Social – Flight

This post will be less structured, more free-form/ flow of consciousness.

The flight is essentially the classroom-filling unit at SOS, so for those unfamiliar that might happen across this post, you can simply consider the term “flight” as a typical classroom cohort or team.

Flight C-41 consisted of 13 individuals, all but one of whom is (was?) a captain:

• An Egyptian major participating as an international student. He is a flight academy instructor.
• A B-52 Weapon Systems Officer.
• A KC-135 pilot.
• A finance officer.
• Another medical corps officer.
• An acquisition officer. That’s me.
• A missileer.
• An F-15 pilot (or “driver” as I frequently heard).
• A FAIP – First Assignment Instructor Pilot.
• A cyber officer.
• A communications officer.
• A logistician.

Each of these individuals comprised our team and contributed some element of learning as we interacted over the five and a half weeks.

For what’s it’s worth, our instructor – a major – is a C-130 pilot.

These short descriptions naturally do no justice to who each of these individuals is, and it isn’t even really the point of this post to explain who they were.

The flight serves as a variety of abstract proxies.

• It serves as a temporary team.
• It serves as a recreational group.
• It serves as a source for new and different perspectives.
• It serves as a source for unique insights.
• It serves as a target for leadership practice.
• It serves as a source of motivation.
• It serves as a source of frustration.
• It serves as a source of friends.
• It serves as a reflection of a slice of the Air Force population.
• It serves as a unit to serve.

I’m sure the flight is much more than that and it can have unique functions depending on myriad factors…

While I recognize that any flight is also unique, there are a few thoughts that feel like they ought to ring true in any flight.

Just because you are in a flight does not mean you get to know the different team members well. Each individual will generally reveal things about themselves in two ways. They’ll tell you, or they’ll show you. Whether they recognize how they are revealing things is another consideration altogether.

Just because they reveal something to you does not mean that you or your fellow flight members will interpret that correctly. There are tons of assumptions in any interaction, and the context at Squadron Officer School has a way of intensifying some assumptions.

While I knew what I wanted to get out of SOS – an understanding of the academic structure, an attempt at distinguished graduate status, the possibility of long-lasting friendships – I recognized before attending that my goals or interests would not necessarily be those of anyone else in my flight.

That proved true: many felt it was a break from their busy jobs. Many also felt it was a checkbox needing fulfillment. SOS was not something to take seriously aside from not failing with little there was to fail.

Even with that general disinterest in the program, competitive energy also inspired some behavior – the structure of SOS divides the Class into Squadrons, and Squadrons into Flights. Just at the squadron level, the prospect of being the “lowest performing flight” was enough to encourage some activity from my peers.

I found this somewhat frustrating at points, but I failed to lead my team to the conclusion I’d arrived at: if we tried even a little early on, we would have performed substantially better and the threat of being last never would have been a concern.

Instead, I frustrated many of my peers – I was too intense, sometimes overbearing, sometimes intimidating as a potential team member.

Getting that consistent informal – and two rounds of formal – feedback was actually very helpful…

While the feedback was sometimes good, it was not always good. I could tell that certain expectations were applied due to poorly established relationships. The best feedback came from people I’d had decent conversations with. The worst feedback came from people that never expressed clear goals. That said, I had great feedback from someone who wanted to approach SOS as a break from work; even though their goal was not ambitious, it was clear.

The best experiences with my flight were the dinners out. The environment was generally more relaxed. Alcohol loosened some of the reservations people had. Business was left on base. This time out gave us all the opportunity to share ourselves without an academic agenda or breaks until it became necessary to head back to the hotels.

Some of the context of my intensity was able to get out; understanding some of my background and perspective allowed me to better reveal myself.

Understanding where some of my peers were coming from helped me to interact with them during our exercises or classes better. These interactions also helped identify who might be stronger or weaker at different activities. Learning that someone was afraid of heights was critical for constructing teams for Project X, for one clear example.

Learning about different backgrounds and different experiences helped craft stronger identities of The Other in my mind that provided a sense of what was comfortable, what was challenging, what boundaries could be pressured.

…but I won’t pretend everything was just a challenge to overcome. I did not come away from SOS feeling like I disliked anyone in my flight, but I did take away that first impressions are an obstacle that should be consciously addressed.

At least two members of my flight did not seem to recognize the adjustments I made over our month together: the feedback provided in the middle of the course matched the feedback provided at the end of the course despite what I thought had been an improved relationship and understanding.

I don’t hold that against them, but take this as evidence of an interactive failure of some kind. The negative impressions I left – my intensity and my general approach to things – remained on these two despite what I felt was a definitive adjustment of my approach.

Others noted my shift in behavior over the course of our class in these two feedbacks. It isn’t something to get hung up on, but every bit of feedback is worth analyzing for what insights can be pulled from it, good, bad, relevant, or ambiguous.

Hopefully, most of us have the time to develop our professional relationships in our workplaces, whether military or not.

Specifically if you’re heading to SOS, I think it’s worth trying to align goals as you can, but admittedly, I do not think it would be super effective to ask your Flight what their goals at SOS are so you can all figure out how to align to at least one specific goal. That’ll probably come off as overly formal, however genuine you might be.

That all said, here are some different things I learned (or got refreshers for) from my flight.

• Keep in mind the extreme differences that can exist in different cultures. 
• We keep getting older until we die – we choose how gracefully and healthy we age.
• Sometimes you have to ask people to share their thoughts directly.
• People have expectations of you whether they tell you or not. (I haven’t decided if there is anything that should be done in light of this.) 
• You may have expectations of people whether you can concretely define them or not.
• Fitness matters.
• The experiences of individuals within the same culture can vary wildly and are worth exploring.
• Breadth (of experience) can be its own kind of depth.
• Your unique experience still shares a lot of similarities with others’.
• Passion – or intensity – is not enough. Teamwork, difficult as it can be, provides flexibility.
• A philosophy of consistency despite the variety in the human experience can simplify everything.
• Pause and ask questions – you have more time than you think.
• It’s not supposed to be easy, but awareness is the first step of many in the pursuit of continuous self-improvement.
• Dinners and drinks do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to networking…