• Understanding sergeant's words: 'I've got your back'

    Seeing the newly selected staff sergeants recently brought back memories of when I was selected for staff sergeant.Actually, my thoughts went to the night I graduated Airman Leadership School. As I crossed the stage after receiving my completion certificate, my co-workers gathered to congratulate me

  • Lessons in compassion

    (This story is part of the "Commentaries" section on AF.mil. These stories capture the experiences of Airmen from a first-person perspective.) "Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others." - Quote from Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film, Sansho the

  • Finding light through darkness

    Keeping a secret that defines you, that has shaped your life for nearly three years now and is sure to shape the rest, a secret that you go to sleep with every night and wake to every morning is sometimes hard to keep trapped inside.I could probably go my entire life without revealing the sad truth

  • Flight for life

    Last November, I was offered a chance to support a mission to Afghanistan, which I jumped on before I even knew the full details. My mission, as I had chosen to accept it, would have me rendezvous with an imbedded Washington Post duo in Afghanistan, escort them back to the U.S. I was also document

  • Think before you act: It only takes a second for your actions to go viral

    Have you ever done something you wish you could take back? Said something mean ... wrote something inappropriate ... behaved in a way that was disrespectful? I'm sure you have or you wouldn't be human.However, in today's society some of these behaviors never go away, even if you tried to delete

  • MLK on leadership: Of current relevance

    The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had many personas depending on one's perspective: a minister, activist, hero, troublemaker -- even communist.But as you look back on his legacy, I believe even his staunchest opponents would probably agree that he was a leader -- a man with an absolute belief in

  • Finding balance in the deployed, home station environments

    Many talk about finding balance the professional and person, yet for so many of us, especially while deployed, our work blends into our life. Finding balance to me means ensuring my energy stays level and I'm able to easily manage all the roles in my life. In the deployed environment, life can be

  • Think before you post

    Have you ever had one of those days that it seems like you are working harder than your coworkers? You made 100 widgets and your coworker has only made 50. So, what do you do when you perceive the workload as unfair? Do you go home and blast your frustrations out on social media for all to see or do

  • Zuhls' Rules - Management

    Editor's Note: This is the second of a three-part series designed to explore leadership, management, and synthesis of the two. The purpose is to make us better 21st Century Airmen.In the first commentary in this series, we recognized our Air Force needs leaders capable of dealing with the complex

  • No bad Wingmen

    In too many mishap investigations we find out there were other Airmen present. Some were in a position to physically intervene or at least say, "knock it off," and potentially prevent the mishap person from dying or sustaining severe injuries; but for some reason they chose not to. Law enforcement