Lessons in Servant Leadership

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Well, welcome everybody. I haven’t done this sitting down yet, so this is a new experience for me. So we’ll see how this works with my little notebook going on here. So good afternoon, we’re here to talk about Lessons in Servant Leadership. That’s the name of the panel, and it’s the name of one of my new favorite books, which is still hot off the press. It’s called “Get Back Up: Lessons in Servant Leadership,” and it just so happens to have been authored by our guest today. This book is full of really good stories about servant leadership, and it’s not just about in the halls of the Pentagon. It’s about at home with your families. It’s about adventures on the road. It’s about in the battle space. It’s about relationships. But first, let me introduce these awesome authors. They probably don’t need an introduction, but to my left is Heather Wilson, the 24th Secretary of the Air Force. And to her left is General Dave Goldfein, who’s the 21st Chief of Staff of the Air Force. And they both served together and were a great team, so thank you both for being here. Heather and Dave worked closely together during their tenure, and a lot of the stories in this book are from that era, where they had their heads together to lead the Air Force and develop our Airmen. So we’re not gonna steal any of that thunder because we’re gonna dive right into these stories, and we’re gonna hope to learn a little bit more about their careers in servant leadership. But just to set the stage, something that’s emphasized repeatedly in “Get Back Up” is that servant leadership is entirely founded upon humility. And it’s that simple. In almost every story in here, as Heather and Dave tell of the lessons they learned, it demonstrates that servant leadership and effective leadership based on a foundation of humility is highly effective. They’ve done a great job defining that principle, and this book should be mandatory reading for commanders, chiefs, CEOs, managers, and every leader at every level. So with that, I’m gonna start. Let’s start with the big part, with a couple simple questions first. Why don’t you guys just describe how you decided to come up with the book and why you decided to write it, and what was the motivation behind that?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

Well, I thought Dave needed to get some of his great stories down in writing. And he hadn’t done that, and I said, okay, what if we do this together? And I think both of us have been focused a lot on leadership. And the irony is that Dave Goldfein and I raised our right hands and started at the United States Air Force Academy on the same day in the same class. And then our careers took very different directions, and we ended up serving together in our last assignment at the Pentagon together as Secretary in Chief. And so along the way, we learned different things, and our paths crossed. And so we would tell those stories, but really focused on junior leaders and what we learned along the way.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

And I’ll just add that we dedicated this to our nine grandchildren in the hopes that one day they may choose a path of servant leadership. And we are focused on young leaders, because every leader to the title gets knocked down at some point and has to show the world how to get back up. And so if we could share some of the stories that we learned both individually, some of the chapters are just on the individual paths that we, on our journeys, and some of the stories are what we learned together, working as Secretary in Chief. If we can pass that on to the next generation of leaders, we’ve hit the mark.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Fantastic. Here’s another interesting fact. So all the proceeds of this book are going directly back to support Airmen and Guardians and the Levin Kids organization. Now that’s a great example of servant leadership. So how did that conversation arise and why did you all decide to do that?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

Well, anybody who’s in the military or veterans can get the book for free from Air University Press. But we also wanted to make it more widely available. And like Dave said, we did this to write that dedicated to Front Page, to our grandchildren. But if there are any revenues from this other than for $1 down at Goodwill, we wanted that to go to something we care about. And so it goes to the ROTC scholarship program at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, so we wanted to make sure that we were advancing ROTC. And in the University of Texas at El Paso, one of the largest universities when it comes to engineering, science, technology. And one of the things I’ve noticed when I’ve had a chance to come visit you at the university is these are incredibly hard-working people, right? These students are really dedicated. And so if we can give back to the ROTC unit there, it’s all worth it. And the other organization that we’re given to is an organization that started by none other than Mary Ann Miller, who some of you remember from Air Mobility Command, first reserve officer to become a MAGCOM commander. And she started this program called Levin Kids, which builds after school learning centers in the absolute worst neighborhoods, starting in California, now my hometown of San Antonio. And so we’re trying to save the world one child at a time. And we’re going where they are as opposed to bringing them to us. And so if this book ends up being successful in terms of the press part, then every dollar goes to them. But like Heather said, it’s like my first book, Sharing Success, Owning Failure, 25 years ago. You can get it for free at the dollar store with every purchase. So we’ll see how it goes.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Dave, you just mentioned a little bit about why the title came. Do you have a specific story, and Heather, do you have a specific story you’d like to share about, hey, I kinda got knocked down, had to get back up, and that was one of the driving factors behind the title of the book?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

The title of the book is the title of one of the chapters, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted Dave to write this story down, cauze I’d heard him tell it. And I’d seen its impact on people. And we had a Chief of Staff at the United States Air Force who had one more takeoff than landing, and it’s the story of him being shot down. But it’s also the story of how he got back, and the Airmen who went to get him. And this is such a great country, that we don’t leave someone behind, and we take tremendous risks to go in and get somebody and bring them back to their family. And then, that decision as a commander, he wasn’t just a lieutenant, he was a commander, and he had to act in a way that would inspire confidence in everybody else in the triple nickel. And that was an important story of how to get back up.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, and now I’m speaking to one of my former instructors when I was growing up in the F-16, right? And one of the things that I think you taught me is that if you’re a self-respecting fighter pilot, you don’t brag about getting shot down. I brilliantly intercepted an enemy missile with my airplane. And I had people tell me afterwards, “We thought it was destruction of enemy air defenses, not depletion.” But what I learned from that experience is that there are moments in every one of our lives as leaders where we get knocked down, where there’s a setback. And the question becomes, do we see the opportunity that’s being handed us in that challenge, or do we just see it as a challenge? Do we see the hurdle, or do we see the finish line? Very often as leaders, we’re not graded by how high we fly. We’re graded by how high we bounce. Happy bouncing.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

So when you all were together at the Pentagon, you represent a pretty interesting concept behind our government, the civilian control over our military. And so as the Secretary and the Chief, you have to work through that principle and that dynamic on a daily basis. So can you talk about some of the lessons that you learned coming in, that you had to relearn maybe in terms of how I communicate, how we decide, how do we collaborate, how do we get our staffs together, and how do we ultimately come to the right answer for the Air Force?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

This was something that I didn’t really understand as well as I should have before I became Secretary. But in our government, under our Constitution, the Secretary has almost all of the authority. But the Chief has almost all of the influence. If you can figure out how to work together, you can get a heck of a lot done. And Dave became the Chief six months or so before I was nominated to be the Secretary. So he had already set out some goals, some of which I didn’t even, I still, it’s like join all domain command and control. Dave, I don’t know exactly what that is. But it was important to him. And I respected his experience, and if it was important to him, there was a reason. So figuring out how to integrate and weave together the goals we were gonna achieve together, and then both committing to those goals. We communicated seven or eight times a day, by text, by phone. There was never a major decision that I made without asking him what he thought. And we didn’t always agree. And on several important things, we started out in a different place than both of us ended up. Because steel sharpens steel. And we came out with a better solution than either of us came up with in the beginning. But that relationship over time was very effective. But it’s very different under our Constitution. And you think about this, we started as classmates. And I have to give the Chief real credit for this. And we talk a lot about our roles under the Constitution, and what was his lane and mine. And the entire time I was Secretary, even in private, he never called me by my first name. Never, because we had roles to play under our constitutional republic. And as soon as I walked out of the Pentagon and retired and went off to a west of the Pecos and back to higher education, I became Heather again. But we knew we had a role to play, and that he was role modeling that for every Airman in the service. And we both understood that. But it was an unusual relationship over time.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

You know, when General Welsh pulled me in and said, hey, looks like you’re gonna be the nominee for Chief. I put together a transition team led by then Brigadier General Grinkovich, and a small team. And one of the things I asked him to do was, hey, tell me what service secretary and chief teams have been the most effective at actually moving the ball. And if you know where the glass door is, right, we have paintings and pictures of all the secretaries and chief. And I walked down that hallway, and then I get a chance to call a few of them. And what I came to the conclusion was that these successful teams understood what Secretary Wilson was just talking about, right? Which is the decision authority resides with the civilian secretary. Influence very often resides with the chief. And neither position can actually move the ball by him or herself. And so it became the relationship that I spent the most time investing in. And I’ll never forget one of my favorite memories of our time together was when we went over the hill together for one of the first times together. And we’re going into, I forget if it was a congressman or senators, and they did the usual, good to see you, Chief. Look forward to this conversation, very formal, right? And then they looked next to me and there was Dr. Wilson, Secretary Wilson, and they said, Heather, it is so great to see you again. Do you remember when we worked on that bill when you were in the Intelligence Committee? Do you remember this, this, and this? It was a completely different conversation. And I remember thinking, man, this is gonna be great. Because as we work together on not only this relationship, but on moving the ball together, it’s those relationships that you build coming into the job very often that are as important as the relationships that you build while you’re in the job. And it is, for a secretary and a chief, the single most important relationship that you have to work on every single day if you’re gonna move the service.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

So do you have any more examples on how Heather’s background in Congress really helped you get something across the goal line over on the hill, or between the two of you as you worked together?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

There were a lot of them. But there were a couple of them where I understood changes in mission are often very, very difficult. And you have to work that through understanding what the homes, what people are seeing from their district. And the other one is, and Dave knows this from, so he was at Holloman as the commander when I was the congresswoman from New Mexico. And you’ve told this story, but I understood when I became secretary that I know all of you who are active duty, think you’re incredibly influential, you’re brilliant, you’re nice, I loved working with you. The Guard has more stroke than any of you. And I knew that. And Dave experienced it in New Mexico. I don’t know if you wanna tell that story, if you remember what I’m thinking.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

I remember I’m sitting in the governor’s office, Governor Richardson. And I’m sitting there and the commander of the taco guard was with me. And again, it was the good to meet you, general, look forward to working with you, very formal. And then he looks over at the commander of the taco guard and he goes, hey, man, I hope our wives aren’t out doing too much damage today shopping. And I remember thinking, wives are out shopping, wow, okay, that’s interesting. And then we’re talking about different things about Holloman and he looks over at again the taco guard commander and he goes, hey, what time’s your daughter coming over to babysit tonight? So here’s my takeaway. Between me and the commander of the taco guard, who was the full timer and who was the part timer in that relationship? I was the part timer, he was the full timer, and we had that in every state. And so it’s something that we both worked on, which is, God, if we can ever harness this relationship between the guard and the reserve and the active, and go out there and fight the same big battles, we’d be unstoppable. And by the way, among the other services, we’d be the envy of them, because we have something that quite frankly, they still don’t.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

I also, when I was nominated and going through and reading huge briefing binders and all that kind of stuff to try to get through confirmation without being a complete idiot. And I sat down with the head of the guard bureau and he looks at me, just really skeptically, and he said, what do you think about the guard? And I said, well, my husband’s in it, is there a problem? He goes, your husband’s in the guard? And I said, yeah, he’s in the Air Guard. And he’s like, okay, you understand then. I said, yes, sir.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

There you go, that’s awesome. Well, let me ask you another question, and this is a little bit different subject, but it talks about different services and that kind of thing. So you were both around when the stand up of the Space Force occurred. So now we’re gonna stand up a new service, it’s gonna come out of the Air Force. It’s gonna still fall in the Department of the Air Force. They pick Jay Raymond to be the first CSO. And so now, can you guys go through some of those challenges and some of those lessons and how we split apart the organization, how we manage that huge change, how we get it down to the lowest level. And all the work you had to do behind the scenes to support that and what you and Jay might have discussed in moving that forward.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Absolutely, I don’t know if Jay’s here.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

He was here this morning.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

So when we first started, and they asked us about a separate service, I had just come back from a Red Flag. And I remember watching then Colonel Deanna Burt walk on stage as the deployed Expeditionary Wing Commander. And all the blue forces reported to her as the Expeditionary Wing Commander. And her job, of course, at Red Flag was to build the plan that would be able to accomplish the objectives as given to them against this Red Force. And I remember just thinking how cool, this is exactly where we’ve come as an air and Space Force, right? We are joint, when I was the CFAC, every single mission of every component depended on space. And so when we started talking in the beginning about a separate service, I thought, and I even testified to say, hey, if you’re saying the word separate in space in the same sentence, maybe we’re headed the wrong direction. This is about cohesiveness, jointness, working together. Then I went down to Maxwell and sat down with the Schriever Scholars, right? Which is our major lieutenant colonels we send down there. And I’m telling them about why I’m really concerned about separating space in this joint fight that we’re in right now that’s so dependent on space. And I was watching the body language and I can tell they weren’t buying what I was selling. So I started doing what leaders ought to be doing, which is, there’s a reason God gave us two ears and only one mouth. And I started listening, and that’s why we call it squinting with my ears. And I went around the room and for two hours they talked to me about all the things that had been passed up that were opportunities to invest in space that weren’t happening, all the things that they were living as the next generation. And no doubt they’re here today as the current leaders of our Space Force. And so it came clear to me that I was looking through a lens, my own lens, on space operations, and I needed to get out and do a listening tour. And so I traveled to every Space Force base. I went to NASA, I went to SpaceX, ULA, all of them. And I came up with just a couple of questions. I said, number one, could we as a service embrace space superiority with the same passion that we historically embrace air superiority? And number two, could I as a service chief that was responsible for operations in all domains from 100 feet below the surface in a missile launch facility to the outer reaches of space and everything in between, could I advance space for the nation as fast as a service chief singularly focused on space? And I came to the conclusion on my own listening tour that given the advances, commercially given the advances in the space domain, we could do better. So I got on board and I told the president, the former president, now current president that, I said, okay, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is something I got behind it, but here’s what I’ll share with you all. So I have five grandchildren now. I used to show a picture of me holding my two oldest granddaughters, Ava and Ray. And I would show that in uniform and I’d say, now Ava and Ray don’t know it yet, but they’re a class of 2040 at the Air Force Academy. I will let them decide which one joins the Air Force and which one joins the Space Force. And on that day of their graduation in 2040, a test question will be asked. And it will be asked of the class of 2020. And the test question is, what did you build? Did you build two services that are fighting each other for resources, competing? Or did you build two services built on a foundation of trust and confidence and joint operations and the intrinsic value of what air and space power bring to this nation and our international teammates? Jury’s out. That test question is still there. But that’s why we focus so much on building these two services on this institution and foundation of trust and confidence. The last thing I’ll say on this is that Tom Friedman had a great quote, who’s a good friend of ours, and quoted in our book. He said, trust is the only single legal performance enhancing drug on the market. And that’s what we’ve got to build within our two services.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

So, yeah. So Heather, how about your thoughts on this? And now we’re gonna split apart space. I’m gonna have two service chiefs reporting to me. I’ve gotta balance that out.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

So when I was first confirmed, I was actually testifying on the Hill 24 hours after confirmation. So right into it, and it was on space. And I was asked about an independent Space Force. And I told the Senate at that time that I was more focused on capability than on organization of the org chart or bureaucracy. That didn’t sit really well with a couple of my former colleagues in the house who wanted to build a separate organization. But I also knew that I had limited political capital. And that I wanted to focus on getting the capability that we needed for the war fighters and not on trying to get a new org chart done. And at that time, there were only a couple of house members that were really interested in this. And I knew, I’d been a member of the house. I knew they had to advocate for some things, and it wasn’t entirely about military capability. And so I focused on building the capability. Probably by the summer of 2018, it was clear that the president thought this was a good idea. As a political appointee, you have to accept that there are sometimes things that are gonna be pulled above your level. I wasn’t elected. The president and the vice president were. And they have a heck of a lot more political capital than a secretary of a service. If they wanna make this happen, they have the ability to make it happen. And then our job is to try to implement and make sure that it gets done right. One of the things I was concerned about over time is not only the potential for separation, but also once the sizzle left the pan, this would be a very small service and concentrated in a few states. And would it continue to have the advocacy over time that would be needed to sustain it as the force that it needs to be?

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, Dave, you mentioned something in your last answer about squinting with your ears. You wanna talk about that term a little more? Go into a little more depth into what you mean by that?

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Well, I’d say it’s, I think, a leadership trait that is one that everyone needs to work on it, and some of us are better at it than others, right? And what it means is that when you’re out and about, the higher you go in an organization, the more you will find people trying to tell you what they think you want to hear, as opposed to ground truth, and I found that what was liquid gold for me was when I could get small groups, like sometimes two, three, four Airmen. But you had to have staying power, because if you just start out with, hey, how’s it going, right? You would get the, it’s going great, all right, which was code for, move along, chief, I got work to do here, right? So now you have to lean forward and look at them and go, no, really, I wanna know how you’re doing. So how about this, do you mind? Tell me your story. What brought you in? And I would listen to their story, and then somewhere in the story would always, at some point, get to, and I’m now part of this squadron. I’m part of the Bulldogs, or I’m part of the Jaguars, or I’m part of some carnivorous animal that’s my squadron mascot, right? And then I’d ask the second question, which was, well, tell me what it means to be a Bulldog. And that’s where I got some of the best feedback of how our Air Force was doing. Because of course, what I wanted to hear, what I longed to hear was, I’m part of something much bigger than myself. I truly feel valued. I feel like I’m part of the organization. The people actually listen to me. I feel respected. And I look forward to coming to work every day because I’m actually doing more together than I could ever accomplish by myself, right? You always wanna hear something like that. I didn’t always hear it. And very often as leaders, getting out and making sure that you get ground truth on what really is going on is so important. Very often I would ask questions about something I knew I had said and therefore made it into a directive of some kind. And I’d ask them to explain back to me in their own words, hey, can you explain to me why we’re doing this? And until I got to the point where I had young squadron commanders and young officers and Airmen being able to explain to me the why behind what we were trying to do, I would come back and come back to the team and say, hey, we got more work to do. We’re not communicating this message in a way that they’re hearing and they’re squinting with their ears because I’ve been out there squinting with my ears and we’re not connecting. That is an ongoing journey, I think, as a leader.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Do you have anything to add to that one, Heather? Okay, well, how about some lessons for the industry folks here? So when you think about what you learned in your tenure about not just leading acquisition and trying to find technical solutions to aerospace power challenges, but working with leaders in industry to make those solutions a reality. Heather, do you have any stories about working with industry along those lines?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

Well, certainly one of the things we try to do and is an ongoing challenge for the military is how do we buy things faster and smarter? How do we make it so program managers can manage their programs and spend less time managing the Pentagon? And I knew that whenever some decision came into the office of the secretary about some acquisition, that it took hundreds of hours of staff time to get there. And usually, I was adding time, but I wasn’t adding much value. So how could we push this down so that there isn’t as much second guessing? And program managers are well prepared and trained and executing on their programs. And so we changed some processes that way. We started pitch days, we started trying to make sure that small companies, I mean, let’s face it, the Pentagon is hard to work with as a customer. How can we go from, you go to the county fair and they have that sign that says you must be this tall to ride, right? How do we lower that so that smaller innovative companies can supply what the nation needs faster? And that means that the Pentagon and the Air Force had to change in the way in which we engage business and open that aperture some. So we tried a number of different techniques. That’s an ongoing challenge. It will be whenever an organization is this big.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

And I’ll just share with you that I sit here today as a proud husband, father, and grandfather of five for one reason. That is a combination of the work done, the attention to detail by industry and Airmen. So those of you who don’t know and have never had the experience of ejecting out of a high performance airplane, and you wanna know what that feels like. Well, all I can share with you is that I used to be 6 foot 3. This is all that’s left, right? But in a successful ejection, there’s about 1,000 unrelated miracles that have to happen in a span of seven seconds, right? Canopy’s gotta blow, rocket’s gotta fire, seat’s gotta extract, drug chute’s gotta come out, altimeter’s gotta work. I mean, you could go through it. It’s like 1,000 different things that happen to happen mechanically. And if any one of those goes wrong, the likelihood of an injury or something else bad happening is far more likely. I’m sitting here today because the folks that made that ejection seat, the Airmen who worked on that airplane, had such incredible attention to detail that it saved my life when my life depended on it. And I can’t tell you how many times I would walk out on a floor in an industry, and I would love to look in them in the eye and just share in that story and just say, thank you. Thank you for what you do every day. As technology gets more advanced, as we bring more AI into it, as we bring more capability that we can actually use to first deter and then win if possible, to the chief’s words this morning, we can never lose sight of that attention to detail that happens every single day on the floor of industry as they put that ACES-2 ejection seat together, and those Airmen on the flight line who tested and triple tested everything, that when that moment came, they were ready.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Let’s keep going down that road, and let’s just talk about some of, I know that you have some great stories about this whole experience. So after the miracles happen, the seat leaves the plane, you’re in your chute thinking, well, that didn’t go well, or whatever might have been running through your mind. You hit the ground and now you’re part of a different team. You’re part of a CSAR team. You’re the evader. There’s a team coming to get you. You’ve never met. You have however much we’ve studied and trained on that part of it. And so now, how do you blend together to be part of this team to make the whole thing effective? Can you talk, because I know you talk about that, and I think that might be an interesting thing to leadership on the fly in an area you never really thought you would ever be in.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Do you all remember that Garth Brooks song, Thank God for Unanswered Prayers? Right, so when you’re at the Air Force Academy, and you want to be part of the jump team, which was my goal in life, you got to have a 2.6 GPA to pull your own ripcord. If you’re struggling with a 2.0, you get to go to Fort Benning and jump with a static line with the United States Army. But here’s the deal. Here I am at Fort Benning, and what’s the fourth jump for everybody who’s ever been through Airborne? The fourth jump is a night, low altitude, full combat gear jump. When as soon as you hit the ground, you’ve got to gather all your gear and you’ve got to run to the buses to pass that jump. Here I am, at night, low altitude, full combat gear, and I got to sprint into a tree line. If I’d had a better GPA, I may not have been ready. I like to say I was part of the group that made the top half of the class possible.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

And I like to say that in our class, no one would have guessed that the class geek and the class clown would have become secretary and chief.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Okay, let me continue down this road. And so you’re captains back in the day, and this is a question for the captains and the tech sergeants that are out there. So back then when you knew all the answers to all the problems that the Air Force was having, and if only the chief would get his head out and do this, everything would be better. So were you ever in the positions you were in? Did you ever come up to that position and say, you know what? This problem is still around and I can actually fix it. Did you ever experience anything like that? And say, hey, chalk one up for the good guys?

Dr. Heather Wilson:

One of the things that I hated, and still do, is I hate meaningless Air Force instructions. And when I became nominated to become secretary, they don’t give you access to all the stuff. But you can go on the website and start looking, reading things, right? 1,400 Air Force instructions that are mandatory at the time I was nominated and became secretary. We had a mandatory Air Force instruction on how to build an obstacle course. My guess is at Offutt Air Force Base, if they need to build an obstacle course, they can figure it out. We had a mandatory instruction on it, it required a three-star commander approval to get more than day lockers at the gym at Air Force bases. This is stupid. And if we expect, in the future of conflict, that you all are going to have to get a mission accomplished with very little communication and innovate and go after the mission. We need to treat you that way in peacetime. And so one of the things that I started, at first I said, all right, how many Air Force instructions do we have? And the lawyers came in and said 1,400. And I said, well, how many of them are out of date? They said, well, roughly 40% or so. And I said, all right, why don’t we just start by eliminating the ones that are out of date? And I thought the lawyers were gonna choke. It’s like, no, we can’t possibly do that. And well, we’ve got letters of instruction that extend parts of them. So it’s even worse. You’ve gotta know there’s some extra letter of instruction that’s not even in the book. And so we set up a team to review every instruction, repeal the ones that we could, rewrite the other ones in plain English, and that an 18-year-old can understand, and move authority down to lower levels. And I’ll never forget one story. I was up in Alaska, Joint Base Elmendorf, and we did a town hall meeting. And this guy stands up and he says, Secretary Wilson, the regs say that we have to get approval from the two levels of command up in order to put a civilian on a military aircraft. And they did that probably because some congressman asked to put their friend on an airplane or something. But here’s the deal. The radars they were maintaining were maintained by civilian contractors. So every time they had a radar break, they had to get approval from two levels up, which was actually in Japan, to buy a three star to put a maintainer on the back of the airplane to fix the radar. And I said, do you know the number of that reg? And he says, yes, ma’am. And he gives me the number. And I had Colonel Tully, who was my military aide, come out. And I said, Colonel Tully, write this down. And he wrote it down. And I said, I will rescind that regulation before I leave this base tomorrow. The place went nuts. And then they had more. They said, well, what about– We got on the bus. And Tully, who’s wonderful, says to me, ma’am, I called the lawyers. They think they may not be able to get this all done by tomorrow. And I said, Colonel Tully, you can rewrite that regulation, or I can rewrite that regulation. But I’m going to rescind it by tomorrow. And I did. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own way.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Yeah. I love it.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

So I’ll share quickly where the focus on squadrons came from. Because it really came from two experiences. First, my experience as a squadron commander, leading a squadron into combat into Kosovo and Serbia from Aviano. And the level of decision authority I was given, the number of decisions that I was expected to make, the amount of risk I was supposed to take as a squadron commander was rather vast. And so that was the way I grew up. And so then I became, later on, the CFAC, responsible for all the deployed squadrons throughout the Middle East. And one of the unintended consequences that I found is I would go out and visit units and squint with my ears. Listening to them was that, at that time, like 15 years of combat operations where we enjoyed air supremacy. Quite frankly, we could fly any place we wanted to all over Afghanistan with very little risk. And we could deploy forces and build up forces and move forces. And it was not a contested environment in terms of the air domain. The contested environment was on the ground, which we were supporting. The unintended consequence of that was that we had also raised decision authority. And so when I was sitting down talking to squadron commanders, I realized and I heard that decision authority had been taken from them and moved up the chain because we were not in a contested environment, perhaps, like we were over Serbia. So now the question becomes, what do we do about it? And that was the focus that we took on squadrons, which was, how do we revitalize this heartbeat of the Air Force, where we’re going to succeed or fail and keep pushing decision authority down where it belonged? And that they knew that we had their trust, we had their confidence, and we had their back. And they were not required to ask permission. They were asked to ask for forgiveness later.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

It’s always important to be tackled from behind. Just go.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

Exactly. Exactly. So that was one of the things that was sort of an experience growing up that then, becoming chief and secretary, we were able to tackle together.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

OK, real quick, let me ask you the quick two-part question. Heather, what was your favorite story that Dave shared in the book? And Dave, what was your favorite story Heather shared? Heather, let’s start with you.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

Well, for me, the favorite chapter is “Get Back Up.” And it’s a story that I’ve heard Dave tell before. And I talked about it a little bit before. But I think young Airmen need to hear that story about what happened on a really bad day. And then what did a leader do, who was a servant leader, in reaction to a really bad day. I think it’s a story I’m glad– in fact, when we were talking about doing this, I told Dave, you need to write some of these stories down, you know? And he kind of looked at his shoes. And we decided, all right, if we do this together, will you write these stories down? And that story is one that I think is worth the read.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

So Heather tells a story called “Shovel the Snow.” And you’re going to love it when you read it. So I think you’re president of the South Dakota School of Mines for like– actually, you were still going through the– I mean, you’ve been there like a couple months. And it’s 70 degrees. And the students are out in South Dakota in T-shirts and shorts enjoying the sunny. And one of your meteorologists walks in and says, Madam President, I’m watching the indicators. And we’re going to get 40 feet of snow this weekend.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

40 inches, man.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

40 inches.

Dr. Heather Wilson:

It’s bad enough, but not that bad.

Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.):

4.0 GPA, 1.9 GPA. See? So he walks in and she says, you’re kidding me, right? And then she and her husband Jay go to the student union, pull out a couple of shovels, and just start shoveling the snow to make sure that there’s a way for the students to pass in and out of the student union. And one of the students comes out and goes, Madam President, what are you doing? She goes, oh, we’re just out here shoveling. He goes, well, do you need any help? He goes, yeah, I could use some help. So he goes off, finds a truckload of friends and some shovels, and they all get together. And the lesson there is that sometimes you just got to pick up the shovel and do what needs to be done. Sometimes you’ve got to communicate to those that were privileged to lead that there’s nothing that you would ask of them that you wouldn’t do for yourself. And that is my favorite story.

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Well, we’re about done. So I want to thank you both for sharing these stories with us. I really do appreciate both this time with you and the time I spent with you reading your stories. And I’m serious. It’s a really, really good book. Right now, Heather and Dave will be downstairs at the Prince George’s Exhibit Hall, Air University Book 511. And you can go down there and pick up your signed copy of Get Back Up and meet both of these two great leaders. And then later on this afternoon at 4:30, they’ll join us again at the AFA studio to record a live episode of our new podcast. And it’s “Building Better Leaders” is the title of the podcast. It’s brand new from our Doolittle Leadership Center. And I hope you guys get a chance to take advantage of listening to it. So Dave and Heather, thank you so much again for sharing your stories with us. Let’s give them a big round of applause.