 different wing commanders and, although their personalities and styles have varied widely, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every one and consider them all friends.  I couldn’t say the same back in the “old days”.

Back then it seemed like every time you got a fantastic Wing CC, look out, commander Karma would kick in and you were in for a rough ride with the next one.  We found ourselves in that exact situation when Col “S” showed up on the base.  At first we thought that he would be OK.  He was quirky, aren’t we all, and he really wasn’t much of a pilot, but we’re pretty accepting here and we gave him a chance.  It didn’t take long, however, for us to realize the true extent of the terror that had been dropped on us from above.

He was the kind of guy that kept an “enemies list” on his desk.  He tracked the folks that pissed him off and his mind was unchangeable.  He surrounded himself with like minded integrity-less people and gave them free rein to wreak havoc on the wing.  Here’s my favorite example of the kind of person he was.

Mike was one our most popular, and funniest, squadron pilots.  He was a natural comedian, the kind that lit up the room when he walked in and had a quick, but not mean, wit.  He was everyone’s friend and never said a cruel word about anyone.  Well, one afternoon Mike was walking up the hill to Ops and noticed a Toyota pickup with a for sale sign in the window sitting next to the HQ building,  He’d been looking for a truck and this one had it all.  Bright and shiny, not a scratch on it, and the price was right in the range for the year and model.  So he called the number on the sign and, low and behold, it belonged to Col “S”.  After a test drive and the colonel’s assurance that it was a great truck, the deal was made, money changed hands, and off Mike drove in his sparkling used truck.

Now fast forward 9 months.  Mike’s wife didn’t like the truck at all.  It couldn’t fit the family and she didn’t like climbing up into it, so like all of our toys the wife doesn’t like, it had to go.  Mike knew how much it was worth so he drove to his local Toyota dealership with his eye on a comfortable Camry and started negotiating.  He and dealer agreed on a price, but then the negotiation broke down when the subject of the trade-in came up.  They offered him a third of what he paid for the truck and no amount of cajoling would get them to up the offer.  Finally, the dealer said, “It is after all an “R” title”.  An “R” title is for a vehicle that has been totally destroyed and then rebuilt from parts of multiple vehicles or after significant and extensive frame and body work.  By law, the seller must tell the buyer if the vehicle has been destroyed and then reconstructed which, of course, Col “S” had not done.  Mild mannered Mike drove the truck straight to the base, stormed into the Wing CCs office, pounded on his desk, and demanded his money back or he would “call the cops”.  Col “S” could only sheepishly pull out his checkbook and refund Mikes money.

That’s the kind of guy Col “S” was.  We had a Flight Engineer go to the back of the airplane to take a leak during a long overwater leg and stay back there long enough to play a few hands of poker and take some money from the crew chiefs.  The squadron handled the issue appropriately, but Col “S” heard about it and summarily fired the OG and the DO, but reinstated them the next day.  Grievances, IG complaints, Congressional inquiries, it never ended, until the day he left, and then things returned,almost immediately, back to normal.

Senior leadership, at all levels, has an enormous impact on morale and performance and when there is a lack of integrity, consistency, or failure to follow the law/regulations, it sends the message to all levels below that those standards, or lack thereof, are acceptable.  I learned a lot from Col “S”, I learned what not to do.

Final Note:

I was always a little bothered that he liked me, or appeared to like me.  I guess I would prefer that bad people not like my, but he was always friendly and supportive and I try to get along with everyone.  At the time I was the chief of stan/eval and years later someone who knew him well told me that he didn’t want to piss me off because I was one of the few people on base that could make him look bad to HHQ.  He was worried that I would bust him on a checkride and that would be embarrassing to him.  An odd look into an odd personality.

Many years ago I was asked to speak at a ROTC Dining In.  If you know me well, you know that my preferred speaking style is best described as “informal”.  I don’t enjoy giving rousing, flowery talks that end up being scripted.  I’d rather speak extemporaneously about a subject I’m passionately interested in and then answer questions off the cuff.  I find it exhilarating.  So when I was asked to speak in this formal setting it took me awhile to wrap my arms around it.  In the end I came up with a talk which I’ve given many times since.  It’s evolved as I’ve fine tuned the message, but it’s the really the same speech.  It’s all about what I’ve learned about leadership from the best commanders I’ve served under.

You already heard part of the speech several weeks ago when I wrote about the integrity and consistency of leaders who feel strongly about what they believe in and demonstrate that by their actions.  Today you get part two.

I remember being a lieutenant.  In many ways those were the best years of my career.  Everything was new and challenging and I approached everything as an opportunity to be the best I could be.  No plans for the next job, just do today’s job the best you could.  When you’re a Lt your view goes out about as far as your next flight and as high as your squadron commander and anything beyond that really doesn’t matter.  I knew that there was a wing commander but all I really cared about was whether he’d make me wear a scarf or a dickie and whether he was really hard-over about it.  Someday I’ll explain dickies to you youngun’s.

It wasn’t until I was a Captain and an ART that I really took an interest in what kind of guy the Wing king was.  I actually got to interface with him on a regular basis and his policies directly affected my everyday work so it really mattered to me what his priorities were.  So there I found myself in 1990, or so, a senior captain, getting a new wing commander, wondering what the new guy was like.

Col Chris Joniec came to us from the strat world.  He had been a 141 guy forever and this was his first foray into TAC airlift and that made us all a little nervous.  However, it took about 5 minutes for us to realize that we had no reason to worry.

Self knowledge is very important in determining your leadership style and in identifying your shortcomings.  Some skills you can work on, develop and improve, but there are some abilities that I believe are gifts and if you don’t have it, you don’t have it.  Col Joniec has one of those gifts and try as I might, I just can’t get any better at it.

When he arrived on base we were in the process of gearing up for a dreaded ORI.  If you’re not familiar with the Operational Readiness Inspection process, suffice it to say that it’s an event that takes up way more time, money, manpower, and effort than the outcome can possibly justify.  It is the quintessential “practice bleeding”.  We were going to perform the ORI with another wing, which shall go unnamed, and we had planned our first get together which meant that they would fly over to Pittsburgh with all of their functional area experts and we would sit down with our counterparts and begin hashing out how we would tackle this thing.  The other wing arrived midday with about 70 folks and we gathered in the aircrew briefing room with our 70 people, pretty much broken up like high school cliques.  The two wing commanders rose to speak to the crowd and set the tone for the whole six month process we were about to embark on.  Col Joniec had been on base all of about 6 weeks but since he was the host he spoke first.  He gave the perfunctory greetings and then began to demonstrate his near miraculous skill.  He proceeded to introduce every one of his 70 or so folks not just by name but by job title, where they worked and even threw in a funny tidbit about them when appropriate.  Flawlessly, without pausing, without notes.  When he finished, he turned to his counterpart, who had been the wing commander at his base for several years, and gave him the floor.  Well, after what seemed like an eternity of silence, he looked around the room and said, “I’m going to let my folks introduce themselves”.  A truly brilliant response considering the position he found himself in.

I’ve always been jealous of the skill to remember names.  If everyone had a number I think I’d be OK, but I sometimes forget my own family member names.  It’s one of those skills that can really endear you to your people, but it’s not just remembering the names.  It really boils down to really being interested in their lives.  In their struggles, their ambitions, their shortcomings, their challenges, their families.  And not just paying it lip service, but really honestly caring.  Don’t kid yourself, people know if you really care.  And the proof is in how often people come to you with real problems.  As hard as it sometimes is, you have to be willing to listen to financial problems, marital problems, parenting problems, medical problems, spiritual problems and, yes, even dating problems.  The reward comes when they also share their victories and you see them flourish and mature.  If no one is asking you for advice then maybe you need to spend a little more time and effort investing in what really makes what we do possible, our people.

“Three Little Words”

Today is my wife’s birthday.  I, of course, won’t tell you how old she is, but it begins the 6 months that we’re the same age.  I remember when we first started dating.  It took me a while to get up the nerve to ask her out, but after admiring her from afar for a year we went out for the first time in September 1973.  We saw Fantasia in an old theater in Squirrel Hill which is now a restaurant.

Teenage boys usually aren’t that good at expressing their emotions so when our relationship progressed to the point that I realized she was “the one”, expressing that wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do.  I don’t remember who said it first, but the first one always has the fear that they’ll say it but the other won’t.  That, no matter how well you think the relationship is going, there’s that little voice of insecurity whispering in your ear “what if she doesn’t”.  I don’t quite remember the “when” or the “who first”, but it seems to have worked out.  It will be 33 years in August.

The good thing about saying “I love you” is that it gets easier with time.  Not that it has any less meaning, but you know how you feel, you have confidence in who you are as you age and, frankly, you’re not so shy about expressing it.  Once you have kids who mean the world to you, how can you not say how you feel about them and as you age you seem to have less desire to hide your feelings and put less emphasis on being what others expect you to be.

Sadly, there are three other words that seem to get more difficult to say as you age or as you move up the career ladder.  They are just as important in maintaining a good marriage and in demonstrating leadership and integrity in an organization but in both cases they become harder and harder to say.  They are “I was wrong”.

I know that they can be hard to swallow in a relationship, but nothing can diffuse an angry situation and bring peace to the house quicker than those three words, spoken sincerely of course.  And don’t think the spouse doesn’t know when you don’t mean it.  Sadly, they are words rarely heard coming from senior leadership in most organizations.  We hear lawyered up responses that talk about “organizational inconsistencies”, or “inadvertent data errors”, or “decisions made with incomplete information”, but all that needs to be said is “I was wrong”.  There is no better way for a leader to demonstrate his humanity, his integrity, his honesty, his contrition, his professionalism than uttering those heartfelt words.  In most cases, unless you were visiting prostitutes in Columbia, people respect honesty and need to know that you’re not, nor do you think that you are, perfect.

Now I’m not saying you can throw it out there after you’ve tried everything else.  It needs to be the first thing you think of, not the last.  If it’s your last resort then maybe it’s time for a little self examination.  It also doesn’t work to point to your staff and say “he was wrong” or even “we were wrong”.  Your staff, your mistake.  We all have to live with our decisions and be confident enough in who we are to suck it up and take the bad with the good.

What we do when we’re wrong says a lot more about our character than what we do when we’re right.

“Happy Birthday Peg, I love you!”

Chapter 12

Jeff walked into my office, pulled up a chair, sat down, and said “I just stopped by to say goodbye”.  It was 20 January 1993, 0935.  It was sunny and cold.

Jeff was the squadron commander and he was everything a squadron commander should be. He was fair, consistent, even tempered, and compassionate yet firm.  He had flown Hercs, well, forever.  He was one of the last Viet Nam era guys and he brought that experience and those hard learned lessons to everything he did.

At first I thought he was headed out on a trip so I asked him where he was going and how long he’d be gone, but he just calmly said that he was retiring today and needed to out-process by noon.  I was gobsmacked (I love that word).  I asked if the family was alright, if he had a job transfer, if there was anything I could do.  He just shook his head and said everything was fine.  He just couldn’t continue to serve.  So I pressed him and he quietly and passionately told me why.

“You know I served in Viet Nam, those were really tough times.  I lost friends, but we did the job that was asked of us.  And when we came home, we came home to people that spit on us.  It was frustrating, but we moved on and we live our lives and try to honor those that didn’t make it.”  At this point his tone began to change.  I wouldn’t call it anger, he was firm and resolute.  “I lost too many friends and I believe too much in America to serve under a draft dodger who despises the military.  I’ll be retired before he takes the oath of office this afternoon”   And that was that.  No more discussion. Decision made.

We talk about integrity as a core value in the Air Force, but what does that really mean and how does that affect the way we live our lives and make important decisions.  I see lip service, I see politics soaking through the fabric of the military and staining the centuries old call to selfless duty.  We’re not perfect people but we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than those we serve.  We can’t hide behind regulations, they’re no substitution for integrity and sound judgment.  We have to do the right thing not the politically correct thing.

Jeff was perfectly positioned to make O-6.  He would have been a great Vice Wing Commander, but if he couldn’t look himself in the mirror in the morning then it isn’t worth it.  He couldn’t compromise his values.

“The day we see the truth and cease to act is the day we begin to die” – Martin Luther King

Chapter 11

Our lives are made up, mostly, of habits.  The good ones, the bad ones, everything we do is based on the sum total of our experiences and our behavior based on the results of previous actions reacting to those experiences.  The question is, what’s a good habit and what’s a bad habit?  There are some obvious bads and some obvious goods, but most fall somewhere in the middle, habits that give our lives order and provide a rough framework for everyday living.  We have our favorite meals.  Maybe it’s pizza on Saturday nights, or Wednesday date night with the spouse.  We shower the same way, we brush our teeth the same way, we drive to work the same route.  Most of what we do, we do because we don’t have think about it.  I‘m no exception, when I’m at home I pretty much do the same thing every morning.

My alarm is set for 5:30 although most of the time I automatically wake up at 5:25.  It’s one of those radios that comes on softly and then slowly brings up the volume so you don’t jump out of your skin.  I don’t have to worry about it waking up Peg since she can pretty much sleep through a nuclear detonation.  I don’t have it set to music, I have it set to the same station I’ve been waking up to since I was 14 years old, KDKA.  It’s the only time I listen to the station and it’s really all about the morning format.  News at 5:30, weather and traffic at 5:35, sports at 5:38, and then the thing that drives me from bed 99% of the time at 5:40.

It’s a segment called “And Now You Know”.  They have a reporter who, daily, comes up with some question that is either so obvious that any idiot already knows the answer or is so trite that nobody cares.  At least I don’t care.  Questions like “Do kids really need discipline”, or “Are men and women really different”, or “Should you eat more vegetables”.  She interviews someone who’s written a self-help book and is an “expert” on the subject and she ends with “And now you know”.  Rarely do I make it to the final line. Before she gets there I’m irritated enough to leap from bed to bathroom and my day begins.  However, one day last month I had a 1% morning.

On that morning, my interest was peaked by the question “Can you change your attitude”.  The discussion focused on a recent study that showed that we have the capability to consciously change ourselves from a negative person to positive one.  This, of course, is no surprise to the Christians among us, but this study showed that our brains actually get rewired when we decide to be a “half-full” person.  And it doesn’t take long to happen if we make the choice.

We all have coworkers who are, shall we say, a challenge.  They’re the wet blankets, the whiners, the naysayers, the gossips.  They bring the work place down and they have a nearly exponentially negative affect on everything you’re trying to do and they can quickly destroy an organization.  Sadly, some people don’t know that’s what they are.  Maybe they grew up in a family where everyone was that way.  Maybe they have a spouse who drags them down, or maybe they just evolved into it.   The other option is that they’ve made an intentional choice to be that way and those are the ones that do the most damage.  They enjoy undermining anything positive and love to see others as miserable as themselves.  They’re the people that I have the least amount of patience with.

The question is, how do we deal with them?  I’ve always preferred the “overwhelm them with kindness” approach.  Be the ying to their yang.  When they get overly negative, get overly positive.  Never lower yourself to their level and always take the high road.  Immediately squelch negative rumors with positive facts.  Be consistent, positive, a good example, and supportive to a fault even when you really want to slap them.  You can wear most of them down and a positive attitude is contagious.  Occasionally nothing works and if they become a threat to the organization then, if you’re in a position to make a change, you might have to “encourage” to move on.  If they really don’t like what they’re doing then maybe they should find something they do like.  Regretfully, some people will never find something or someplace they like.  If only we could rewire their brains it would be easier but all we can do is let them know how the rest of the world perceives them and let them make the choice to change on their own.  We can give them the opportunity and support but it’s really up to them.

Recent studies show that it takes between 21 and 66 days, based on complexity, for something to  become a habit and the behavior study showed that in as early as 6 weeks you can modify neural pathways to change from negative to positive. All I can recommend is that you to look in the mirror, listen to yourself, try to see how others see you, and make a choice.

Chapter 9

I’m sitting here at my computer on a beautiful Saturday evening and for some reason I can’t get two words out of my head, “cognitive dissonance”.  Most of you probably know that my interests lie about as far from psychology as you can get.  My degree is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and I’m all about quantifiable, measurable things.  I know that you can usually manipulate numbers to come to a convoluted conclusion, but I like to think that pure science and reason should prevail.  I’m not that touchy feely guy.  I’m the guy that tells the crying little kid (or the occasional adult) to grow a pair and get over it.  Not that I don’t have a sensitive side, but I like to save that for things that really deserve it.

But back to cognitive dissonance.  It’s basically defined as believing in, or about, something so strongly that when undeniable evidence to the contrary is presented, you find some way to mentally convince yourself that you’re still right.  I heard a great example last Friday from the Head of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Protection Agency.  Someone at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon asked him why, after years of espousing the joys of clean natural gas, radical environmentalists suddenly attacked natural gas development so rabidly.  He began the answer with cognitive dissonance.

He said that for years they had hammered on coal and oil because they were trying to break down the U.S.  economy and force us into energy sources that are not capable of sustaining our standard of living. They knew the science of natural gas and knew that it was clean and safe but it was only available in the U.S.  in extremely limited quantities and was not a threat to their world view.  However, when recent discoveries proved that we have an almost limitless supply of natural gas and we can continue our evil capitalist ways, their paradigm suddenly shifted.  Instead of celebrating a future of abundant energy, they attacked the thing that had been a safe energy source in their eyes just 4-5 years ago.  Hence, cognitive dissonance.

Jack was an “old school” pilot.  He smoked too much and had the voice to prove it.  Raspy, deep and thick, layered overtop a quintessential Pittsburgh accent.  He also drank too much, but he lived a life that might just lead anyone to it.  He had flown B-52s in Viet Nam and I think he earned a DFC after executing the only successful B-52 split S while escaping a SAM.  After the war he ended up in FB-111s in Plattsburgh where he bailed out after his wingman ran into him during air refueling.  Although you don’t really bailout of an FB-111, you ride the capsule down!  Everyone loved Jack.  When we were based together, he was the Chief of Stan/Eval, which I thought odd since he really didn’t like paperwork and he was everyone’s buddy, two attributes that can be problematic in a Stan/Eval officer, and I was the Tactics officer.

The stage is now set.  We came up on an Oak rotation and after the squadron put together the crews I found myself paired up with Jack.  Now, that was back when we actually did something at Oak and we flew out of Howard AFB, Panama.  Being with Jack meant that we would probably get at least one interesting mission and it would definitely be fun.  Sure enough, we ended up spending an entire week in Guatemala City providing the platform for the Central American Military Parachuting Competition.  Every morning we flew our airplane from Guat City to a little airport down in the jungle by the coast and we would spend the day doing lift after lift of static line and freefall jumpers from 5 or 6 countries.  It was great fun and once we got into the flow we were cranking them out by the hundreds.

There was a U.S. team there as well, and on the first day, the team leader, an Army LtCol, commented that he was tandem jump qualified and would be happy to jump with anyone on the crew who was interested.  I think I heard a little squeal come from Jack and for the next 4 days all he could talk about was how he’d always wanted to jump.  And every day I would laugh and tell him that he should put that on his bucket list.  Well, the last day came and we were doing the last lift with the U.S. team and after we had dropped the static lines and were climbing up for the HALOs, Jack suddenly announced that he had to go back and take a leak.  We had already started the checklists and I suggested he just wait until we got these guys out and then we’d delay the landing so he could hit the head.  He didn’t like the idea and insisted that he really had to go.  At that moment, that little voice in the back of my head started whispering and I didn’t like what it was telling me.  “Jack”, I said. “Why did you insist I fly the left seat today?” And just then, the loadmaster chimed in, “Jack, the LtCol is waiting for you”.  The little voice stopped whispering and started yelling, but the voice sounded a lot like mine.  “You are not jumping out of this airplane!” “But”, he pleaded, “You have long arms, you can reach everything from over there!”  “That’s not the point, you can’t jump out of the airplane.  And if you do, after I land this thing, we’re not flying again until they send me another pilot”.  With a pout and a whimper he climbed back in the seat. We completed the drop, landed the airplane, and never spoke of it again.

How do we talk ourselves into obviously boneheaded decisions and why do we cling to ridiculous assertions in the face of all logic and facts.  Cognitive dissonance is a cruel mistress don’t succumb to her wanton ways.