Leadership Analysis of the NCO
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LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS OF THE NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICER
By
Jeffry S. Clark
A Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements of
LEAD500 LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THEORIES
February 2013
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Introduction
This final portfolio project will focus around the current state of leadership of the NonCommissioned Officer (NCO) of the United States Air Force (USAF). The current state of the
NCO corps in the USAF in recent years has brought to light many issues that have required the
Air Force to address publicly and privately within their commands. To formulate where we want
the NCO corps to be in the future and how we as an Air Force want it to change I will be
performing a GAP analysis to conclude what actions to take and what needs to be achieved in
order for these goals to be met in the future.
*In order to only reveal a certain level of information without jeopardizing the security and
infrastructure of the Air Force this paper will be generalized in many situations. Not all
information in this paper will be quoted or worded directly from an official Air Force document
or regulation. Most information used in this project was taken from regulations that had no
releasability restrictions.*
Background
To begin I think it’s important that we define some of the background information used
in this project to describe the basic concepts and definitions in which will be discussed and
analyzed during the course of this project. For starters, what is a Non-Commissioned Officer
(NCO)? A NCO as defined by Air Force Instruction (AFI) 36-2618 “consists of Staff Sergeant
and Technical Sergeant. The primary focus in this tier is mission accomplishment. NCOs
continue occupational growth and become expert technicians. At the same time, NCOs develop
as leaders, supervisors, managers, and mentors. Additionally, NCOs must ensure they keep
themselves and subordinate personnel trained, qualified, and ready to deploy and operate in an
expeditionary environment while maintaining home station readiness. In the NCO tier, NCOs
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also continue to develop institutional competencies in preparation for increased responsibilities
while continuing to broaden technical skills and pursuing professional development through onand off-duty education.” (AFI 36-2618, 2009). Staff Sergeant and Technical Sergeants can be
found on the military pay scale as E-5 and E-6 (figure 1). Normally Staff and Technical
Sergeants have been in the military on average of 5-6 years for Staff Sergeant, and 8-11 years for
Technical Sergeant.
Figure 1-Military Pay Scale
Currently, the Air Force has 328, 778 active duty members serving (AFPC, 2012). Of
those 328,778, 64,380 are commissioned officers and 264,398 are enlisted members (AFPC,
2012). The average age for enlisted Air Force members is only 29 years old with 44% of the
enlisted force being below 26 years old (AFPC, 2012). To put that into perspective, almost half
of our enlisted Air Force members are below 26 years old, an age that many people who graduate
from college are around.
Educate the Force
So if almost half of the enlisted force is below the age of 26 what does this mean? This
means that we have a lot of young people who are skipping college and joining the ranks of the
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Air Force immediately or even a few years after high school. Is this a bad thing? Not really
according to my squadron commander that I interviewed. My commander believes that young
blood is good for the Air Force and that we should focus on training that young blood to be
educated much further than expected for their age. This means that if someone joins the Air
Force at 18 years old, they could be a NCO by the age of 23-24, a normal age for a college
student or college graduate. So as an Air Force, we are asking 23, 24, 25, and 26 year olds to be
NCOs in charge of people, equipment, and even large amounts of money, not to mention the
adult and leadership type of responsibilities that come with the rank of NCO. In my career I
joined the military late and entered at 21 years old. I also became an NCO at age 26 years old.
The Air Force views young people as a good thing because the total force never gets too old to
keep up with the operations tempo that fighting two wars creates. Furthermore, the Air Force
also believes that those young people need to be trained and mentored as much as possible
because we are asking even more of our NCOs than we ever have before. I interviewed my
current supervisor who is a Master Sergeant, (E-7 on the pay scale), and during our interview he
stated that in the early 1990’s when he was being promoted to Staff Sergeant the promotion rate
to that rank was only about 14-15%. The promotion rate for Staff Sergeant in 2012 was 40%,
more than 13,400 members who got selected for promotion (Air Force Officials, 2012). This
proves that today’s promotion rate to the ranks of NCO are much higher than they used to be,
and with the youth of today’s military members being in the low 20’s that means more young
people are being promoted quicker.
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Current State
The current state of the Air Force is an unpredictable one. We aren’t sure just yet what
this whole sequestration thing is going to, but we know it’s going to impact us hard and fast.
Billions of dollars are going to be cut, which means less money for equipment, supplies, and
most importantly people. People are our greatest asset and we’ve gotten along fine for years by
cutting corners and getting the job done. Since we’ve been fighting two wars and trying to
balance the force mission at home and in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve knowingly cut corners and
looked the other way. But with these two wars slowing down we have to get back to training and
maintaining our force. This means getting back to those strict rules of engagement and enforcing
the strict military discipline we are used to. Currently we have a younger Air Force than we ever
have. A lot of individuals are recruited right out of high school. With the Air Force currently
paying 100% tuition assistance a lot of high school graduates are joining the Air Force, as well as
other military branches just to get their school paid for. This means our demographic changes
and we become younger as a military. While becoming younger is a good thing, we must
remember with youth comes a lack of experience. Experience can’t be taught, it must be
experienced, which is why it’s called experience. You have to go through the good and the bad
times, and learn from those times. Our military members today don’t have that background and
we must give them the tools necessary to handle these experiences when it’s time.
We want a stronger and more capable military that is willing to do more with less. This
requires a lot of patience and time, which when we are fighting wars and involved in conflicts we
don’t have a ton of patience or time. This means our military members are going to be thrust
into certain situations that they are not ready for. But we want a military that is already ready.
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Our current state of NCOs has them competing for promotion and putting decisions in
their hands that their commanders don’t always support. The problem might not be that our NCO
corp. is incapable, but that our senior leadership is not supportive. I contacted many of my peers
that work at different Air Force bases around the world about this issue and I got some
interesting responses. The majority of people said that it is hard to get leadership to support their
decision because they regard them as a young NCO who might not know what they are doing
yet. Part of this is true to an extent. A commander is supposed to trust an NCO who has been in
5-6 years? How does that NCO know what is best for the Air Force? That would be a hard thing
to do as a commander, but making hard calls is part of being in the military. A few of my peers
also reported back that they have great leadership who lets them make the hard calls and take
responsibility for the consequences, which is a valuable learning experience regardless of good
or bad. I have been in those situations before and I was wrong, very wrong in fact. But I learned
from that situation because I had a great leadership staff that supported me and helped me see
what went wrong with the entire situation. It was almost as if they wanted me to fail so that I
could grow and learn from the situation. Which leads me into this: Are we scared to fail? Are
we worried that failure will make us all look bad? Even on the smallest thing? Failure can
sometimes be a good thing, like in my situation. I failed but learned so much from it. I took away
more from being wrong than I would have if I was right. Maybe we need to fail a little more at
the small stuff in order to be right on the bigger things. Failure is not an option when we are
talking about fighting wars and accomplishing the mission, but we aren’t a perfect country or a
perfect military. We must make mistakes in order to learn from different situations, because it’s
called experience. I’ve met too many people in the military that have had perfect careers. These
careers involved leadership protecting them from harm or difficult situations. That is not
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leadership. The current state of leadership in the military demands that we get things done and
get them done quickly. That is often the mentality when we are fighting wars, but when we
aren’t fighting wars and we are focused on training the force here at home, we must focus on
development and preparation.
Too often we are worried about pointing the finger and blaming someone for our loss or
hard times. In actuality, it’s nobody else’s responsibility but our own. Our Air Force is one that
is afraid of the hard calls regarding people because everyone is coming back from deployments
with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of the things they’ve seen or had to do in a
time of war. PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder. According to the US National Medical Library
PTSD can occur after you’ve seen or experience a traumatic even that involved the threat of
injury or death (Vorvick, 2011). The cause of PTSD is unknown. Psychological, genetic,
physical, and social factors are involved. PTSD changes the body’s response to stress. It affects
the stress hormones and chemicals that carry information between the nerves (Vorvick, 2011).
Because of the effects war has had on the Air Force and the military we have been afraid to get
back to the basic discipline and fundamentals that we as a military are used to. Individuals
coming back from war don’t just snap back into military mode and start acting like military
members again because they have to get their mind back into a peaceful, disciplined state. This
is hard to do when you are coming back from war and are used to being on pins and needles for
anywhere from 6 months to over a year and a half.
It’s a very difficult time to get back to the basics. The discipline that we must have to
continue that legacy of being the biggest and most lethal military in the world was not created
overnight. It was created by millions of veteran’s who served before us. It was created by
honorable men and women who fought hard for what we as a country believe in. Today’s
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society has changed and we must find a way as an Air Force, as well as a military to find the
balance of yesterday’s discipline, with today’s freedom and culture. Part of this will be
empowering our junior enlisted and given them the ability to make decisions and run the force
without senior leadership constantly limiting them.
Future State
The future of the NCO corp. is going to be our most important asset. With budget cuts
looming and potentially placing many difficult measures on our ability to defend this country, we
must rely on our NCOs to maintain the integrity of the force. General Welsh, the current Air
Force Chief Of Staff, the highest ranking Air Force member spoke at a Air Force Sergeants
Association conference in the fall of 2012 and had this to say “I am absolutely convinced that if
we knew each other better, we would care for each other more…It all starts with great NCOs and
great supervisors who understand every Airman does have a story” (Grammel, 2012). General
Welsh also went on to say that the enlisted leaders need to recognize that there is always
someone who is better at something than they are, and it is their job to recognize this (Grammel,
2012). The general said “Everybody who has ever worked for you is better than you at
something; your job is to encourage that and develop it, and to give them free reign. Every now
and then, step back and lead from behind. Become the cheerleader” (Grammel, 2012). General
Welsh believes today’s Air Force needs bold leadership, especially when it comes to meeting
standards. He was quoted as saying “Deal with it, Make the tough decisions. Make the hard calls.
Make your NCOs make the hard calls, and make your Airmen make the hard calls” (Grammel,
2012).
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We can’t really predict the future, but we’ve been a military for a long time, which gives
us full authority to try and predict what our military services will need in order to sustain
themselves in the long run. This type of management has to make difficult calls. I know that for
the Air Force we are over our end-strength and we need to let people go, reassign other people to
critically manned career fields, and brace for impact if these budget cuts really do go into effect.
As an Air Force and as a military we are going to be asking even more of our people than ever
before, including the time we fought the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This will be a time that is
difficult for everyone, and we will need good leadership. It is already known that good
leadership is what we need now, so when the good times are less often and daily work is more
difficult than ever, excellent leadership is what we’ll need to have. As NCOs we will need to find
the time to take care of each other, whether we actually have time to do so or not. It’s important
that we stand tall together in the face of adversity and be a strong force.
Leadership is a quality that is not taught, it is learned. I’ve always believed this. I have
never really been taught a leadership quality through the voice of a teacher, but I’ve been taught
plenty of leadership qualities through the impact and examples that teacher has broadcasted.
Leadership is about how you talk and what you say. It is to a degree, but you lose credibility if
you talk one way and act another. Leadership is about talking the talk, and then walking the walk
better than anyone else. Leading by example is the best way of leadership. People will follow
brave leadership. For example, I once had a first sergeant who was getting pretty old. He had 27
years of total service and was a former Marine. He came to the Air Force early in his career
because the Marine corp. was getting rid of his job and he wanted to remain in that job. He
joined the Air Force as quickly as possible because the Air Force still had his job available. He
was a short man with a small gray mustache, wide body, and colorful personality. I admired him
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because he always gave it to me straight. I was a young guy when I first met him. We used to do
these morale runs once a month on a Friday morning with the base commander. Each unit would
line all of their people up in formation and run behind the base commander and his leadership
staff for about 2 miles. Nobody liked these runs because they were early in the morning and it
was Kansas, so it was a little cold. My first sergeant was the only guy out there fired-up to run
and excited to be alive. He wore two knee braces, an ankle brace, and had to carry an in-haler.
His body had been through enough pain and suffering in the 27 years he had served already, yet
every time we did one of these runs he was acting like he was 16 all over again. I couldn’t
believe at how motivated he was to do these runs. He always put everyone in a better mood and
he led by example. We were by far the most motivated unit on those Friday mornings because of
that first sergeant. It was a shame that he didn’t get promoted that year and had to retire, but it
also proved a great point…you live each day to make the day better, make the people better, and
work it out. Don’t live each day to just get by and hope for a promotion. Seize the day. We need
more leadership like him in today’s Air Force, and we must bridge that gap quickly.
Bridging the GAP
To this point we have verified the education, age, and promotion levels of NCOs in the
Air Force. We understand that age levels are relatively low, mainly in the low to mid 20’s, and
the education level is very basic with minimal to no college education. We’ve established that
these young individuals get professional military training at a certain level of rank, and we’ve
established that there is an obvious gap in that training from Senior Airman(E-4) to Technical
Sergeant(E-6). So how do we bridge that gap?
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I myself asked my training group first sergeants (E-7) for an interview to get their take on
this question. How do we educate our NCOs at the E-5 rank while they wait to get promoted to
E-6? For some this can be a long process. I was promoted to E-5 right at my 5 year anniversary
or service, and haven’t been promoted as of Feb 2013, and will celebrate my eighth year in the
service this April. The E-6 promotion list comes out in June, and if I get selected I won’t be
officially promoted until sometime in 2014. This makes for almost a 5 year gap between E-5 and
E-6 promotions, and that is if I get selected on this year’s list. The point we are trying to make is
that it can be a big gap. I interviewed 3 first sergeants about this issue. These first sergeants each
supervise the morale, welfare, and well-being of a squadron of at least 100 people, no civilians.
In their military careers they have supervised individuals at all rank levels. I asked them this
very question, “What do we do to bridge the professional training gap between E-5 and E-6?”
The responses I got were nothing I wouldn’t expect from a first sergeant. One of them said that
it’s up to senior leadership to mentor and educate this new NCOs while they perfect their
abilities as managers and leaders while waiting on promotion to E-6. Another first sergeant said
that the first sergeant council in conjunction with the chief’s council on base was putting together
a 4 day professional development seminar strictly for E-5’s who are not selected for promotion
to E-6. The senior enlisted leadership on base feels it is their responsibility to groom and educate
the leaders of tomorrow and they have realized that there is a gap in the professional education
realm.
I asked when the next seminar was going to take place and I was fortunate enough to
attend that very next week. I have a great supervisor who understood that this project was
important and any additional research I could conduct would only aid me more in writing this
report and conducting my GAP analysis. These four days involved lectures from only senior
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enlisted leadership. For the most part we had E-7s who came in to do the briefings. This
training was unlike anything I’ve ever been to. The individuals who came to speak talked to us
like young managers and wanted to give us tools that we would need to grow and become senior
leaders like themselves. It was a great opportunity and a wise decision by base leadership to
conduct the seminar. I left feeling more excited and fired-up about the Air Force than I ever have
before. In fact, I left feeling excited to reach that next promotion and share the things I’ve
learned with the people I supervise. Unfortunately I do not know if other bases are doing the
same thing for all of our E-5s, but I know Join Base San Antonio is, and I know that we are the
largest joint installation in the Department of Defense, so we are reaching a lot of young NCOs
with this seminar. I don’t like to assume, but usually in the Air Force when someone is doing a
process right, and it works, it will spread like wildfire. Hopefully this seminar spreads like
wildfire and many more bases pick up this idea and make it even better than my experience.
This is a huge step forward in bridging that gap.
Recommendations
The following is strictly my personal observation and opinion. I based this off of my
research and personal experiences as a member of the Air Force. What we need is decision
makers or aren’t afraid to make those hard decisions. We need stronger NCOs that are capable
of leading the force, without being limited by senior leadership. We also need senior leadership
who understands all of this, and is willing to educate, mentor, and accept the role of these junior
enlisted members. We need good leadership from the top down, who can motivate and mentor
the younger members of the Air Force to become the senior leaders of tomorrow. The promotion
process that we currently use officially selects individuals for promotion, but every day we
unofficially select members for promotion by way of mentoring, educating, and guiding those
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members. Public Law limits the amount of people who can serve in the regular Air Force in the
grades of Senior Master Sergeant (SMSgt, E-8) and Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt E-9) to only
3 percent of the enlisted force (AFPAM 36-2241, 2011). In order to make E-8 in the Air Force
you must be truly one of the best. It’s very difficult. To make E-9 and become a chief is even
harder. Less than 1 percent of the entire Air Force is a Chief Master Sergeant. In reality, we are
helping the promotion system each day determine the next SMSgt and CMSgt. If we make the
tough calls and mentor the younger members to head in the right operational direction we are
helping determine the next members of our senior leadership teams.
We also need more training in the middle. We have training at the upper levels of senior
enlisted, but not at the very beginning. We need more professional education for brand new
NCOs that are waiting to reach E-6 and E-7. We need senior leadership who is capable and
willing to reach out and mentor these young Air Force members, as well as push them to make
those difficult decisions and step up. The stronger we are as a force the more capable we will be
when our nation calls on us.
Conclusion
It’s a very difficult time for the Air Force for many reasons that have been discussed in
this project portfolio. Overall, the mentality is that our NCO’s must be the backbone that
supports our great Air Force and also the military. Leadership is a tool that has to be taught at
many different levels, and in order for the Air Force to have a certain expectation of those levels
they must provide an initial expectation and even initial training. Also, in order for those
expectations to hold true the Air Force must also set the standard for leadership and hold those
individuals, and in this case NCO’s, accountable to those standards. In a time were budget cuts
are the main focus of how our military will function in the near and far future, we must focus on
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being our absolute best all the time, because we literally can’t afford to give it even our 95%
anymore.
Upon conclusion of my analysis I found that the opinions of many people at my local
level believe our NCOs are empowered already, and that the mentoring needs to come from the
top levels down. They believe that our senior enlisted leadership as well as commissioned officer
leadership need to provide more opportunities for mentoring to our NCOs and young enlisted
members to better grow the force. From what I could determine the senior leadership of the Air
Force has strong opinions about the younger generations of people who are joining the Air Force
and are in turn becoming tomorrow’s senior leadership. That gap will be bridged by today’s
leadership putting in the time and efforts to train and grow tomorrow’s leaders today, by way of
mentoring and guiding them to success. As General Welsh said: “Make the hard calls.”
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References
AFI 36-2618, 2009. Department of the Air Force, AFI 36-2618 The Enlisted Force Structure.
Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC). (2012, Dec 31). Air force personnel center. Retrieved from
http://www.afpc.af.mil/library/airforcepersonneldemographics.asp
Air force officials release e-5 promotion list. (2012, August 02). Retrieved from
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123312441
Grammel, J. (2012, August 17). Welsh talks . Retrieved from
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123314471
Vorvick, L. J. (2011, March 05). Pubmed health. Retrieved from
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001923/