2019 Air Space & Cyber Conference – Connecting Airman To The Flight: Leading with Purpose

Connecting Airman To The Flight: Leading with Purpose with Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright at the 2019 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Subscribe to Dr. Justin Imel, Sr. by Email

Transcript

[Announcer] Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Gerald Murray. (bright, uplifting music)

Y’all, y’all sit. Thank you, quit, quit, quit. I don’t know about this section over here, leading this off, but thank you so much. What a great honor and a great privilege. An honor that I have and to just say it real quick, to follow the Honorable Whitt Peters is, I get goose bumps, and then I’m like, am I worthy to do such, but it is a great honor to be able to follow him and to continue to do my best to continue to strengthen our great association. But more so, I have the honor this morning ladies and gentlemen, to be able to take and welcome and introduce to you one of the great leaders of our Air Force. You know Chief Wright well, our Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, and just to let you know right up front, he has agreed to, in fact he wants to keep his comments to the point that he has the opportunity to answer questions, you’ll have the ability to text them in and then I’ll facilitate that. So just to put you on notice now, if you’ve got questions or anything for Chief Wright, that’s the way we’ll do that here today. It was noted yesterday in the introduction of our Chief of Staff, that our first Chief of Staff of the Air Force was 1947. It was 20 years later with the advocacy of this association, with the Air Force Association, and then with the law that was enacted by Congress to give our Air Force and allow the Chief of Staff, General McConnell at the time, to be able to select our first Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Paul Airey. I can tell you in testament of knowing Paul for many years of my life, what a great choice that General McConnell made, the perfect Chief to begin as our Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. No different in as much as General Goldfein selected the 18th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force to be one of the greatest Chiefs that I believe that we’ve ever had in our Air Force. And so, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure of representing the Chief that represents all of our enlisted airmen active duty, international guard and reserve, and has such great care for our airmen and their families, and also for the officers and the civilians that make up our airman of our Air Force, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the 18th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Chief Kaleth O. Wright. (applause)

[Chief Wright] It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again. Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. (audience applauding) All right, good morning, AFA. (group response) And happy birthday to our Air Force, 72 years. (crowd cheering) Yeah. So if you know me you know I believe that leadership and success is a team sport, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin this session by introducing my lovely bride and my teammate, Mrs. Tonya Wright, thank you baby for being here. (audience applauding) And of course my wingman, General Goldfein. He had a pretty funny story about me yesterday, I have a lot of funny stories about him. (laughter) but they all involved scotch and cigars and may not be appropriate for this audience. So we’ll just pass on those. So thank you sir for being here, thank you for your support, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your support during this time. Thank you to AFA, the leadership of AFA, Secretary Peters, Honorable Secretary Peters and Lieutenant General Wright, and thank you all of our industry partners and most importantly, I want to say thank you and welcome to all of our airmen that have, we’ve been blessed with here today. We also have our 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year who we recognized this week, so thank you for being here, thank you for all of your hard work and thank you AFA for sponsoring this program for so many years. (applause) I mean it really is good to see so many, obviously too many to name, so many of my colleagues and peers and friends that I’ve had an opportunity to serve with over the last 31 years, so thank you again for everything that you do for our United States Air Force. On April the 23rd, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, who was our 26th president, and this was a year after his presidency ended, he was traveling abroad, he was actually doing some hunting in Africa and a few other countries, and he stopped in France, in Paris, and during that time he gave a speech, and the speech was titled “Citizenship in a Republic”. And in this speech he talked about that our republic, the United States, would be saved by the brilliance, the grit, the discipline, the work ethic, the character of its citizens. But he also, in this speech, he railed against those individuals who stood by on the sideline and criticized those who were actually in the arena, who were actually doing the work, who were actually making a difference. And so I want to talk today about the importance of each of us being in the arena. As I travel across our Air Force and I get to spend time with many of you and many of our airmen, one of the things that I always hear is hey Chief, when is the Air Force going to fix this. When is the Air Force going to look at that? When is the Air Force and mostly, when I’m receiving these questions, I’m looking up in the sky for the Air Force. Now, I know what they mean, what they really mean is when are you and General Goldfein and Secretary Donovan, when are you gonna give us this or fix this or fix that. And I always try to redirect the conversation to hey, I full well understand our responsibilities as the leaders of this organization. But I also believe that the biggest difference is made in your organizations by each one of us taking responsibility, waking up every day thinking, hey, what is my responsibility. How can I put myself in the arena each and every day? So we’re gonna talk a little bit today about how we all can maintain our competitive edge in being in the arena. You know the boss talked a lot yesterday about multi-domain operations, he talked about the various domains which we operate in, so I’m a firm believer that one of our, if not our most important domain is our human domain, our human weapon system. And in order for us to maintain a competitive edge in the environment that we currently exist in each and every one of us have to maintain our competitive edge. We need all hands on deck. Nobody, none of us, gets to sit on the sideline. Let’s talk about this environment, which is typically described in most places by the term, VUCA, anybody ever heard us use this term? It stands for volatile, um (audience laughing) uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I mean, if you pay attention to anything that’s happening in this world, you know this is a hard world that we live in. It’s tough. A lot of large problems, a lot of small problems. General Goldfein also describes the nature of future conflict, and he said it’s gonna be trans-regional. A Russia problem is not just a Russia problem, it’s an Indo-PaCom problem and a TransCom problem and a SoCom problem and a SouthCom problem and so on and so forth. He describes it as being multi-domain. It’ll be coalition based, we’ll need our allies and partners. It’ll be joint based, so we never go to war, we never fight any conflicts alone. And it’ll happen with a speed that we’ve never seen. He talks about the expectation of the nation of us, the Department of Defense to include the Air Force. That we will defend the homeland, that we will have a safe, secure and reliable nuclear deterrent, that we will be able to defeat a peer adversary like Secretary Esper talked about. At the same time, we’ll be able to deter a bad actor like North Korea or Iran. And all the while, we’ll maintain the VEO fight. So this is a lot. The nation depends and expects a lot of us. So again, we need everyone to be focused, and where I want you to focus is on yourself, because these are wars of cognition. The future wars that we will fight, it used to be, we’re accustomed to fighting wars of attrition again, the boss talks about this being wars of cognition. We have to think our way, this is about information. This is about judgment, this is about decision making. And in order for us to be our best, let’s focus on our most valuable asset and that’s you. And so I have a few things, a few areas where I think each of us can focus to become the best version of ourselves. And as we focus on ourselves, I’d like you to think a little bit about the stories that we find ourselves in each and every day. So every day we live a different story. And any good story always has a hero, a victim, and a villain. And I want to make sure that we don’t always find ourselves, we don’t always place ourselves in the role of the victim. Think of any challenge that you might be having today, a leadership challenge, a resource challenge. When I was deployed in 2014 in Afghanistan, we had lots of challenges, but I’ll tell you about a specific challenge, and Chief CZ will be very familiar with this. There was a very senior official that I had a significant challenge with, we butted heads. And initially I put myself in the victim role. Oh my God, woe is me, why is this guy always on my case, why is this happening to me, I can’t believe this is happening. Very quickly, my limbic system, my limbic brain took over, and I found myself playing the role of the villain. So we met and we were on, it was Camp ISEF at the time, RSM now, and we ended up meeting right outside my office, and I was about this close from punching him in the face. (laughter) This close. And Tonya will remember this too, ’cause I was calling home saying hey, I might be coming home early because I’m about to kill this guy. (audience laughing) And then very quickly I transitioned into a how can, how should I be the hero in this. How can I be the one that goes above the fray, who understands what needs to be done in this situation and take some initiative to actually do it. So I want you to think about in all the stories that you have in your life right now, whether it’s a challenge with your spouse, a challenge with your airmen, a resource challenge, I don’t want you to sit back and say woe is me, when is the Air Force gonna come save me, how can I be the hero and the hero, think about this, you see we have Thanos on the screen here. Being a hero is not easy. It took all of them to defeat Thanos, I think, the movies, they just go on and on and on, so I think he might be defeated. But it takes a lot to put yourself in this position so as you think about how you might approach life and how you might approach the world, try to put yourself in the role of the hero. So let’s talk about some things that will allow us all to maintain what I would consider our competitive edge. And the first thing is, hey man, you got to have a purpose. Like what’s your why? Why do you wake up in the morning? What keeps you up at night? Those things really should be your moral compass. How many of you here right now understand your why and are able to live your purpose every single day? Yeah, so if you’re getting up every day and you’re working hard for something that you don’t believe in and you don’t understand your purpose, that’s stressful. You know, many years ago, you probably know the story, I wasn’t the greatest airman to ever exist, sometimes it was a little bit of a surprise to me and certainly when I see my friends that I served with when I was airman, they’re like, what the, how the, But somehow I made it and it’s largely because at a very early point in my career, I began to understand my purpose, I began to understand why I serve. Very similar to the young lady that’s on the screen here I had an honor guard experience. The first time I got to present a flag to a spouse, and I had to look her in her eyes and thank her for her husband’s service. I used to joke about it was in North Carolina, it was in the spring, there was a lot of pollen out there, my eyeballs started sweating and all this other stuff, but the reality is, I looked her in the eyes and I cried. I was a young senior airman, maybe A1C, and at that moment I realized that my service meant something, that I was serving a greater purpose. From that day forward, to include today, I wake up every day and I understand exactly why I’m here. I understand exactly what I was put on this earth to do and then I get to get up and do it. So make sure you understand, and this can change, this doesn’t have to be static, maybe your purpose with the assignment that you’re in right now is to serve in whatever capacity you’re serving, to help whomever may be in distress in your organization. But this is something that you have to feel, this is important in order for you to maintain this competitive edge to be able to give us everything that you have. We don’t talk about this often, it’s often even seen as selfish. So this is Toby. This is Chief Toby, Roger “Toby” Toberman. He is the AFSPC, he’s dual-hatted as the AFSPC and the U.S. Space Command senior enlisted leader. For most of our careers, and I’ll talk specifically about the Chief, you know we’ve ignored this idea of putting your mask on first, of taking care of yourself. But I tell you, I admire Toby because he has it down. Now I just told you, Toby has at least two jobs, but on most weekends, this is where you can find him, in his happy place. Whenever the Chiefs get together, and we get together quite often, you’ll find most of us somewhere near a fire pit with some type of refreshing beverage, and some form of tobacco, just doing what Chiefs do, right? Solving the world’s problems, except Toby. Because you know where Toby will be? He won’t be fishing, but he’ll be getting his seven, eight, nine, 10 or 12 or however many hours of sleep that he requires to function. (audience chuckling) And we think it’s funny, but I just can’t express enough how important it is to take care of ourselves. Because this is what I believe happens to each of us. On a daily basis, on a pretty regular basis, hey Chief, can I talk to you for a minute? Hey Chief, do you have a second? Hey Chief, can you look at my EPR? Hey Chief, can you give me some advice about this? Hey Chief, you got time for a coffee? So constantly, constantly, people are plugging into us and if you don’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of them. So let’s make sure that all of us are practicing, that you’re thinking about, man, how do I take care of me? I would tell you, so again, some people would say that this is selfish, I would say it’s selfless. Putting your mask on first, making sure that you’re in the best position and you have the right level of energy to take care of everyone else. The third thing I believe you need is mastery. So Daniel Pink in his book Drive, he talks about one of the three things that drives intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. How many of you get excited when there’s an exercise? How many of you get excited when it’s time to practice? How many of you get excited when it’s time to go train? This is what, this is how you become your best. This is about reps, whether you’re flying F-16s or generating sorties on the flight line or doing contracts or repairing networks. We all have that responsibility first and foremost to be the best technicians, to be the best experts in the field that we’ve been trained in as airmen. And I’m talking about deep, meaningful practice and reps where you get meaningful feedback. This type of mastery, you see, I had the chance to recently go down to the Fire Academy, and I think I actually trained on this same trainer right here. Now, I was in and out of there in about 20 minutes. But I got to watch as the students and their trainees time after time after time teaching and training and providing feedback. I got to watch how mentally and physically exhausted the students were when they got through the training reps. And so that’s how we all need to be. Mastery is very very important to being competitive and maintaining that competitive edge. How many of you have heard the term iron sharpens iron? Yeah, so this comes from Proverbs 27:17, as iron sharpens iron so too should one person sharpen another. In this quest for mastery, for competitiveness, for excellence we all have, the worst thing that you can do is feel like you have to do it alone. Use your teammates, sharpen each other, challenge each other. One of the great things about our Air Force Senior Enlisted Leader Counsel composed of myself, all the major command Chiefs, the combatant command senior enlisted leaders and a select group of other Chiefs, senior Chiefs across the Air Force as well as a select group of career field managers, is that man you would not believe the level of conversation and discussions. You know I get, to compare it, I have the pleasure of being the only enlisted person that attends Corona, and this is General Goldfein’s gathering of all the four-stars and sometimes some of the three-star generals, and this is where the biggest problems in the Air Force, they get solved. And so basically I get to be a fly on the wall. And here’s the difference between general officers and Chiefs, I mean, it really is, when I hear the term officer and a gentleman, like well, gee Bob, I don’t think I agree with that, but (audience laughing) hey why don’t we take a look at it and we’ll talk about it and you have your people contact my people and (audience laughing) Like, well, that’s collaboration. And then I get to, I get to my meeting with the Chiefs, and we were recently trying to work through a uniform issue, a very unique uniform issue, and there was no, well gee Bob, (audience laughing) there was a lot of, you know in comic strips whenever there’s curse words, there’s these little at signs and number signs and so there was a lot of I would just say interesting language. Nobody, we didn’t get to wrestling this time, but it’s a pretty tough crowd but we collaborate nonetheless and we always get to what I believe is the right answer for our airmen. And at no time do any of us feel like we have to do it alone so whether you use the general officer’s style or the more rough and rugged Chief style, I think collaboration is one of the keys to success in all of us maintaining our competitive edge. This is about persistence, this is about passion, this is about perseverance. I think you’ve realized that being an airman is tough, being an airman in the environment that we described earlier is even tougher. Being an airman in the environment that’s undermanned and in some cases under-resourced is tough. Being in an environment under the command of toxic leadership is tough. But we all need to have a little bit of this grit thing in us. And my wife reminds me quite often that hey man, it’s not that easy. You know, you can’t just tell people to be tough and get over it. And so that’s not, that’s not what I mean. But also I don’t want our airmen growing up in an environment that as soon as things get tough then they quit. The great thing about grit, it’s not like shoe size or eye color, you’re born with it and that’s what you got. So you can work on this, there’s ways that you can work on being grittier. One, figure out what are you passionate about, what are you fascinated with? What scares you? I’m deathly, deathly, and I didn’t mention this to the jump team as USAFA, but I’m deathly afraid of heights. Like I get that feeling in my stomach, I try to be cool and tough when my kids want to go to an amusement park and we go way up to the top and then, so somehow I ended up in an airplane about two months ago and that door opened, man, you would not believe what was going on inside my body. But the whole time I was saying I fear this, I fear this, but my only way to conquer this fear is to just do it. Just do it. And so I began to build, and when I hit the ground, I hit the ground pretty hard, (audience laughing) I decided, I want to do it again. And I want to do it more. I don’t know if I’ll be the same level of fear or nervousness, but I want to do it again. And so find that thing that scares you and then figure out a way to do it. One small step at a time. One of the other things that you can do is spend some time with gritty people. You know, you’re the average, Jim Rohn says you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And if you spend time with people who are courageous, who are willing to take risks, who are willing to face their fears, man, that rubs off. Again, tough environment that we live in. And so I love to find unique ways for all of our airmen to be just a little grittier when it comes to dealing with the tough challenges of life. Then I want you to lead with conviction. You have to stand up for the things that you believe in. Leaders who lead with conviction, what they provide to airmen and the people they serve is certainty. That hey, things will be all right, I understand we don’t have enough manning, I understand we don’t have the money that we need, I understand that we’re having this suicide challenge. But when you lead with conviction you let airmen know you provide that certainty for them that hey, things will be okay. We asked our airmen to take a day and talk about suicide. Resilience tactical pause, and we gave you kind of the time it was about a 45-day period to figure out what’s the best day and what’s the best time for you, and I talked a little bit about it yesterday. This Facebook page, Air Force Wingmen Outreach popped up. I talked a little bit yesterday about here’s some of the things that airmen are saying. Mental health system is a little bit flawed. There’s still a stigma about asking for help. but I also mentioned yesterday that the greatest amount of comments come in the form of my leaders don’t have my back. That’s a call to action for all of us. We can choose to ignore it, we can choose to make excuses for why we think it’s not reality, but I think the data speaks for itself. It’s a call to action for all of us to be leaders of conviction, to provide these airmen hope, to provide them the certainty that they need to be successful. So I don’t want to get too geeky about brain stuff, but many of you have probably heard of Simon Sinek and his Start with Why and he talks a lot about certainty releases the hormone dopamine, and it provides you pleasure when you have certainty, when you know, hey, my wife loves me, she cares about me, when I get home there will be food on the table, hint hint, (audience laughing) No? She’s like,

[Audience Member] Go off, go off, go off

I know, right? But certainty releases the hormone dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, uncertainty releases the hormone cortisol, which is associated with depression, anxiety, fear. So our airmen need to know that we as leaders have their back, and it doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything and you have to come to their rescue every single time, but in general they need to know that you lead with conviction and you have their back. Think about the difference in how you feel right now, if you have one of these leaders that believes in you, that provides you the certainty that things will be okay, that gives you the room to innovate, create, that gives you the room to fail, how it makes you feel. Versus if you have now or if you’ve had the exact opposite. A leader that doesn’t have your back, how stressful it is to get up every morning and go to work. How stressful it is to try to make a decision. You know sometimes we try to make this stuff, me included, right, so I wanted to put on a good show for you, I tried to make this pretty complicated and give you all these things, but man sometimes it just comes down to be a good human being. Right? This speaks to all our character. Being the best version of yourself, yes, mastery and being skilled and maintaining that competitive edge but a great part of becoming the best version of you, being the person that we need in our Air Force is be a good human being, think about how you treat people, think about how you talk to people, think about how you deal with people. Use the Mother Teresa, the Gandhi or the grandmother, mother, father test, what would my grandmother think if she saw me doing this or saying this or acting this way? Certainly when it comes to the challenge that we’re having right now with suicide and connectivity, man sometimes we just have to be good human beings. It’s that simple. As I as putting this together, I began to think about okay, all these qualities that we talk about and how we maintain our competitive edge, who do I know that embodies each of these qualities, and the person that immediately came to mind was my good friend, my brother, some believe my twin brother, actually, funny story, Todd Simmons. Todd is the Air University Command Chief. He’s transitioning, he’s moving on, he’ll be retiring in December, but he’s the type of leader that I want to follow. He’s the type of man that I want to model myself after. He’s the type of man that I would ask to be a mentor for my sons and my daughter. He’s given everything that he has to our United States Air Force. He’s extremely talented, he’s extremely passionate, he’s a defender by trade, so he’s not just a in the education and professional development and leadership arena. Lots of great things happen at Air University but lots of great things happened throughout his career. And I wanted to personally take this opportunity to say thank you to my friend, my brother, who embodies all the things that we talked about today, Chief Master Sergeant Todd Simmons. Todd, can you stand for us please, sir? (applause) And you remember I talked about how Chiefs curse each other out, so I’ll be cursed out for that later. (laughter) Sometimes you gotta be bold and go along like the Chief always tells us. I never felt like I had to compete against Todd, or Moose or Julie or CZ or Toby, and these are all of my peers and colleagues, and so on your quest to maintain, to enhance, to improve your competitive edge, don’t look to your left or your right. You’re your greatest competition. Don’t try to be better than this person or that person, try to be better than you were yesterday. Try to understand your purpose a little bit better, live your purpose. Try to take care of yourself. We have a system that sometimes, and I recognize this and I think the boss has recognized this, we have a system sometimes that in our minds I think we believe forces us to compete with each other. But you can be successful in our system, you set high standards for yourself and you compete against you, you’re your greatest competition. Remember this is a very complex world we live in. General Goldfein yesterday talked about that Chief 24, Chief of Staff of the Air Force number 24 is perhaps in this audience somewhere and is perhaps a Brigadier General. And in 2030 Chief 24 will go to war with the Air Force that we build. With the weapons systems and he had all the weapon systems of the future up on the screen with the weapon systems that we decide to invest in. Chief 24 will also go to war with the airmen we build. She’ll be counting on you to be at your best. She’ll be counting on you to maintain and enhance that razor-sharp competitive edge. And here’s my only question. Will you be the critic on the sideline? Or will you be the airman in the arena? Thank you. (applause) (stirring orchestral music)

Chief, thank you so much and you did, you left some time for a few questions. But I can tell you that this audience has given you a lot more than just a few. All right, you and the Chief, and Chief Goldfein often say that you like to squint with your ears. You got a lot of squintin’ to do right now. And then the issues coming in, so we’re gonna try to get to as many of these as we can, the Chief has already asked for those we can’t get to that he would like to get these questions and be provided to him so that he can address them and take a look at them as we go forward, and oh by the way, he has your phone number, so if you get a phone call from the Chief later on, you’ll know where this question come from. All right, Chief, the first question that came in, and I think to start there very fitting and focusing on our airmen and their families, probably from a young airman, they wanted to know what is being done to address the housing, our family housing, especially for our young airmen. A lot of attention is going out there on the privatized housing now, it’s certainly I think that’s where probably a lot of our NCO, senior NCOs and officers live, but a lot of our young airmen are living in some of the oldest base housing. What’s being done there?

So Secretary Donovan talked about this yesterday during the panel. Our civil engineering center, and we’ve really energized the wing commanders for the wing commanders and wing command teams that are in the room to help us hold the contractors accountable for performance. And there’s been some confusion in the past about exactly what the responsibilities of our wing commanders were with respect to privatized housing but I think we’ve made some strides in ensuring that everybody understands their responsibility, that we have the right types of leaders and the right level of leadership and engagement in our, in housing management offices, and that we’ve been able to hold back some of the incentives that we typically provide to the privatized contractors for non-performance. And so we’re working and I think we’ve almost got the tenant bill of rights that kind of outlines exactly what tenants are, their role and their responsibility and their rights when it comes to specifically non-performance, and so I think all these things combined will get us in a better place. Like most things, we can’t change this overnight, but we can put the right level of pressure on the privatized housing companies to perform and be responsive to the needs of each of our airmen.

All right, great, thanks Chief. Chief, I’ve heard you comment on this one maybe a little different before, but I think it’s very important for the audience to know. What’s the Air Force doing to get after the exceptional family member program issues, for example, members using all of their leave because of medical issues or issues in the family and their children that need to be, that perhaps, they have to take and deal with personally versus the Air Force helping?

Yeah, so Tonya, again, we were having a family panel yesterday, and Tonya talked a little bit about the respite care program, so having the provisions that we have and lots of changes going into this program, but the provisions that we have to help provide care, reimbursements for our families that have exceptional family members as part of their family, whether it’s a child, a spouse, or a parent. And so we’ve been working pretty hard. General Goldfein and I talked a little bit just about two weeks ago about the need for us to really kind of have a top down review and kinda of a thorough review of our exceptional family member program and we seem to have, most of the airmen that I talk to, we seem to have the most challenges in our assignment system. And this is no knock on our assignments, we have some fantastic assignment professionals down at AFPC but this is where most of the rub comes in in terms of being able to get individuals to the appropriate assignments that has the type of care appropriate for their family members, so we’ll be engaging in this kind of top down review of the exceptional family member program and figure out the best ways again to meet the needs of each of our airmen.

All right. Chief, this next one, I actually had this question asked by a technical sergeant to me this morning, and so with the new promotion changes for senior NCOs, what will be the criteria of being looked at for the board since there will be no more testing, and how will this process work?

So nothing else changes, so the criteria has been set for quite some time, we look at leadership, we look at breadth of experience, we look at job responsibilities, specific achievement, what your bosses have to say about you, that stuff hasn’t changed in years, and it won’t change. What we found was that when we implemented WAPS testing, Weighted Airman Promotion System testing, in somewhere around the early 1970’s I think it was kind of fielded in about ’69, we started in ’71 or so after a year or so of beta testing. We needed it, promotions were local, there was, as you can imagine, some of the good old boy system and some of those things, so we needed a centralized way of testing and we came up with WAPS testing. Well, in 2019 we no longer need that part of the promotion process to ensure that we promote the right people with the right skill set at the right point in their careers. Now, your promotion will be based solely on your performance and your readiness to take on the next level of responsibility. I think this is a fantastic thing, I think it gives us further confidence that we’re promoting the right people at the right time with the right skills and experience. And the fringe benefit is we give you the time that you typically spent reading through your PDG, we give you that time back, and you can spend that time with your family, you can spend that time being more resilient, or with your dog or your parrot, cooking dinner for your wife, or whatever it is that (audience laughing) you want to do. It doesn’t mean, and I need to say this because one of the responses I typically get back is if nobody has to study how are we gonna be a professional force and how are we going to maintain our level of professionalism? Well, we didn’t say we were gonna burn all the books. It’s not gonna be like The Book of Eli, there’s only one PDG and it’s in Braille, and it’s so hard to get, all that stuff still remains and I think it’s up to us as individuals and professionals to understand that it’s part of being an airmen to understand how the Air Force works, to understand all the things that are typically found in that Professional Development Guide.

All right. Chief, there’s lots of questions that are coming in about the physical fitness standards and measurements,

Yeah.

This particular one says in the past you spoke about PT standards may be transitioning to annually for those who are under 90% or every two years for those above 90%. Any new developments or where are you at in this one?

Let me tell you how I, let me tell you about PT. (audience laughing) So I typically, when this discussion comes up, I typically ask audiences like this to imagine an Air Force that didn’t have a PT test. And what do you think happens? They say, we think it’ll be chaos, we think that readiness levels will decrease, we think that everybody in the Air Force will gain 30 pounds and so on and so forth. And then I say, hey, let’s imagine that if each of us, you and I, decided hey, I’m an airman, and as a condition of my service, fitness and health and nutrition, I’m supposed to be fit. And I don’t need your test, I understand that the Department of Defense says that you have to have it, but I don’t need your test because I can pass it any given Sunday. And then imagine if those of us in the room who are in some supervisory position decided, you know, I think it’s important for my airmen to be trained and I also think it’s important for them to be fit, so I’m going to make provisions, whatever that means, to ensure that they understand what being a fit and healthy airman means. And then you say, so bring your little test on, Chief, whatever you want to do with it, ’cause fitness is a lifestyle for me, fitness is a lifestyle for my airmen. But since not everybody thinks that way we gotta keep doing something with the test. (audience laughing) And so a couple of things. One of the things that we want to do, we got some feedback, you know we have airmen that go to great lengths to get a good score on the abdominal circumference. So they take certain things, they starve themselves, they go out of their way to make sure, ’cause it counts for 20% of the test. And then they try to run or do the other components and we’ve had airmen that have lost their lives, we’ve had airmen that have become injured, that have gotten sick, and so one of the things that we are thinking about, and this stuff is still all in the preliminary phases, is separating the time from when you take and when you actually take the other components. So think I go take today and I do my run, sit-ups and push-ups next week, same time seven days from now. Minimum of seven days I believe General Kelly can correct me if I’m wrong, but in the Army you can’t take it, if you choose to you can but they suggest that you wait seven days before you take the other components. And then they give you up to 30 days before you have to then take the rest of the components. We also looked at instituting mock tests that actually count so as long as you’re within your window, so if you’re a six-monther and you’re current, if you want to go take a mock test, you pass, good, if you don’t pass, no harm, no foul. So we’ll continue doing some smaller things, you know one of the things that I think we’ve talked about, we haven’t gotten there yet, is not everybody’s a runner, we want to be able to measure the O-two max by rowing, by swimming and by cycling, some of the other ways that you can actually measure someone’s overall health and fitness. So we’ll keep, we’ll keep you updated as we conduct the tests and as we get the right approvals and the right system for each of us. But in the meantime, I would like for us as an Air Force to start thinking more about what health and fitness means, not just a test, the test does not make you any more fit than you were the day before you took it. You know, being fit and healthy and prepared, and having the right level of mental acuity is gonna come from you living a lifestyle of fitness 365 days a year.

All right. Chief this one has certainly nagged our airmen for a long time, and then there’s a follow-up close to this one, and it has to do in that utilization of our airmen and especially the toughness of how to maintain the development of our airmen in their career fields but then giving our airmen opportunity. So this first one says, we understand about re-training and especially the special duties to help further our airmen’s career. Why is it so hard to get release from our career fields due to low manning or sometimes it’s almost impossible to be, for people to leave or to go and take their talents otherwise and certainly a lot of times some of them make that choice to leave our Air Force because of that.

So first I’ll tell you anything is possible. But when it comes to retraining and special duties and doing things outside of your primary AFSC, you know there’s a balance, there’s a balance between hey, what’s best for the airman at this point in their careers and their desires, and what’s best for the Air Force and the mission that we have. Now, releases belong to career field managers so if you want to be a first sergeant, a recruiter, an MTI, MCO, what have you, it’s really determined by the career field manager who has the broad view of the manning and the health of their career field. And career field managers, I would say, have been, they’ve been pretty good in helping us to get the right airmen that we need into those special duties and allowing airmen to transition. I actually applaud Chief Kim, Dong Kim is one of our career, one of our maintenance career field managers, and you probably heard that two years ago we were 4,000 maintainers short. So we’re 4,000 maintainers short in the Air Force. Who thinks it would be, and again I understand the balance, right? I understand that not all of those airmen were happy and wanted to stay out on the flight line and launch jets, but who thinks it would be a good idea if you’re 4,000 maintainers short to open up the flood gates to allow maintainers to go be MTIs and some of these other things. It’s probably not the best management or leadership or mission, essential mission oriented practice, and as the career field has gotten healthy, then we open up the gates. So sometimes it’s about timing, sometimes it’s about hey we, in all sincerity, we want to do the best that we can for each of you and get you to opportunities that we want but we also have to balance the needs of our Air Force when it comes to retraining, special duty and releasing folks from their career fields.

Okay. And then I’m gonna follow up this one, because as we focus on our new Space Command and the future looking at that, General Goldfein’s highlighted that it’s software in the future, and that cyber is so important, how can we maintain the talent that we nurture in our technical fields that are focused on cyber and space domains when the lure of the private sector is as great as it is?

Yeah. So one of the things that we’re doing, it’s called the Coding Language Initiative, so do we have any LEAPsters in the room? Language Enabled Airman Program, so if you’re not familiar with this program, if you’re an airman and you don’t have to be a linguist, a certified linguist in the Air Force, but if you’re an airman and you work in maintenance and security forces and logistics, you name it, but you speak a foreign language, we have a way of testing you and certifying you, and then using your talent. We typically ask you to go TDY, if there’s an engagement with one of our foreign partners or allies, and we pay you extra money because of the talent that you have to speak this additional language. Well we’re in the process of making coding a language just like regular LEAPsters in the Language Enable program. So that’s one of the ways that we can maintain some of the talent and we’ll incentivize it correctly and provide the special experience identifiers, special duty identifier. Our cyber airmen, how do we compete with Apple and Amazon and Google, and all of those things. So you probably know the answer to this, financially we don’t compete. There’s no way, we just can’t, can’t do it. There’s a small percentage, I would say a small percentage of our airmen who decide, hey, I’m gonna go work for one of these companies because the money is just better, how can I pass it up. But most of our airmen who decide, whether it’s to go work of Google or Amazon or any other company, it’s not because of the money, it’s because of the culture, it’s because of you, it’s because of me, it’s because they wake up every day and they say something like this to themselves, you know, I hate this job. I don’t to get to spread my wings, I got all this talent, I understand coding, I understand cyber, I want to be innovative, Air Force said they were in the service of innovation, I hear General Goldfein and the Secretary talking about these innovation funds and I see Spark Tank on the TV, but when I come to work I got, I used to call it choke com. Somebody tells me to shut up and do it the way that we’ve always done it. And oh, by the way, our leadership is not connected, we don’t have the purpose as an organization, so on and so forth. So I think in order to maintain the talent that we have in the Air Force it’s not always about the money, they don’t always want more money, they want to wake up and come to a job and be fulfilled and feel like people care about them and feel like they can use the natural talents that they have. And that’s really up to us as leaders to create those environments where airmen feel like they can thrive.

Okay Chief, we’ve got just a few seconds, so thank you. (applause) We’ve got just a few seconds there, the last one’s gonna be and General Goldfein talked about Chief of Staff 25 is probably a Brigadier, a young Brigadier General sitting out here in the audience. Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force number 22 is probably a young Master Sergeant sitting out here. What are you gonna tell that young Master Sergeant in preparations to that future 2030?

So I tell that young Master Sergeant preparation for being a Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force alongside Chief 24 is always be authentic, you know. People want to see who you truly are and the things that you truly believe in. And then just like he and I have and the secretary, squint with your ears. You got to listen to the people that you serve. I’ve been to tons and tons of classes in education and I got a whole bunch of leadership thoughts and philosophies but mostly I just listen. I listen to the things that you say you need and the things that you have to say and I allow that to help drive, create and drive the strategy that we use for making life better for each one of our airmen. And then the last thing I would tell them is hey, stay hungry. Stay hungry and take care of yourself because this is a very, all leadership jobs are demanding, I won’t separate ours from any other job. All leadership jobs are demanding and so put your mask on first, take care of yourself so you can better take care of your airmen. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, our 18th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, and Chief, you might have guessed, you’re gonna get this pair of socks. (applause)

Share with Friends:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.