 So I really, really wish that I was personally there with you. Can you still hear me? OK, good. Thank you. But unfortunately, due to having to be here in person in some of the meetings, I just couldn't be. But I cannot tell you how much I wish I could be there in person. And I just want to say congratulations to you. Super excited. I armwrestled my chief so that I could do this with you because I think you are such an important audience and an important and influential group. And she's still mad. But these are the ways the cookie crumbles here. But today, I am certainly happy to give you a program update on the many things that we're doing in A1Z. And I'll even send you info if you like. But what I want to do today, and I'm happy to field any questions you have on them, we'll have time for questions at the end. But what I really wanted to do with you today is have a bit more of a conversation with you. Since we have this specific time carved out today to talk about integrated resilience, this is a space for you to think a little more deeply about what your new rank and potential positions might mean in this particular context. It'll be a little bit different than what you might have experienced as an airman, for example, or even an NCO. I am a firm believer that in these courses, the absolute best learning is from your peer group in the room. So I do ask you to participate in this. Hopefully, I'll be able to hear you when you do participate. But I think you would learn more from each other than you will from me on any day at all. So this time is really for you. So take it where you want it to go as well. So I am not opposed to interruptions, questions about whatever I'm talking about. I can't see the slides, but I assume that's the cover slide that you're looking at there. If you could just move to the next slide for me. And I think we're probably on the vision mission slide. So I feel obligated to share with you I'm learning about this A1Z business a lot. I just got into it in August. And the portfolio is pretty big and it's pretty daunting. But it has to do with people. And I am all about the human beings. And so luckily, you and I get to work with human beings on a daily basis. Unluckily, sometimes, we get to work with human beings on a daily basis. Because everything is not always rainbows and unicorns. And you all know this better than anyone, that that's just not reality. And as lovely as our humans are, it is most certainly not perfect. We all stumble. We all make mistakes. We all do wrong. We all get broken. And this affects us and everything around us. And so what I've learned about A1Z is that while we talk about interpersonal and self-directed violence and the prevention of all of those things, we really want to focus on the resilience of the people that we have. Because the bad things are going to happen. Unfortunately, that's just life. But we have to figure out a way to enable people to be as strong as they can be despite these things that happen. For us, it's workplace violence, family violence, suicide, sexual assault, the prevention of all of those things are all tough challenges, as you know. And things that we do not want in our culture. People get hurt. Missions get missed. Mistakes are made. Focus is lost. Damage is done. And you probably have more experience in that room with all of those things than you would care to admit, as we all do. We want to minimize this as much as we can. And it's not just taking care of victims. That's very important. The response side is very important to us. But so is the upstream part. If we can get upstream of some of these things too and prevent them from happening, then that's where we want to spend some of our investment for resilience. And that's where we're nurturing anything that creates resilience. And you've had, I'm sure, plenty of experience with your own personal resilience. But we're going to talk today a little bit about the different levels, the perspectives that you're probably now going to have to move in between multiple times a day, probably, in the roles and rank that you have. And then what that means, how you can address each of those levels, each of those perspectives in maybe a slightly different way and hone some skills for each of those particular levels. If you could hit the next slide for me, please. Thank you. So I don't know about you all. But what I'm hearing from the field and also what I am feeling is overwhelmed with so very many things. Sustained conflict for over two decades. This one, without question. Incidents of social injustice, the George Floyd incident, the racial disparity, the hate crimes against Asian-Americans, all of that in the social context. COVID, we don't even need to talk about this. There's just massive repercussions to what's happening with COVID. Could be isolation. It could be remote work. It could be military actions, fatigue. Childcare is a stressor. Housing, education seems to still be a challenge even in university levels, just because of the rising costs of education, food insecurity, political turmoil, withdrawal from Afghanistan. There's the normal things, relationship issues, financial issues, political turmoil. There's the geopolitical dynamic. There's Ukraine. There's China. There's often more work than time in the day. And I think you probably feel that on a regular basis, so do all our airmen and guardians. Toxic leadership, toxic leaders, toxic peers. I think we may have had some experience with that in the room. The Rams winning the Super Bowl? I mean, really. What kind of a time, space is this? Wow, all the things that just generate. I saw a couple of Rams fans, though. That's impressive. Congratulations. All the things. You all are still standing. So you have some semblance of resilience in you. But some of these things can definitely leave a mark. And these are the kinds of things our airmen and guardians and our families are trying to juggle as we're trying to maintain the mission. And it's important for each of us to sort of keep an awareness of the environmental stressors like this and the impact on all of us. It affects quality of life, our focus, our capacity. And it can have a negative effect on our readiness for our mission, which I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the link between resilience and readiness. Can you hit the next slide, please? OK, thank you. As you know, you've heard our chief talk about readiness in a context with emerging threats, current threats. Very important for us to focus on this and sharpening that and honing it in an operational way. It is also very important for us to do that with regard to our people who are our competitive advantage. We will not win a fight without our people. And so that, to me, indicates that it's a critical component. And I really believe I'm preaching to the choir on this one, but I just wanted to I didn't want to miss making that link for you here, because I know yesterday you covered down heavily on some readiness topics. Really fundamentally, everything that we do bends itself towards being more and more ready. You may have had experience with this where you've had maybe a personal challenge or two that seems to take some of your mental focus away from maybe what you're supposed to be doing for work, or maybe it's just a conflict in the amount of time and energy that you can put in between those things. You've probably felt this before that certainly has an impact on our ability to be ready. So the better we get at handling these things, the better we get at maybe predicting where the stressors might be on helping build in some preventative measures, the better off we're going to be. But you, in your particular seats, certainly will be entering into a place where you're going to have to be so many, many things to so many, many people. Your roles are immense. You have to be a SME. All of these things here, advisor, counselor, coach, example, parent, sibling, child, spouse, friend, teacher, mentor, there's so very many things that you have a role to play in. And at this point, at this rank, now you have to start thinking about it just a little bit differently. And maybe a little bit more deliberately than you have in the past. I have broken it out into three different levels. There's a couple more in there, and I'll show them to you. But today, we're going to focus on these three and just talk through those from your perspective, from where you're going. The enterprise level, that's maybe the department level. It can be interpreted as a department level or it can be interpreted as a service level. It's larger than the organizational or unit level, for sure. Organizational or unit level, I think, is pretty intuitive to you. But it is, perhaps it's the squadron, but perhaps it's the group. Maybe it's the wing. There's different levels of that, too. And then, of course, there's you, you, the individual, where I think all of the resilience starts and stops. It starts and stops with you. So I just can't let the opportunity pass by to link it to readiness. So I wanted to make sure and footstomp that with you today. And then, I know Chief Crowder's in the room there, too, with you and, man, I wish I was there. I have a list of the student roster. And so I do have questions, which I will be asking. And if I don't get anyone to stand up to answer or to throw in and engage, then I might have to use this roster. It's got numbers on it, Chief Crowder, so I'll just ask you to be thinking of numbers between 1 and 375. And we'll just employ people that way. But let's take a look, if you will, with me at the different levels that I'm talking about here. Let's dive a little bit deeper. So if you could go to the next slide, the one that says Enterprise on top. So if you look at this, it's just a visual depiction of how maybe you would want to think about all the layering of the different perspectives that you have to navigate pretty much on a daily basis, maybe an hourly basis. Individual starts with you, the family, your family unit, your friend network, your organization and your unit, your community, and the enterprise. And the ones we're going to focus on today are individual, organization, unit, and enterprise. But the other ones equally as important. And you know this, it's where you make those personal connections. It's where you nurture the people that you're going to maintain relationships with forever. And that's pretty key, and that's pretty important. The first level that we're going to talk about a little bit is the enterprise level. And this is the one where we're talking about the Department of the Air Force level. We're talking about maybe the service level. It's a little bit bigger than all of us. And at the installation level, it's sometimes difficult to consider things at the enterprise level. So I'm just curious about your thoughts on what the enterprise level means and how that might shift your thinking and your decision making as a chief in whatever role that you're going to go into. If anyone wants to jump in and help me with that, that would be great. I'm just curious about your thoughts about what enterprise means to you, how that might reshape your thinking. Do you have any volunteers? I'm not sure I'll be able to hear you, frankly. I don't see any movement there. Chief Crowder, are you in the room? I am not able to hear. General, this is Chief Dave Flossi from Air Force Material Command. Can you hear me? I can. Thank you. Sure. I'm not going to answer the question, because I'm here as the senior mentor today. So on behalf of Derek Crowder, I'd be happy to pick number 44. And we'll find you now. Ooh. Well, OK. All right, let's see. I've got a chief master sergeant. We've got that worked. We've got people at the mic now. That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Let's hear it. Can you hear me? I can. Thank you. This is Senior Warren from our Joint Staff Support Center, SIDAR. For the enterprise level, I believe we're looking at what the Air Force is focusing on with these disparities across the enterprise. For me personally, I'm in a joint environment right now. So I have to open my aperture a little bit and think about my soldiers and my sailors. And you talked about all the different roles that we have. I feel all those roles as the only senior enlisted leader on site. And I have a small team, so I'm not dealing with a lot of things my brothers and sisters here are, but we have to think at the strategic level. We've been hearing that this whole time we're here, and that's something that we have to take on as these chiefs that we're about to be or already are. To take what the enterprise is putting out there, we have to buy in and also get our airmen to buy in so that we can get ahead of this and get upstream, as you said. Yes. You're absolutely right. And I really appreciate you bringing the perspective from the joint side. To be the senior enlisted leader in a joint organization is also a very different perspective. And it makes you sort of more aware of maybe some of the challenges that are faced by the other services, which can affect the enterprise. So that's a perfect perspective. Let's flip to the next slide. I've put together just a few thoughts on the enterprise level, which may or may not resonate with where you're at right now. But these are important skills. This is not an inclusive list, by the way. But it's just something to start thinking about. Your role at the enterprise level is sort of to represent the enterprise at whatever organization you're in. So you have to kind of translate. Like in the joint environment, you've got to translate between the services about whatever is the enterprise, maybe the enterprise vision, the enterprise goal, the enterprise mission. You also have to translate in between the different groups, tribes that come into the joint environment. So a little bit of translation. But it's not just between those groups. Can you think of other groups that might require your ability to translate communication in a different way, perhaps? Do we have anybody at the mic now? What are some other groups that you'd have to translate for? I'm going to have to go pick number 44. General, this is Chief Phillips from J-Bear, Alaska. I think the other group would actually be internal to DAF, and that's the civilians. Sometimes we have to speak a little language, different language, and be patient with our approach with civilian counterparts. Yes, I think that's definitely key. For our civilians, their whole world is different. And mechanisms to do feedback to check their resilience, perhaps, it's all requiring some translation. Do any of you Snapchat or are prolific with social media? I see some no. So who is? Who are those people that are prolific with the social media? Those are the young ones, right? The young ones, the airmen and the guardians, they're coming up after you. Who, by the way, speak in a completely different language than we do? So I've recently learned that Pandora is an old person's music delivery system. I thought it was pretty cool. Also, I learned that fire is not cool to say anymore. That's also old. So there's just a total different language for the younger generation now. And so I think it's important for, as chiefs and as leaders in the organization, it's important for us to kind of understand how the communication happens amongst the young airmen and guardians and even family members. And then not necessarily become prolific ourselves, but just understand how they hear things and how they absorb information. This is key, because communication is so important at all the levels. But sometimes when we're saying something at the half staff, for example, we're completely being misinterpreted at some installation out there, perhaps. So that can easily happen within the squadron. It easily happened with you and airmen and guardians that you will be working with and responsible for. Or just trying to link up with and make a connection with. So I think that's a pretty big one. An advocate, of course, as the enterprise representative, you'll also have to be an advocate for what the enterprise is trying to do. And you'll have to educate yourself on how you're supposed to, your organization and your people and the mission is supposed to link into that enterprise. Because that's certainly your role. It doesn't happen without you. It just won't. It won't happen without you. And that does mean that you have to think a little bit outside where you are, too. You have to do a little research. You have to stretch a little bit and try to gain a little bit of perspective. So you can share that perspective with the airmen and the guardians and the civilians that are around you. An advisor, I think you all are very well set on this, because you've been doing this for quite some time. And you're obviously very good at it. But as an advisor, certainly it's important to understand who you're advising and what their particular preferences or priorities might be. But it is also crucially important that you understand the perspective of the people that will be affected by whatever decision is being made. And I think you all pretty much intuitively get this, but it bears repeating at this particular perspective with the enterprise level in mind. The same thing happens here. Responsibilities, I wanted to communicate the need to continue to nurture your own understanding of what the enterprise means. And it grows and evolves over time. So spend a little bit of time there to understand what organization you're fitting into. And then that organization, what is that fitting into? Spend time listening to the chief, General Brown, General Raymond, Chief Bass, Chief Toberman. What are they talking about? And what are they spending time on? What's important at that level? Because sometimes that's an indicator of what's important to Congress, which is yet another level of enterprise, especially here in DC. Knowing the people, I think I touched on that a little bit earlier, but just understanding the multi-generational audiences that you'll have to deal with in your organizations. Civilians, too, because that adds other generations, perhaps to the mix, and definitely different experiences, certainly different motivations. But consider how information absorption happens for each of those groups and how you might make that even better. And then the skills required. I'm gonna keep hammering communication skills and you're probably gonna hear that the whole time that you're here, but I don't think we can over communicate. So communicate by multiple means. Communicate the same thing over and over and it kind of feels like you're on repeat sometimes, but that is definitely valuable. The skill of managing multiple generations still important for the enterprise because you are the link between the enterprise and the younger generation. The generation that's coming after you that will solve all the problems that we created, that is the connection. You are the connection. Maintain a curiosity about the enterprise context. That is something that I had to work on because I was younger, when I was younger, I was focused on my immediate surroundings, my acute problems, my unit issues. I was trying to make my unit the best it could be, but I wasn't really thinking about how it fit into the bigger picture. It takes a little time for that to happen, but that is a critical shift that needs to happen just so you can understand the links. What that also does is communicate value because you have to link what the mission at the unit level is for a two striper all the way up to something General Brown says that the enterprise is interested in doing. That communicates the value of that airman. I mean, it takes time to do that. It takes time to walk through the steps and kind of explain things. And I know what you don't have a lot of is time, but I can tell you that it is worth the investment. When you can create that sense of value for an individual in an organization, that is a protective factor. And in the resilience world, we look for all manner of protective factors that we can build in. So if you could spend time doing that, that would be pretty amazing. So having said all that about the enterprise level, if I could get a participant to help me with this, what are some thoughts about how you might cultivate this knowledge of what's happening at the enterprise level? What kinds of things or tools do you use to kind of cultivate and link those things together for yourself? Some people do it naturally because they're just interested in some people deliberately but I will take input from anyone or number 44. Ma'am, can you hear me? I can, thank you. Yes, so this is Natasha McCracken, I'm out of Ramstein. So as a MRT, one of the things that we actually did was we went and looked in our unit as, what are the things that the airmen don't know? And just going around talking, when things come down from half and ask them, how do you think this is gonna impact you? How's it going to change what we're doing now and where do you see us going five, 10 years from now? And some of the airmen would open up, share stories. I know we've talked about trauma and stuff today and some previous briefings and they would just open up and say, hey, really what we want from you is to share your Air Force story. Tell us how you did it, what made you successful, where did you fail at? And give us those lessons learned and that really builds trust, which is another big thing that they wanna trust, not just big Air Force and us as leaders, they wanna trust those senior airmen, those staff sergeants, the tech sergeants, the officers, they wanna trust everybody that we are their family when crisis comes out, so thank you. Yes, very well said, very well said. And I think there's an element of that that is just, it's fundamental. There's trust, there's a need for trust. I've heard from airmen and you probably have heard this too. I just want them to care more and I think a demonstration of that is sort of indicates a level of wanting trust and needing trust in a safe environment for them. So thank you for that input. There are of course practical means for you to stay linked in with what the enterprise is doing in 100 different ways. Geopolitically, obviously that influences kind of our business like some people are now deployed because of what's happening in the Ukraine, which we might have been able to predict if we'd have been kind of watching the geopolitical scene. So sometimes it can kind of give you an idea of where you might need to look and pay attention because those could potentially be opportunities for risk factors to show up, stress of deployments, families being left to deal with all of the things that we talked about earlier that create this crazy context that we're in, that kind of stress. And so being mindful of the movements that are happening and the impact on the actual people and maybe the families even is certainly something to consider when we're focused on the mission a lot of the times and sometimes to the detriment of the second and third order effects of what we do and how that might impact a family. Thank you for that. We'll move to the next slide, which I think should say organizational unit and it should have the concentric circles again. And so we're moving to the organizational, there we go, thank you, the organizational and unit level one. What I'd like to ask, and this one we're gonna start out with a conversation first. If you are willing, I would love to hear someone's experiences that they've had in a unit that maybe was a little stressful or challenging or tested you in a certain way that you would be willing to share with the group today. Can't tell if anyone's walking to the mic. Hey ma'am, Chief Slade from SOC here. As a squadron superintendent, I don't know, a few years back, I had an actual like convicted later toxic commander that I was the first sergeant for. So, and one of the things I didn't realize, probably the biggest thing I didn't realize is that the stress that I was under myself trying to insulate my squadron and my formation and my people from this commander. So there was lots of, there was plenty of isolated instances of, I mean, from verbal abuse to money to all kinds of stuff. I mean, this to fear of reprisal, et cetera. But that was definitely, it was painful for me in retrospect to watch my squadron live through that under this individual over. Wow, yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I am really sorry that you had that experience. One of the most painful experiences I think is having to work in an environment with a toxic leader. While there are some things that you can learn from working in that kind of environment, one, how not to be a leader, but also kind of how you can morph a little bit to sort of absorb some of that and you start thinking about protecting others. So it sort of alerts senses that are good because those protective senses are important. It is very unfortunate that we have those experiences at all in our military. Unfortunately, more than you would think. And that does have a very detrimental effect. And that does happen at the organizational level. So that's perfect. What happens there is there are maybe incidents of trust, broken trust. There are probably incidents of maybe self-esteem, damage to self-esteem. There's certainly no safe environment to do the things that you know you need to do, which is provide crucial feedback and input, provide sound reasoning, all of those things that would be necessary to be an optimal operating unit. Very difficult to do in a toxic leadership environment. So that's certainly a very challenging experience. And then you take it home. It's not like that sort of stress stays at work. We would love to just compartmentalize stress and say that it doesn't affect any other part of our lives. But I'm here to tell you that stress is stress and it's going to affect you all day long, no matter where you go. So it's best to deal with this kind of stress, negative stress, and confront it and just authentically address what's really happening. I think that's one of the harder parts of leadership. And I have had to learn that too, is sometimes it's okay to ask for help. You know, if you're in a moment like that and you're suffering from something, I think many of us may have a tendency to not want to ask for help because it's a sign of weakness is what the excuse is. But in reality, the strongest thing you can do is ask for help. By doing that you're getting yourself help, but you're also demonstrating what it takes to work through the stress in a better way, in a more positive way. So use those opportunities to demonstrate how to get through it and how to manage the best way you can by using helping resources if you need to. Maybe it's just another coworker, maybe it's your spouse at home. Whatever you need to do, don't stuff it down and compartmentalize it and let it ferment into something that becomes something you carry around like baggage for the rest of your career. You don't need that. You don't have the time or the energy to be dragging baggage. And we have many important things for you to be doing as chiefs. And so I implore you to deal with this stuff in whatever way you can and we will help you get there if you need the help. But this is not just for you, it teaches others. And that's a key component of what we need to do at this level too. We'll move on to the next slide. I've kind of outlined a little bit on the organizational piece. In the organization, you've got a few roles. And again, this is not all inclusive by any stretch, but advisor, again, because that one's gonna be there, all levels are gonna have some of this. Change agent here, this is important too because this requires a bit of courage. It requires the ability to have these crucial conversations, perhaps with leaders that are your boss or your boss's boss. Maybe it's with a peer. Sometimes those are the hardest crucial conversations to have. Some difficult situation with a peer. So all of that tests your skills and your capabilities. You all are probably no stranger to having to manage conflict, but those are certainly some key skills. Crucial conversations. There's a great book out called Crucial Conversations that can help you kind of frame these difficult conversations that you will have to have. You probably have had some, but if you haven't and maybe you're not feeling as comfortable with them as you think you should, that's a skill, you can work on that. Crucial conversations will help you kind of objectively look at having these hard conversations with people that are necessary. I had a difficult time doing that too. So I had to learn to reframe it in my head when I had some feedback that was less than butterflies and rainbows and had to reframe it in my head because it made me very uncomfortable to have these conversations. Didn't like doing them, but I also didn't want to avoid them. So I reconsidered what the transaction actually was. And it's really an investment in that other human being that you have to tell whatever negative feedback to. And I reframed it as the discomfort that I am personally feeling as I approach this conversation is worth it. I will pay this bill because it is worth paying this bill to make this other person aware of something that maybe they don't even know they're doing. So I had to reframe it in order for it to become something that I didn't want to avoid anymore. It's valuable. That kind of feedback is valuable. You want to know the truth about yourself. And so you would want someone to tell you as hard as it would be to hear. So that's one of those things that's also a skill that needs to be built, but kind of jump to the bottom bullet there, but nurturing the connective tissue in your organization, that's kind of your, that's your area of expertise as chiefs. You know how to make connections. You already know how to network. You are excellent at this, but you've got to do that amongst the units, maybe around the installation. You also have a responsibility to overtly have inclusive environments, inclusive and safe environments for all of us to have opinions, for all of us to share our ideas and thoughts. And this is a tough one. The creating safety and inclusive environments sometimes is a tough one to do. That means if someone brings you something that is very wrong, that perhaps that's not the moment to just berate them about whatever it is they're doing and tell them they're doing it wrong. Perhaps it's actually a moment to develop and teach an individual about what it is that they might need to try differently next time. There's different ways to do it and it all depends on the circumstance, but your responsibility is to watch for that. Watch for that environment and if it feels like it is an unsafe environment to speak your mind, if it feels like it's an unsafe environment to bring up issues, that's where you need to fly in and you need to do something about that. Figure out what the source of the issue is, have a crucial conversation and enable that environment to be the kind of environment where you would feel comfortable bringing your ideas to the table and trying things that are maybe different that we haven't done before. Fail at something, but also learn. So that's kind of where I think the innovation push from the Department of the Air Force is important and I think we can nurture it by creating the environment where you try things and it's okay to fail to learn something and then move on. I think all of us are perhaps a little reluctant to fail it at much because maybe we're a little type A or maybe we're a little prone to do the best we can and expect the best, but sometimes learning does require failure, so allow that to happen, but make sure that it's a learning opportunity and not a negative that squashes that kind of creativity. Managing perceptions, this is also important at the organizational unit level because you're representing a lot. All those roles that you saw on the previous slide, you're representing all of that. Everywhere you go, whether it's in uniform or outside of uniform. And so the way that you carry yourself, the way that you behave, the decisions that you make, where you show up, how you show up, all of that sends messages and teaches our airmen and guardians and the people around them. So that's important. People development, I know you all are quite good at this, but that remains very important at the organizational and unit level, so continue to do that. But at this point as chiefs, and this is hard, you have to learn to delegate and let someone else learn by doing. Sometimes that's a little challenging. I know it is for me, even still, something I work on constantly, but for you as chiefs, it is time for you to step back a little bit and delegate, allowing your people to experience how it feels to learn with you flying overwatch and making sure that they're kind of covered. Their six is covered, that they're thinking of everything, that they look sharp, all of the things that you would want for yourself. That is the way that people can maybe internalize the learning best. Skills, again, UC communication, because I'm gonna have that on all of them. Familiarity with multiple generations, again, this is you're close, you're really close to the young, new airmen, the middle, the middle tier airmen and guardians, the officers, the civilians, you're in the middle of all of that, so important to remain familiar with that and use the skills that you have to do the translation that we talked about earlier, because that's still key for us, because no matter what we say, it can always be misinterpreted. Okay, moving on to the individual slide. So with this one, I think this is a really crucial one for every one of us, as especially you, you being chiefs now and stepping into roles of great responsibility and having to represent all of us wherever you are, that's a lot of pressure. I'm just curious if anyone is willing to share maybe what kind of pressures you feel with this new role, this new responsibility that you have, this kind of, and maybe you don't feel prepared for it, maybe you do, but there's gotta be a little bit of pressure associated with pinning on a new rank. I know I felt it myself too. Is anyone willing to share a little bit about what kind of pressures you're feeling with this rank? Oh, I see a winner. Mike Chuck, all you sucka DJs, no, no. No. No. Martin Foster, right Pat. So for me personally, I've been in for 19 years and I feel pressured and like most people probably in this room, I think we've all probably been the go-tos in our squadron for the majority of our careers and I've experienced a lot of personal things over the past five years that really shaped, there were some low points, but it made me stronger. And actually for those who don't know, Chief Frost is a mentor of mine, he's the SCL A8. So seeing him open up yesterday, I was just, man, that was beautiful. But it gives me more courage, forgive me, I'm trying to formulate my thoughts and so the pressure. You know, I think about this because I'm a squadron SCL and my squadron has, the headquarters is at right Pat, but we have detachments all across the globe and because of COVID to include Korea. So it's not easy trying to get TDI out there. So I'm not able to make, I'm not able to go walk on that operations floor and go make that face-to-face connections. Some of the things I've been doing is Zoom or twice a week, I call the ops floor, just talk to whoever's working that, whoever picks up the phone, whether it's number 44. But yeah, thanks for laughing y'all. But I talk to whoever's, you know, just talk about life, right? And so I've been able to make some type of connection, but there's always like this constant pressure that no matter what I do or no matter how many emails I send out, that like I'm constantly letting people down, right? And I think a lot of people feel like that where that's the pressure where I've actually lost some sleep, I stay up late at night because I can't sleep because I don't want to let people down. The other pressure too is make sure my commander's not here, no, like there's a point to where know how much, we all understand, we all know that we have to delegate, but then it's kind of like those commanders or those people that constantly want to keep going to the same well who don't know how to like back up, right? Where they're constantly going to the same people asking for the same stuff. And I don't know, that's just the pressure is what I'm kind of rambling, but basically moving forward like we have to get with this bigger scope and responsibility, we have to think more strategically, but we're still expected to move tactically every single day and just how to best accomplish that. So I appreciate this opportunity, thanks. Yes, thank you so much. That is one of the most difficult things is bouncing between strategic, operational and tactical. And you have to do it, you have to do it probably multiple times a day with this rank and whatever position you're going into. Thank you for that, by the way. That pressure is real. And if you're honest with yourself about that pressure, I think it is possible to figure out maybe the best way to approach that. There are pressures that maybe, you didn't grow up in a particular career field, but now you're a chief and you're sort of responsible for this additional career field or maybe more than one career field and you feel a little bit of out of depth or maybe you don't feel like a deep smee in this area. There are those kind of pressures. There's probably pressures that may have you struggling a little bit with work-life harmony. I like to call it harmony because balance to me implies that there could ever be balance and I don't know that that's the case. I think you have to work every day on work-life harmony. Some days it's work and some days it's life and some days it's a ratio. But I think it can put pressure on your personal life and your ability to sort of find the harmony there is a struggle and it's a struggle every day. You're not alone in that and neither are your airmen and your guardians. Everyone's feeling that. Everyone is feeling that. Jim Brown feels that every day and he has techniques that he uses to try to maintain a little better balance but and you'll have to figure those out for yourself whether that is blocking space on the calendar that is sacred to you that you use however you need to use it to decompress. Whatever that means to you you've got to prioritize that in a way that allows you enough time, enough space to be a full-up round when you need to be, when you have to come back to the job. You need to do that for yourself and only you know what it is that you need, what makes you feel refreshed, what makes you feel and it's different for everyone. So there's no right answer to this but it is a constant struggle. You've probably felt it your entire career but just know that your airmen and guardians are facing it too and some of them are not as adept at dealing with that kind of balance and struggle as you are now but it is a constant struggle and you're not alone in that either. Okay, let's move on to the, man, need more time. Can we move on to the next slide please? So this is the individual level and this is where I think this is where my heart is. It's where you spend time, you have to spend time getting to know who you are. I don't know how you're gonna do that or I mean everybody does that differently too but learning who you are and be honest with yourself about the strength and weaknesses that you bring. You've gotta be real with you. I mean, if you're the only person that you're real with about that, that's okay as long as you know, be honest about that and then know what areas you might be weakest in and consider working on those just to round out your own skills. I think introspective time is probably severely undervalued in most calendars that I see. Time for yourself. I don't know if you had a chance to see the tweet from General Menehan from the AMC commander, it was probably three weeks ago now where he sent out a tweet and it was a picture of his daily calendar. It was all blurry except for one section and it was his appointment to see mental health and he tweeted that out with an underlying warrior heart mental health as health kind of quote at the bottom. Even at that level, he needs to take time to manage his own mental health. He recognized that in himself and he went after support to help himself with that. That speaks volumes and also it makes all of us feel not quite so alone and maybe not quite so afraid of going to seek help like at mental health. So that was a pretty amazing tweet that I saw. Managing stress, again, this is on you. You have to understand yourself and how you decompress and how you de-stress and then prioritize it. You have to be a priority. You absolutely have to make that time so you can be your best for everybody else when they need you. Work-life harmony, I think we talked a little bit about that and modeling behavior, I'm pretty sure that you're in tune with but people are watching you even more now than they ever have. And so I just know that that can be used as a teaching tool. Both good and bad, I'm assuming good, but mostly it's just important to know that that's the case and you probably cannot escape that, especially at the installation level. And then finally, teach, please, please invest the time to teach the people around you, the junior members around you, how to navigate the things that you've already navigated. Be on the lookout and consider being a little intrusive from time to time. Lives are too valuable to lose to suicide, to stress. Every one of you and every one of our airmen have a place and a mission in the United States Air Force, in the space force and that's a critical role for them to play. The value is great. So we can't afford to lose anyone for any of these reasons and it's worth being a little extra intrusive if that is the thing that intervenes in between a stressful situation and a very permanent outcome to a temporary problem. Skills virtually the same, you see communication again, but nurturing holistic health. I'll hear a little bit about that, the Total Force Fitness program, but just the physical, spiritual, mental, social pieces of your life. And again, I think it sort of reflects the work-life harmony struggle, but those are the pieces that you know, be mindful of for yourself and also assist and grow others so that they do the same thing and start prioritizing those things and without guilt, right? Because as soon as we prioritize ourselves, I think many of us feel a little bit guilty about using that time to do that. Don't feel guilty about prioritizing that time. That is absolutely important to the Air Force for you to be refreshed, decompressed, and focused on the mission. So if that's what it takes for you, that's what it takes for you. The other things, learning skills, emotional intelligence, you've probably heard a good bit about that, but that's pretty key too, the ability to understand where other people are coming from and the ability to relate to where they're at. So that enables people who might be in struggle to feel unimpeded in talking to you or getting help, and you might be just the thing that is in between them and help so you can kind of lift them up and ramp them to some help. I think we only have about five minutes left, so I'm gonna move on to the next slide, but just know that I am here to help with the individual portion of that, should you need help from the Air Force A1Z, ideas, I'm all about helping you grow as an individual and figure out how to do life better. I'm here just a couple of tips, won't spend a lot of time here because you'll probably hear a lot of this throughout the rest of your course, but develop your sensor network. This is gonna help you as an advisor. Physical presence, you already know this, unit presence as was demonstrated earlier by a story, just sometimes since we're in the virtual environment, it can be a virtual meeting, it can be a call just to see who's there. Stay current and informed as well as you can. Seek those diverse perspectives and try to keep a learning mindset. We still have a lot to learn even at the ranks that we're at. Advising and teaching, critical, engage. We do have things that you can use if you want to be sort of a link to resilience tools, if you wanna help in that way, then we're happy to help you with that. Demonstrate, you're gonna have to do that a lot here in this job, but the fortunate case is everyone already has you under a spotlight, so you might as well use it for good. You make those connections, make good decisions, and care, not just about your airmen and guardians and families, but about you. That is worth the investment. Okay, next slide, please. By now, I think you've probably picked up that I think resilience is very, very intensely personal and it's unique to you. I think it's wrong to think that we can solve everyone's problems that they have, personal and professional, nor would we want to solve all of their problems because we want to create independent, empowered, thinking airmen and guardians. And by fixing everything for them all the time, maybe that's not exactly the optimal answer all the time. But, and I did want to convey that you now own very publicly the culture of your organization and how you set the tone and how you lead in your organizations will affect the climate and culture of it. So if it's not the culture and climate that you want, that's for you to change and for you to influence and to use your rank and position to influence that as much as possible. I hope that this gave you just a tiny little wedge of time to think a little bit about your new personal context, if you will, with your new rank and your new position, how you're potentially gonna weave resilience and resilience activities into your world and your organization. Take the time to do that. The things that the activities, the TMTs, the taskers, they will come and they will go and they'll be overwhelming and they can drive your day unless you take a deliberate moment to think about these things and proactively weave them into your everyday life and demonstrate that to people. Next slide please just to let you know, I put my email address here because if you should need anything and I, again, I mean this, email me if you need anything, please. I want to help, I wanna make things better. I think we're gonna do that, but we have to do that together. So I will take your challenges, your issues. I will most definitely take your feedback because I know you'll hear more than me what impacts the airmen in the field and the guardians and the families. I wanna hear about it because if we can influence it with policy, we will because the chief of the Air Force and the CSO are adamant about making life, quality of life a priority for our people. And so if we know about it, we wanna make it better. That's really all I have for you today. I did wanna leave a little time for questions, but if you have and I know we don't have a lot, but if you do have questions for me, please take down my email address. I will be more than happy to entertain your questions and help you in any way that I can because for me, I love my job. This is like a dream job and I am very ready to make things better alongside you. So whatever I can do, let me know. And that's all I have, thank you. Any questions? By the way, number 44 was Chief Chad Brown. Your classmate had you, buddy. Any questions for me? Okay, again, if you do think of some, please email me. It was an honor to be here with you today. Thank you, ma'am.