The Air Force has announced the creation of a new information operations technical training school the first command simply must arm our airmen to out-think out-perform out-partner out-innovate any potential adversary Air Force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality the first command the air force starts here hello and welcome to the Air Force Starts here podcast I'm your host for this professional development podcast Jennifer Gonzalez from the AETC public affairs team in this episode we're discussing an Air Force initiative known as force development the air force charged AETC with executing force development on its behalf aetc's directorate of operations and communications houses a portion of the force development mission and currently has five divisions dedicated to operationalizing the force development mission those divisions include policy integration planning analysis and resources credentialing competencies and the air force learning services ecosystem operations these divisions work to ensure the airmen we are developing today are prepared for the air force we need tomorrow like the work being done by the competencies division this division developed the airmen's foundational competencies which are a combination of knowledge skills and abilities that manifest in an observable and measurable patterns of behavior which the air force has identified as key in preparing airmen the airmen's foundational competencies are categorized into four major groups developing self developing others developing ideas and developing organizations today we are exploring the first foundational competency which is developing self developing self includes the following foundational competencies accountability perseverance communication decision making information seeking flexibility resiliency initiative and self-control i got the chance to speak with major general william spangenthal aetc's deputy commander and colonel mark coggins competency division chief about the importance of developing self take a listen thank you general spangenthal and colonel coggins for joining us i appreciate the invite thank you it's a delight to be here ms gonzalez before we get started why do you think aetc was selected to become dual hatted as the forced development command great question by having a force development commander you have a person who speaks authoritatively for airmen all the time and they can tie in all the work that's being done across the magicoms and across the the headquarters staff to really get the synergy and the synchronization that is necessary to develop the entire forest the amount of interaction we have with key partners doing strategy and policy up at the air staff in half a one and general kelly and his team mr federico and sapphimar and just the synergy that's resolved because now they have a force development execution arm right which is what magicoms do they go out and they execute the last tactical mile they're developing strategy and policy and we're going and making it happen because it takes a big enterprise to do these kinds of things so it is certainly a team effort aetc has a big role in that effort and that's primarily in execution so we work in partnership to advance force development for the entire air force now we know force development and these foundational competencies apply to all airmen across the air force but why is it important that the air force as a whole has foundational competencies including developing south this one might take a little bit to answer and and the way i would like to attack it is maybe go from big to small kind of strategy to task because i think by laying out you know where we want to be as a department of defense as a nation i think will then necessarily lead us to why we ended up at this developing self and the competencies are part of that so you know we've got a national security strategy defense strategy and military strategy that give us you know strategic guidance as as it should recently our chief general brown gave us accelerate change or lose along with some action orders action order a for airmen b for bureaucracy c for competition d for design as we dig into that airman piece there are lots of lines of effort and and us specifically in aetc we have a pretty big role but one of the the fine print items on that was that we need to understand the cross-functional attributes of airmen that will allow us to meet the national defense strategies and you know if you look at some examples of you know kind of our some future fighting concepts uh yeah i would use agile combat employment and the ability to train multi-capable airmen within that you start getting into what what is it that is going to make them successful i you know what i call them they're great power competition airmen you know at some point you've got to determine what are those competencies that will allow us to be successful because today we already have the greatest airman in the world and our nco corps is really the is no kidding the envy of the world but as we look forward to what's required and great in an era of great power competition you know there's a there's a level of agility and lethality our airmen have to understand what it means to be empowered how to empower others they're going to have to understand what mission type borders are and how to execute commander's intent and you go how do i do those things and that's where i think we get to our foundational competencies and specifically when you look at developing self you have things such as accountability decision making being information seeking showing initiative self-control being resilient understanding how to communicate you know flexibility perseverance these are all things that are gonna be required to be successful in great power competition and so to me you know kind of big to small that's why we have foundational competencies now i know exactly what everybody has to a certain level and as we work together because it's not just one matchcom or another it's not one cocom or another hey this is an all-in across the department in really a whole government approach we believe these foundational competencies and specifically you know we're talking about developing self today these are the things that all of our airmen need to be at varying levels they must have to be successful so colonel coggins i get from an air force perspective why these foundational competencies are are important but why as an airman would i electively select to get onto my vector and take these assessments and do these trainings i love the direction you you went with that question what's in it for me it's uh all about service before self but the better we are as individual selves the stronger we'll be in contributing to our war fighting teams because no matter what we might think no airman is an island unto himself or herself every airman has the ability to maximize his or her potential within their workplace but also within their life in general so one of the things that that was criticized whenever we first came out with this list of competencies was it wasn't really air forcey enough it didn't these are the kind of attributes that you'd want if you were hiring into a corporation outside the air force and we nodded our heads strongly and said yes airmen are exactly the kind of people that you want to hire in a corporation these great airmen are what make our service great the agile minded airmen the aggressive learning airmen the creative thinking innovative airmen who make a difference every day uh there is great benefit in improving the human beings that we are and that are in our care and that that greatness manifests on the job general spangenthal looking at your own career what are some of the developing self-competencies you displayed or didn't in my career i've you know i've just grown an incredible amount i mean i look back at you know kind of where i started as a second lieutenant in grand forks north dakota you know i learned a lot of lessons the i would say the hard way um communication right i i was happy being a one-way communicator right i wasn't a great listener and um you know towards let's say decision making i used to tell people all the time and i still do the maybe one of the most important traits if not the most important trait of a leader is making good decisions you could have all the other skill sets in the world but if you make poor decisions we're putting people at risk you know both from a personal standpoint or maybe a an enterprise foundational standpoint i mean we we've got to be methodical in some ways about making good decisions we got to understand if people also have the the right values and isn't part of making those decisions you know are they someone who who does understand accountability on both themselves and their people or are they somebody who just you know does the men required takes care of their task and moves on accountability is is really important to me but there is a level of accountability just kind of day-to-day that i think we all can improve on right now also i'll give you an example it's not my my shining moment in life as a young commander i failed to properly document one of my subordinates performance performances and i knew there was a risk there you know i failed at accountability i did not document his performance correctly and this individual then impacted i would say negatively lots of airmen was it fair to take care of an individual and then they negatively impacted you know 50 75 100 people absolutely not i've taken that and i've learned a lot and i've had to make a lot of tough choices um from you know through the rest of my squadron group and wing command and i've never let that one go it was an accountability failure on my part and i share it so that hopefully people won't make the same mistake and it was what's strange is i made lots and lots of good accountability decisions even when i was younger right you know i i i think you know for the most part you know we we get it right most of the time but it's the it's those instances where we don't that sometimes are the most visible right and could be the most impactful now about the foundational competencies are live on my vector what has been the response you've received from the air force colonel coggins well first i'll say i'm so excited that they're live in my vector my vector hey go there folks go there go to the left side of the page down at the bottom it says air force competencies click the link take the self-assessment be bold enough to take the 360 assessment follow the developmental plan that's that's a provided for you there this is fantastic stuff and i know it's fantastic not just because we built it we built it to be fantastic but we've had up up to or we're right at 20 000 airmen who have interacted with the foundational competencies in my vector and hundreds well i guess at this point we're now into the thousands have started development within their personalized developmental plan that they can get through my vector that number continues to increase as word gets out and truly the the my vector tool has been a real blessing to us being able to expose this great content to so many airmen so quickly within a program of record for the air force that's been fantastic for us and based on the numbers of people interacting with the the information we placed there it appears to have been a benefit to the airmen as well any final thoughts on the airman's foundational competencies or developing self-general spanthal so to me this is i mean they're all important developing self others ideas and the organization but this is one where um you know your individual drive can go a long ways right there's um you know you can you can dig into a bunch of these but you're also going to need some help i think it's i think it's really pretty smart how um colonel coggins and team kind of bundled these together they make a lot of sense if we don't become lifelong learners if we don't continue to improve ourselves i just think we're going to struggle right and i think it's that drive that we see in our airmen that helps make us the the best in the world it's an all-volunteer force our airmen want to be here they all come here for a variety of reasons and they really are outstanding at continuing to to push and develop themselves so to me you know any way that we can improve the ability for for them to help themselves uh and for us to help them in developing their individual skills and abilities improve you know behaviors in these areas you know it's a feel-good story right because i'm i'm helping them improve and at the same time i'm helping the entire team improve so i'm i love it i'm a big fan i'm excited to see where we go with all these in the future and um i really appreciate being able to talk about something that i really enjoy and love today thank you general spangenthal and colonel coggins for your time today for airmen who want information on the new competencies or to take a self-assessment they can log into my vector and select air force competencies from the main menu when airmen complete the self-assessment they can immediately review their results and receive a personal improvement plan if desired the my vector competency tool can also allow airmen to receive feedback from their supervisor as well as a 360 degree feedback from subordinate peers or higher ranking members thank you for the subscribe stream or download and as a reminder you can follow air education and training command and the aetc command team on social media we're on facebook twitter instagram youtube and linkedin you can also catch up on the latest news across the command on our website at aetc.af dot mil from the entire aetc public affairs team i'm jennifer gonzalez and talk to you next time on the air 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