My military and strategic science teacher instructed the class to log all of our leadership experiences at U.S.A.F.A. At the academy every sophomore is placed in charge of a freshman; we are essentially their coach. Our job is to ensure that they are upholding military standards, and also to make their transition from high school to a military institution smooth, however possible that is. Most of the essays Dr. Ferguson will read will consist of students reporting leadership examples as a coach. I threw in a little twist and included both leadership as a coach and leadership as a debater. I've attached the original file since the formating is so poor, but here's what I turned in:
Part One: Leadership in Action Log
9-August: At morning minutes, upperclassmen were going through rooms looking for security violations. As an element NCO, I quickly grabbed one unlocked computer and told the 4 degree in private not to leave his computer unlocked anymore. My reasoning for saving him from humiliation was that his room was clean and he was excelling at knowledge. I told him the next time it were to happen to anyone in his room, the freshmen in my element, that they would be required to do playing card push-ups. I wonder how this technique is going to work?
10-August: At morning minutes I turned studying into a game. Instead of the typical prompt and response, I let them compete in a knowledge bowl against each other. This meant that I would ask a question and the first one to respond would put his teammates at rest. I think it helped the freshmen learn individually. Hopefully, they do well on their knowledge.
11-August: I watched one of the upperclassmen, someone I don’t respect because he doesn’t maintain upperclassmen standards; yell at the freshmen during morning minutes for being terrible. There was no particular reason for this tirade. He told them that they now had to circumnavigate the squadron. I think he lost a lot of their respect for not explaining his reasoning, and yelling at them.
12-August: We had our first training session in our squadron today. A lot of my classmates were teaching life lessons. I thought that we should train them hard the whole time. I thought that life lessons learned at the end of freshmen year were more powerful. A life lesson would have much more effect if they aren’t given every single training session.
12-August: I made a quiz for the knowledge test so that my coachee could show that he was ready to pass before the training session. My coachee did really well so I made sure that he was not placed in my group for training. This was beneficial to him since my last post says I like to train hard and I think it reinforced that studying knowledge was important.
13-August: I reviewed with the A-flight freshmen all of their knowledge. I forced them to go over Wing Staff, something that was not an emphasis item with the other training clerks. I think this will help them pass their knowledge test since Wing Staff will be on it.
14-August: I helped recruit cadets for the debate team. I had to describe to them what the debate team was and to encourage them to try out. I found myself giving them knowledge about the team last year and what it was like being on the team as a freshman. This included how to balance military, academics, athletics, and the debate team.
16-August: I found out that my coachee passed his first knowledge test with a 90 percent. This was extremely important so he could get off to a good start. I was really excited because we had really worked hard to pass this test. The reinforcement during the training session must have really helped and the leadership style I used in the first week also helped.
18-August: I organized a Chick-Fil-a dining-in for my element since all of the freshmen passed their knowledge test. They seemed to really enjoy the food, and music we played. I loosened the reigns a little so that they could take on the responsibility of studying on their own to pass the knowledge test. I am not sure if this is a good idea.
24-August: I found out that my Doolie didn’t pass his knowledge test, but he got a 70 percent which isn’t terrible. I know that more interaction works better with a Doolie, but I think he needs to learn this responsibility. I am going to press him a little more this week so that I am sure he will pass.
29-September: My Doolies have passed their knowledge tests for the last month. They are starting to make my life really easy, and I like it. I am not sure if it is from the example that I set at the beginning of the year, but my roommate and I are going to continue to reward them with food every time they pass their knowledge tests.
30-September: I received my first C on a paper and my English teacher went to both my debate coaches who work in the English department to tell them this. I was a little disappointed about this because I found out through my debate coaches that I got a C on an English paper. I think that she was concerned that I would be upset about my grade in class because I had an A in the class before this paper.
1-October: The generals planned a great lunch and BBQ party for the cadet wing. I think this will increase our support of the football team this weekend. We are also getting out of the weekend AMI, and we will have a day off essentially. At least for me it is pretty useful to have the day off.
14-October: Many of the novice debaters were angry when they lost a debate round. I told them to stop complaining, and to take something from the comments the judge gives at the end of the round. I also lost many debate rounds and I have tried to learn from my mistakes so I fell ok telling them this.
15-October: I lost a debate round because the judge didn’t know anything about the theory I based my case on. I kept calm when he gave his decision. After, the round my opponent admitted that the judge made a poor decision, and that I represented my school well with the loss.
16-October: On the last day of our speech and debate trip to L.A., the freshmen were late in going to the airport. We didn’t yell at them when they got into the van because they already knew how we felt about tardiness. We nearly missed the plane because of our late departure from the hotel.
17-October: My Doolies studied most of the weekend even though I wasn’t there. I was impressed by this, and I thought they showed leadership by doing their jobs when I wasn’t there to enforce knowledge standards. I think a lot of this is from the precedent I set in the beginning of the year.
18-October: The wing distributed k-test rankings by squad and our squad was ranked fifth. This is impressive since I and most of my classmates have let our freshmen do their job without interfering when they pass. I think this method really works.
21-October: I don’t sit CQ often because I am on the debate team. I overheard a buddy of mine complaining that he couldn’t go to the hockey game because he had to sit C.Q. I told him that I would take his C.Q. shift since I never sit and I thought I would help him out.
24-October: I played golf with two retired Navy officers. They showed leadership by teaching me some of the nuances of golf to prepare me as an Air Force officer. I now know how to read greens when they seem completely counter-intuitive; it would look like I was putting up a hill, but the ball would take off because it was actually downhill.
25-October: My English Teacher took 5 points off my grade on a quiz because I wrote the wrong class period on it. I was a little upset because we only had fifteen minutes to write the quiz in class, and mine was two pages. I really wish she came to talk to me about it.
26-October: Two of the freshmen on the debate team are having more problems than the other freshmen. I have noticed that they don’t like the utilitarian way our coach runs the debate team. When they do something wrong, it leads to cyclical trouble.
27-October: The first day of the debate tournament these individuals showed up late and they missed a round of competition. I knew every upperclassmen and coach were going to yell at these two debaters. Before they hit this tidal wave I took them aside and asked them why they were late, and I told them a story about me messing up as a freshmen.
28-October: These two individuals also left early and didn’t go to a mandatory formation with the team. We went to dinner, the formation, and they left early. I talked to them saying they are treading on thin ice with the team, and I asked them to be more involved with the team.
29-October: The two debaters shaped up the last day of the tournament. They won most of their rounds and made a great contribution to the team’s final standings.
30-October: My partner and I lost a vital debate round at the Colorado College tournament because of a terrible judging decision. My partner began questioning the judge in a borderline belligerent way; I began to join him, but I decided to stop because the judge wasn’t going to change his mind for this round or in the future.
31-October: The freshmen debaters continued to persuade me to allow them to dress up when they were debating this weekend. I finally decided to let the freshmen debaters dress up for Halloween during their debates. I thought they would be too embarrassed to lose because they had goofy outfits on. This turned out to be a good decision since the freshmen did well in their debates and we now have pictures to blackmail them.
1-November: My teacher deducted a large portion of my project grade because I did not include documentation, but he was lenient because I always include documentation so I received the 20 percent back. In the words of the Department Head, I kept within the spirit of documentation.
2-November: Our element leader left USAFA. As the element NCO I had to tell the freshmen that the person they may have been modeling as a leader was being kicked out of the academy. They responded well and they look up to our new element leader now, Cadet Bettinger.
3-November: I have been travelling with the speech and debate team for four consecutive weeks, and I have forgotten to look at the knowledge results. I looked today and saw that my freshman has failed the last three weeks of testing.
8-November: We had a great weekend in San Francisco, but on the last day we were all supposed to meet outside of the Best Western Hotel in Stockton at four in the morning. The entirety of the sleep deprived team was waiting outside for 30 minutes when we realized our coach had slept in so we went to her room to wake her up. This was interesting because she yelled at some of the freshmen for being ten minutes late.
Part Two: Reflection
The Oxford English Dictionary defines leadership as “the action or influence necessary for the direction or organization of effort in a group undertaking”. This means the ability to channel the effort of a group to a common purpose or to influence someone to do something for you. Especially this semester, I have made the attempt to access personal growth through a detailed documentation of leadership experiences. These experiences have been in the form of a coach, and an upperclassman on the debate team. Since this is my first attempt to analyze my leadership, being such a nebulous construct, I am using the four concepts of an authentic leader as my criteria to determine whether I have grown as a leader throughout the semester. These concepts consist of self-awareness, balanced processing, transparency and moral actions.
Encouraging and coaching my assigned freshman was the first task I had as an upperclassmen. The job could be simplified to three tasks: ensure that he passes his knowledge tests, set a good example, and help him with school. The freshmen are tested on general Air Force knowledge every Monday morning. Typically, the freshmen who study hard were rewarded with a passing grade. The passing grade meant that they weren’t restricted to the miserable austerity of a weekend in the squadron. Every week I ensure that my freshman is studying for his knowledge so that his spirits are up, and so he succeeds as a cadet.
My biggest failure throughout the semester was self-awareness. This failure was caused by task-saturation. The Chick-Fil-A dining-in on August 12th marks this failure. I loosened the reigns and I stopped going to minutes with the freshmen. I also was, more often than not, away on the weekends due to debate. For these reasons I wasn’t able to study with my Doolie. He continued to pass, but I was using his success to justify my separation from the four-degree system. I justified this in my August 24th journal; I said that my freshmen needed to learn responsibility, but I was unaware that I was missing an opportunity for leadership. I had become task-saturated in knowledge test scores, as if they were the only indicator of success, and I forgot about daily mentoring of my Doolie. The great German philosopher Emanuel Kant says that we must look to the methodology of a plan before the implications. Kant’s philosophy applied to knowledge tests means that knowledge tests are important, but are only a barrier to encourage close interaction with the freshmen, talking to them about their problems and concerns, when studying for the test. August 13th is about me helping the freshmen study for Wing Staff something that they didn’t know well for the upcoming test, but I forgot to blog a long discussion we had about school, and the subjects we needed to work on together. Despite the fact that I was more involved with my Doolie, I think that I was less self-aware; I was doing the right things, but only in an attempt to encourage a passing knowledge score. I only became self-aware through the latent guilt from letting my freshman do all the work to pass his knowledge tests.
August 12th was my first and only training session, and the only moral dilemma as a coach. I noted that I wanted to wait until the end of the year to talk about life lessons, and use the present to train the freshmen hard. There was always the moral question with physical training; is this excessive or morally acceptable, granted this level of training is different for every freshman. I think that I may have gone into that training session attempting to break every freshman in order to gain respect, but in the end I think it was moral, but at the same time dumb because they didn’t learn anything from it, just not to go to my station.
I’d like to think that balanced processing is the internal link to moral actions; therefore, being a balanced processor is to say that you are morally upstanding. On August 9th, my first entry, I prevented a freshman from being destroyed in front of his classmates for leaving his computer unlocked. I think the demonstration of upperclassmen superiority would have taught my Doolie that he didn’t like to be yelled at. Instead I considered appealing to his senses by simply warning him that he had made a mistake leaving his computer unlocked, and eventually he took responsibility for his computer. I actually think that I grew as a balanced processor throughout the year. On September 21st I took a progressive step towards helping my Doolie. My Doolie’s sponsor wanted to pick him up for a specific outing, but instead he went with his academic year sponsor instead. His other sponsor called to get him in trouble. Instead of being mad at my Doolie I stood up for him and formulated a plan with the Squadron Commander to prevent any serious punishments.
The final aspect of leadership as a coach is transparency. I think that I became a little less transparent towards the end of the year, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing because I became so busy travelling with debate every weekend. September 29th was the last time that we awarded the Doolies with food for their performance on knowledge tests. They paid for it, but we went to get it for them since we have access to a car. I think that I lost transparency when I stopped doing this since the rule was if they passed they got food; furthermore, I only went to the August 12th training session which didn’t make me very available. Fortunately, my Doolies understood that I was busy with debate and that it wasn’t apathy. I think that transparency is the most important form of leadership because it is like leading by example.
On the debate team, many of the debaters struggled to find the balance between life as a freshman and a debater, falling short in the debate aspect was unacceptable. My second job, as an upperclassmen on the debate team, was to help the debate freshmen find this balance.
Being a transparent leader was simple in most aspects. On the 14th of August we recruited freshmen to join the team at the Blue Rush, a club interest meeting. The main question I answered involved the balance between debate and school. This was a great question because it was my most arduous freshmen year hurdle. I simply told them how life was for me, difficult, and that I found a few techniques to mitigate this challenge like doing homework on the plane and during rounds. Many of the freshmen saw that my fellow debaters as well as myself were transparent. I think this quality helped to attract the ten or so freshmen that we recruited.
It was difficult to make the four am flights home so I worked hard to show the other freshmen that I could be on time. On 16 October I didn’t yell at the freshmen for being late to the cars in the morning. I am not sure whether I was too tired to yell or whether I understood how someone could be late based on my own difficulties waking up early. I have come to the conclusion that it was a good thing I didn’t yell at them since on November 8th our debate coach slept thirty minutes passed our meeting time.
Balanced processing was a difficult chore since I needed to reinforce the discipline from the other upperclassmen debaters, but ensure that we were implementing discipline in the correct areas. I documented the story of two freshmen that struggled more than most to adapt to the arduous debate schedule. The 26-29 of October documented the story of these two individuals. They missed their first debate round which is one of the worst debate fouls. I pulled them aside before they were subsumed by the tidal wave that was the coach and the upperclassmen. I laid down the standards in a calm way and asked that they not mess up again. They got yelled at, but eventually they got the message and helped contribute to a successful team outing.
I think the nebulous bright line in determining the magnitude that was moral in dealing with the freshman wasn’t clear. This makes me think I may not have mastered this characteristic of an authentic leader. On 31 October I let the freshman dress up for Halloween. I think I did this so that I didn’t suppress any ones religious needs, so I guess that makes my actions moral. On 30 October my partner and I began to question our judge’s decision in a debate round. I don’t think this was acceptable and a bit immoral because we put the judge in an awkward position.
I think I was self-aware as a debater. On 15 October I abstained from arguing with the judge because I didn’t want to risk the success of my team or myself in front of this critic the next time. I actually just hoped that he would owe me one the next time he judged me.
In an evaluation of myself I think it is fair to say that I progressed throughout the year as an authentic leader. I increased ability in transparency, self-awareness, moral action, and as a balanced processor.
I think that it was always one of my goals to be transparent. I tried to minimize any hypocrisy as well as make the reasoning for any punishment clear. At the beginning of the year I only explained myself because everyone else did. As the semester went on I observed the responses of the freshmen, in reaction to myself or other cadre, and I realized that reasoning and explanation were vital to prevent cynicism and other undesirable responses
In terms of balanced processing I think that I have actually lost patience for mistakes throughout the year because of their repetitive tendencies. This has caused me to group freshmen who make the same mistakes together. I have ignored the different circumstances and explanations and handed down the same punishment as a coach and a debater. I think that I will learn to be more of an active listener and understand the complexities of situations from this analysis.
I didn’t have many leadership journals dealing with moral actions. This makes me think that I am unaware of moral situations. I have also learned that I need to be more aware of moral and ethical situations so that I don’t make immoral decisions.
I think that this journal has had a great impact on my self-awareness more than anything else. I have noticed that at the beginning of the semester I seemed self-aware because I was doing the right things like studying knowledge, going to k-bowls, but it has become clear that this was typically in response to a failing or passing knowledge score. It took being less involved to see that knowledge tests were created to bring upperclassman close to freshmen.
Documentation: C3C Patrick McGunagle helped me spell check my journal.
