Commentary Search

  • Commander in Chief's Installation Excellence Award

    It is with great pleasure that I echo Lt. Gen. Heithold’s announcement that Hurlburt Field has received honorable mention for the 2016 Commander in Chief’s Installation Excellence Award. I couldn’t be prouder to serve at your side.It is impressive what you guys do, day in and day out. You are

  • Teamwork: The ultimate force multiplier

    It goes without saying that leadership is a primary factor influencing mission success. However, next to leadership, there is another powerful force at work that is equally important – the force I’m referring to is TEAMWORK, or as I call it, the “ultimate force multiplier.” Teamwork is the most

  • Timeless leadership tenets

    A little over 18 years ago, I was lucky enough to have my grandfather pin on my gold bars at my commissioning ceremony. My grandfather is a Pearl Harbor survivor who swam to shore following the sinking of his ship, the USS Oklahoma. He would go on to fight in the Pacific until the war’s end. Like

  • Developing our Airmen: 3 Effective ways to communicate and mentor

    During an October 2015 wing commander’s call here, Col. Sean Farrell, 1st Special Operations Wing commander, said an area that Air Commandos really need to get after is “developing Air Commandos.” Farrell, like many leaders, acknowledges mentoring and developing our Airmen as an area that needs

  • Four seconds

    It takes four seconds to look around and take note of your surroundings. Four seconds to stop, consciously think and be aware of what is going on.It takes me four seconds walking up the driveway after a day of work to notice a yellow lab laying in the neighbor’s front yard. In the same amount of

  • Quiet Professionals: Our Ethos or our Mantra?

    Air Commandos are familiar with the term “Quiet Professional.” We see it referenced in briefings, on documents, and refer to ourselves as such. Personally, I use the term routinely and consider the men and women with the 15th Special Operations Squadron to be the very embodiment of “Quiet

  • Meet every challenge

    The 1st Special Operations Logistics Readiness Squadron proudly displays “Meet Every Challenge” on our squadron patch. We firmly believe in our ability to meet every challenge any time, any place. But if we can’t meet every demand does that mean we failed? The answer is no.The first lesson in

  • Stalk the enemy

    It’s after midnight and four, highly specialized intelligence analysts sit on a dimly-lit operations floor. The full-motion video analyst diligently stares at his computer screen for hours, monitoring a compound located thousands of miles away for any activity associated with the target. A second

  • Caring for your own

    “Because of the structure and the mandatory demands of military life, it is sometimes impossible for either the service member or family members to reduce demands (Saltzman, Pynoos, Lester, Layne & Beardslee, 2013)”The military has a motto: “We take care of our own” A motto that not only pertains to

  • Mentoring 101

    What is Mentoring? You can ask several people what mentoring means to them and you will get different answers. Basically, mentoring is the passing on of skills, knowledge and wisdom from one person to another. A good mentoring relationship allows both mentor and mentee to develop new talents and