CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. –
I recently had a young staff sergeant, who is a first-time supervisor, come to my office asking for some help on how to take care of one his troops. It seemed the young Airman had been involved in a minor incident and his supervisor wanted to make sure he took care of the Airman.
He told me the Airman in question was a good troop, had never been in any real trouble, but had been spoken to by the shop leadership before because of his sometimes wavering military bearing. I asked the supervisor what he wanted to do and was confused by his answer.
The supervisor said he wanted to handle it but didn't want to get the Airman in any trouble. He went on to say he would like to handle it at his level since that was the lowest level in the supervisory chain. The supervisor told me he would like to make sure there was no paperwork involved so this incident wouldn't hurt the Airman's career. That is where I got confused.
I explained to the supervisor that I understood his position and that he was not going to hurt the young Airman's career. I told him any damage to this person's career would be done by the Airman himself and that he, as the supervisor, was simply documenting the incident and the actions taken. I went on to tell him that taking no action or by not documenting any action taken is what could potentially cause actual harm to the Airman's career later, not to mention to the Air Force as a whole.
I say this because it has been my experience when a person makes a mistake, they normally expect and willingly accept corrective actions. I believe if we truly care about a subordinate then not only is it our responsibility to discipline them but it's also our duty. I've seen good Airmen make mistakes and their well-meaning supervisors take no action. Then the same Airman makes another mistake and the same well-meaning supervisor again takes little or no action.
Unfortunately, the well-meaning supervisor allowed the Airman to believe it was okay to continue down this path and they ultimately ended up making a career-ending mistake. Many times it's us as supervisors and leaders that ended up letting the Airman down simply by not holding them to the standards.
I make it a point to talk to each Airman in my unit who has been involuntarily separated from the Air Force and try to figure out where the disconnect was, if any. Of course, there are the individuals who simply could not adapt to military life. You would be surprised at the number of Airmen who have told me if the problems they had were addressed and dealt with earlier, they felt they could have recovered and remained in the Air Force.
In our role as supervisors and leaders, we don't have the latitude to ignore Airmen who do not live by our values and our standards. In these days of shrinking budgets and a shrinking Air Force, we have a duty to deal with and document incidents appropriately.
Failure to live by and enforce our standards not only can take valuable time and energy away from the mission, but it can also severely damage the career of an Airman.
We've all been told from day one that doing the right thing isn't always the easy thing. Sometimes in order to take care of the troop, we may have to do the unpleasant.