Simple messages, complex meanings key Published June 9, 2016 By Lt. Col. Daniel Cordes 821st Contingency Response Wing TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – Almost two years ago I had the privilege of becoming a squadron commander. A year later, I had the rare honor of taking the guidon for a second squadron. This was an opportunity to help create a fresh identity and culture for this brand new squadron. Despite the challenges of a new organization, such as lack of heritage and process, the squadron has found tremendous success in advancing the mission and creating leaders. It is undoubtedly because the Airmen in the squadron are excited about the mission and feel like they truly own that mission. As a leader at any level, motivating others to feel a sense of ownership and empowerment is one of the most difficult things to achieve. The reason our squadron has been successful is in large part due to a simple and consistent message that is repeated often, but able to be translated differently to every level of the organization: take care of our mission, take care of each other and take care of the name of this squadron. It may seem odd that success is attributed to a simple catch phrase, but words have power and meaning. The power of these words is that that they have been consistent throughout my tenure from the change of command almost two years ago. Not only do they get repeated often, but these phrases are used to explain how and why decisions are made in the squadron on everything from mission development to discipline to social activities. It is important that the entire team know the expectations for making their own empowered decisions to keep congruency across squadron actions as a whole. Our message was broad enough for each level within the chain of command and even each individual to identify how it affects them and how they, in turn, can affect the squadron. As an example when discussing the mission, junior enlisted take care of our mission through proficiency, rapid upgrades, and ensuring they are deployable. Non-commissioned officers ensure they advance their technical skills and perfect process they control. Senior NCOs identify deficiencies and enforce standards of performance. Company grade officers work between flights to develop cross-functional training, and provide broader mission perspective. Finally, field grade officers develop the guidance of long term direction and advocate for current and future capabilities and set the conditions for ownership and empowerment. The concept of communicating a clear, consistent message may appear to be common sense. Yet, as leaders we often over think, over control, or over complicate the issues by providing too much guidance, changing the message too often by chasing the next great idea or being inconsistent between our message and actions. Each of these failures has a harmful effect on those we lead. Providing more guidance than necessary or chasing the perfect solution negates the sense of empowerment. Individuals who are just starting to explore their own sense of ownership will feel disenfranchised. By changing the message too often, individuals become confused by the direction of the organization and frustrated with never seeing things to completion. Finally and perhaps worst of all, a leader who is inconsistent between words and actions will not only cause doubt throughout the organization about what is important, but will also devalue the words used to make the mission and the organization better. A leader’s ability to influence a team in a positive direction is directly tied to the method and message by which they communicate. We have an obligation to choose words and messages that are consistent, simple to understand, translatable at all levels and actionable to individuals so they have the ownership to make their mission and those around them better.