Leadership can be found anywhere

  • Published
  • By Capt. Richard Mench
  • Band of the Golden West commander
A few months ago I had the opportunity to hear Colonel Arquiette speak at Airmen Leadership School class 06-E graduation dinner. He had advice for our future NCOs that struck a chord with me and my own model of leadership. In part he said, "No matter whether you are an officer, a civilian or enlisted, leadership is leadership." 

As a squadron commander I rely on the leadership abilities of everyone in the squadron. Airpower Doctrine calls for three levels of planning and execution: strategic, operational and tactical. 

Simply put, general officers share strategic guidance that dictates to an operational level the end goals of a task. Field grade and SNCOs develop operational objectives to reach these ends while the company grade and NCOs lead the tactical operations of carrying out the individual missions. 

So my simple mind has to ask, who are the leaders? Please let me give one story from my past to illustrate my point. Former Air Force Chief of Staff, General John Jumper, hosted the Global Air Chiefs in Washington, D.C. His strategic plan was to impress and influence his counterparts from around the world. One of his objectives was to use the USAF Band as an instrument to achieve his goals. The commander of the band, a colonel, came to me and said, "Mike, we need to develop a show that will knock these people's socks off. I want it to be 90 minutes and outside on the parade field." That was it. As General Jumper relied on this colonel's leadership, I in-turn was relied on for mine. 

Now I'm in strategic mode organizing the operations of this tactical mission in support of an operational objective of a strategic vision. My first thought was I needed a leader to organize the operations - someone who can pull together all the pieces of this puzzle. 

I needed a leader who would take any hill with me. This job fell to a Tech. Sgt. Together we put together a team of some of the finest leadership I've ever worked with; chiefs in charge of individual performing groups, NCOs in charge of flights of Honor Guard personnel, Senior Airman in charge of a color team and civilians in charge of lighting and contracts.  All together we had more than 150 people working this assignment. 

Well, handshakes and coins were passed around in joyous triumph after the event. The wing commander came out and thanked us all personally, our team won a wing quarterly award, comments from letters by General Jumper and many of the global air chief's found their way onto lots of performance reports that year. 

Stories like this happen on a daily basis in the Air Force and it is important as squadron commanders to recognize these gifted leaders and afford all Airmen the opportunities and the recognition that come. On the same hand, it is vitally important for all of our Total Force to realize how great followership and leadership go hand in hand. 

When asked to step up and lead a task, no matter how small, lead it with Integrity, Service before Self and Excellence, for Leadership is Leadership no matter what rank or status you are.