In this post, I discuss the first category of the Airman’s Foundational Competencies.
I try to explain what they are and why anyone should care.
We’re approaching the end of the fiscal year.
Though the Air Force has also shifted officers to a standardized close-out date for our Officer Performance Reports that locks evaluations into specific months based upon rank, this end of year gate is still as good a time as any to evaluate ourselves and consider how to improve performance for the coming year…
While this content is sourced from Air Force-specific material, the following is valuable for anyone to consider, even from a strictly individualistic perspective.
Let’s get right to it.
There are currently a whopping 24 Airman’s Foundational Competencies.
Immediately, I’m thankful we can place those 24 competencies into 4 categories:
First is Developing Self.
Second is Developing Others.
Third is Developing Ideas.
Fourth is Developing Organizations.
This post will touch on the first category.
The explanations (What is it?) are directly from references.
The reasons I think you should care are my own thoughts, but I doubt they vary much from the intent of the material in the articles I reference.
The Developing Self category includes 9 competencies, presented in alphabetical order:
| Developing Self Competency |
| What Is It? |
| Why Should You Care? |
| Accountability |
| Demonstrating reliability and honesty; Taking responsibility for the actions and behaviors of self and team. |
| You want to improve your accountability to… … be better at following through with tasks to reach your goals. … inspire others to trust you, professionally and personally. … be taken seriously when presenting ideas. … encourage others to invest in you. |
| Communication |
| Effectively presents, promotes, and prioritizes various ideas and issues both verbally and non-verbally through active listening, clear messaging, and by tailoring information to the appropriate audience. |
| You want to improve your communication to… … listen and receive information better. … convey information more rapidly/ clearly. … convey information more clearly. … simplify a complicated message. … better persuade others. … learn more effectively. |
| Decision Making |
| Makes well informed, effective, and timely decisions that weigh situational constraints, risks, and benefits. |
| It feels obvious, but you want to improve your decision making to… … inspire trust from others. … be a better steward of resources. … save yourself, your team, or your partners’ time, effort, and suffering. |
| Flexibility |
| Adapts to and works with a variety of situations, individuals or groups effectively. |
| Improving your flexibility leads to… … smoother progress to a goal after encountering an obstacle. … broadening your pool of opportunities. … thriving during unstable circumstances. |
| Information Seeking |
| Demonstrates an underlying curiosity; Desires to know more about things, people, oneself, the mission or issues; An eager, aggressive learner. |
| Wouldn’t you like to know? I suppose if you’re still reading this, you would! Improving your information seeking most simply increases your capacity to problem solve. It also increases the chances of you clearly identifying, defining, and designing ways to solve a variety of problems. |
| Initiative |
| Does more than is required or expected to improve job results; Takes actions appropriately without prompting. |
| This competency combines accountability, decision making, and information seeking to… … pursue actions that increase efficiency for teams. … resolve problems as or before they arise. … reduce wasted time. |
| Perseverance |
| Displays grit in accomplishment of difficult long term goals. Works strenuously toward challenges; Maintains effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. |
| Improving perseverance boils down to the completion of difficult but important tasks. |
| Resilience |
| Negotiates, manages, and adapts to significant sources of stress or trauma |
| This one strikes me as sufficiently self-explanatory. |
| Self Control |
| Keeps emotions under control and restrains negative actions when under stress. |
| Improved self-control… … improves communication quality. … reduces impulsive behavior. … facilitates teamwork. … promotes calm in spite of stressful situations. |
Hopefully this isn’t the first time any airman has seen these; they’re what the Air Force has laid out as fundamental to becoming a better Airman.
For anyone outside of the Air Force audience, this introductory list includes excellent ideas to consider in anyone’s path to self-development.
While I intend to elaborate in future posts, I encourage anyone to examine any/ all of these competencies in depth for yourself. Simply reading about them will prompt additional thoughts, and I would charge you to think specifically about your own depth of knowledge, skill, and practice of each competency.
As you think about these qualities, consider where you might improve. Then, plan to and work toward actually improving!
References
72 Airman's Writings 