COMMENTARY>>How’s your faith lately?

By Lt. Col. John Vaughn
48th Airlift Squadron commander

No, I’m not talking about your spiritual faith – although that’s certainly an important aspect of life. I’m talking about the faith you have in your leadership. Are you on your leadership’s team? Can they count on you to promote their ideas as if they were your own?

I remember as a young captain, I thought I knew it all. I couldn’t believe some of the mistakes my commanders made! Couldn’t they see how dumb that was? If I were running things ... things would be different.

Now I’m a commander, and I sit on the other side of that desk. I’m sure I face different problems than they did, but many are probably the same, and now I understand. Decisions aren’t easy. Many must be made at the expense of something else. As a captain, I just had no idea what the implications or repercussions of each decision might be. I only saw things from my own point of view.

As I’ve grown older – and been fortunate enough to be promoted a couple times – I’ve come to realize that I don’t know it all.

People are not perfect, and neither are most decisions.

Often, they involve compromise and imperfect information. Your shift supervisor does his or her best to set up a fair work schedule. It may not always turn out perfectly. Trust me; they would make it perfect if they could. But my question to you is, “How do you react?” Like I did when I was younger? Or do you recognize that they’re good people doing their best with what they have? While this week’s schedule might not be perfect, you can bet they’ll do their best to make sure everything’s fair in the end.

You might ask, “But what about critical thinking? If we never question the way we do things, how will they ever get better?”

Critical thinking executed perfectly is a wonderful thing.

The key to that statement is “executed perfectly.” There’s a time to bring up potential solutions and a time to salute smartly and move on. You can still be loyal when you challenge – it’s all about how you do it. Challenging privately is best. But publicly, we should all strive to make our leaders’ decisions our own. No one ever agrees with everything; that’s part of being human. So is making mistakes – I know because I still make them.

A couple thoughts that have served me well: always look for a better way to do things, but once a decision is made, support it as your own and move on; have some faith in your leadership; and above all else, have a little patience.

Your supervisors are good people making the best decisions they can, often in difficult situations. Who knows? One day you might just be one of them. It happened to that young captain.