The Doolittle Leadership Center Is Building Better Leaders Worldwide

For Dr. Patrick Donley, “Building Better Leaders” is a mission that has taken him across the world. As director of the Doolittle Leadership Center (DLC), Donley has stood in front of classrooms from Germany to South Korea—and all across the United States, teaching leadership skills to seasoned professionals and those stepping into positions of authority for the first time. With demand for the workshops growing, he is building a global program around a single conviction: leaders deserve better preparation than most of them get.

In 2020, the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) established the Doolittle Leadership Center—named after aviation pioneer, World War II hero, and AFA founding president, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle—as a forum for collaboration between rising Air Force leaders, volunteers, and industry partners. In 2022, Donley joined the center as its first director following his retirement as a colonel after a 31-year Air Force career, during which he served as a Security Forces officer, a professor at the National War College, and a commander at the squadron, group, and ROTC detachment levels.

From the start, Donley championed a broader mission for the center: not just convening people, but bringing and teaching leadership skills directly to those who need them most.

“I didn’t feel like I had been adequately prepared coming up,” said Donley. “I mostly had to figure things out on my own. I find it disappointing that we don’t do a more effective job of equipping leaders with practical leadership guidance to be successful right from the start”—an experience he believes is far too common.

Lead Develop Care

In February 2023, the DLC hosted its first leadership workshop for cadets of Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (AFROTC) Detachment 890. Taught by Donley and guided by a framework called “Lead Develop Care,” the workshop became the first proof of concept—and success—for what the DLC could become.

The Lead Develop Care framework was developed by leadership expert Terry Cook and outlined in his book of the same name. Donley’s first exposure—which he describes as “exactly the kind of leadership tutorial that I’d been trying to develop throughout my whole career”—was at a table in a Panera Bread, where he and Cook struck up a conversation during Donley’s tenure as an Air Force ROTC detachment commander in Charlottesville, Va. During their conversation, Cook introduced Donley to the model and gave him a copy of his book.

“At first, I was skeptical, as experienced leaders often are,” Donley said. “I was thinking to myself, I already know how to lead well.” But halfway through the book, he changed his mind. Donley realized Cook had built a much-needed structure for using the tools leaders already have, but more effectively—instead of inventing a new set of leadership skills leaders would have to learn.

“Most of the time, when we’re confronted with a challenge, we rely on intuition, experience, or a grab bag of tools—we just keep throwing potential solutions at it until something sticks,” Donley said. “It’s a very reactive strategy, often based on hope.” He describes the Lead Develop Care methodology as giving leaders a way to break that cycle—a simple, systematic process for working down to the root cause before devising a solution.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Three years after the first workshop, the model and Donley’s leadership of the DLC have proved their worth.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Donley said. To date, more than 3,000 students, from general officer to staff sergeant, and CEOs to military spouses, have gone through a DLC-led workshop, with 79 percent rating the nine-hour workshop as “extremely helpful” and an additional 19 percent rating it as “helpful”—a combined satisfaction rate of 98 percent.

Students also report an average 63 percent growth in personal leadership skills after a single nine-hour course. And nearly 80 percent of clients ask the DLC to return for additional courses, with many doing so immediately after completion.

One student, comparing the DLC course to years of formal military education, put its success best: “Previous Professional Military Education, including Airman Leadership School, may have taught me the rules of chess, but this course gave me strategies to actually play the game.”

Leadership Across the Globe

Donley’s goal for the DLC is to take that success to as many students as possible—not only throughout the United States, but across the globe. While the DLC serves a wide range of organizations, its longest-standing partnerships have been with Air Force and Space Force units, which have driven much of its early success and helped turn it into a global program.

Over three years, the DLC has conducted six workshops at Osan and Kunsan Air Bases in South Korea, with other tours reaching Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam. Donley has also taught at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis for two years running, working with midshipmen on the verge of commissioning into the Navy and Marine Corps.

Germany also has been a regular destination for DLC courses, with Donley delivering sessions to two air wings at Ramstein Air Base. The next planned trip will bring those same leadership lessons to an international audience—NATO forces at Geilenkirchen Air Base—marking the first time the DLC will deliver the program to allied nation forces.

“The demand is really heating up, and word-of-mouth from one base to the next has been powerful,” Donley said. That momentum hasn’t been limited to the military.

In one instance, the CEO of a global logistics company attended a DLC workshop in his capacity as a Reservist and approached Donley afterward, recognizing the value it could bring to his company. What resulted from the conversation was a series of virtual workshops training the company’s employees, from the C-suite to the night shift overseas.

The DLC has also brought its workshops to a wide range of nonmilitary organizations—a Washington, D.C.-based project management firm, a nonprofit in Minnesota, military spouses at Joint Base Andrews, high school students, and even a quarry company.

Two Different Skill Sets

To Donley, the unifying idea is clear. “There is a myth out there that says a good technician is naturally a good leader of technicians,” he said. “That’s not true. They are two different skill sets, and both need investment.”

With requests coming in from across the country and the world, Donley is growing the center to meet the demand. The DLC is currently training and certifying instructors on the Lead, Develop, Care framework, deliberately recruiting from a diverse range of backgrounds—including business, academia, and the military—to better match the needs of different audiences. One instructor is already out in the field delivering workshops on his own.

Donley is also exploring expanding the workshops into a virtual format. Though not yet a standard offering, early trials have proven successful—virtual delivery allows the DLC to run multiple sessions in a day at a lower cost to participating organizations.

One recent milestone in the DLC’s growth is its Leader Development Workshops being listed on the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule, allowing government agencies, departments, and units to readily access the program without contracting hurdles.

Donley is also weighing a licensing model to train and certify in-house trainers at partner organizations, allowing them to deliver the Lead, Develop, Care framework internally. Under the model, an organization would pay the DLC to train and certify one of its own people, who would then teach the program internally, with the license renewable annually and transferable when that instructor moves to a new location. For commanders, it allows maximum flexibility in who they train, when, and in what numbers, at less cost than bringing out the DLC each time.

“It allows us to get the material out there, and it allows them to train very flexibly and manage their trainer to the degree they see fit. It’s really a win-win,” said Donley.

Not Just A Workshop

The DLC’s work in creating better leadership also extends past its workshops. Through its Senior Mentorship for Junior Leaders series, held twice annually at AFA’s major conferences, the DLC connects Air Force Academy and ROTC cadets, Civil Air Patrol, and Silver Wings students with high-ranking leadership from the Air Force and Space Force with open Q&A sessions. Past guests have included the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Chief of Space Operations, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, and the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force.

Donley also hosts the biweekly Building Better Leaders podcast, featuring candid conversations with influential leaders from diverse backgrounds—exploring their stories, how they got where they are, and most importantly, how they learned to lead. Many of the episodes are recorded on location, capturing conversations around the world as the DLC travels.

“I want people to think of the Doolittle Leadership Center as a place that builds better leaders across any strata,” he said. “Whether it’s professionals, private life, the college level, ROTC detachments, or even the high school level—I want it to be at the top of that list.”

The Doolittle Leadership Center is taking on new partners. With workshops available domestically and abroad, a growing instructor program, and a 98 percent satisfaction rate, the DLC delivers practical, real-world lessons that make leaders stronger and more prepared, and organizations more effective.

“This is a passion project for me,” Donley said. “Having a framework that allows you to employ your tools and experiences in a way that’s more practical and intentional — so that you can get to a better result — that’s where the real value is. And that’s why we do this.” To him, the framework works the same whether you’re leading a squadron in Korea or a logistics company in California.

To learn more about the Doolittle Leadership Center or book a workshop, visit afa.org/DLC. And for more from Donley and the leaders he meets along the way, catch the Building Better Leaders podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.