i i never never once questioned uh our our ability as an aviation unit to do the job the mission that we were assigned to do even after even up until the day i left when i became the operations officer my last four months in country i got a chance to look at at the battle space in a different way because i would go to battalion and battalion ops and look at that then come back and put that into company ops and and work our portion of the mission our company’s portion of the battalion mission and i’d bring the guys into the briefing room the guys are going to be flying that mission and i’d say okay this is our objective right here now how do we get there we’re here this is our objective our mission is this we got to put so many troops in there how do we get there and usually it wasn’t just one place it was if it was a company plus it would be maybe three different places we’d have to go and i never would say okay this is how we’re going to do it you’re going to do it i think how do we get there what what’s the best approach to make this happen and i was the operating staffs and i’d have these young award awarenesses oh let’s do this today and somebody said no no we can’t do that we got to do this somebody said well let’s do it this way well okay well let’s take a piece of that next thing you know they had planned the operation all i did was approve it but that that’s a leadership skill that i learned from people like colonel bobby fernandez who never said you’re going to do it this way he always sort of facilitated if you will facilitative leadership and that’s what you’re seeing now in business facilitative leadership getting people involved and if the more you’re involved the more you take ownership and that’s what i saw in our guys that’s what i saw in our guys during lamson that’s what i saw on our guys after lamb sun now when we were flying command and control north we did what they told us they had a very specific way of doing things and that’s the way we were going to do it and that’s fine and that’s fine but this is the way we did it and i mirrored my leadership style after people that i had great respect for [Music] to include general helen moore who became lieutenant general helmore uh and the way that the camaraderie the the camaraderie i don’t want to say i was buddy buddy but general moore because i was not but we had a we had a relationship in the cockpit and i think he respected my desires what i wanted to do obviously because i wouldn’t have gone to nam had it not been for that yeah i don’t know if you didn’t have a relationship with hal moore but jesus if you were friends with him who knows what he would have done for you [Laughter] what a great man he was but but i left i left vietnam feeling very good about my unit and about what we did um i did change my views a bit to think that my tour and nam will be successful if i can do things to support my us troops so that changed from supporting the whole concept of vietnamization for example if i can bring ice cream out to those troops after they’ve busted their butt all day inserting then i’ve done something that i can be proud of and and that’s where my mind sort of changed after being in country for about eight months to support my soldiers and to do what i could to bring them home yeah the the leadership stuff you’re talking about that’s exactly the the best leaders i had was they would tell us what the mission was what the goal was and then say come up with a plan and that’s what i always tried to do myself that certainly is the the best way to get people on board with the plan is just let them come up with it that’s right you don’t have to convince them of anything it’s their idea it’s their plan let them argue it out yeah yep
My WordPress Blog