Developing Airmen ethos

by Staff Sgt. Zachary Wolf
65th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

12/11/2014 - LAJES FIELD, Azores, Portugal -- Ethos is a Greek word meaning character. The Air Force has a strong interest instilling ethos into Airmen and helping them develop strong character.  One way Lajes hopes to accomplish this mission is through a new program and website that offers a variety of ethos-building classes.

"The Airmen Ethos Page is a one-stop shop for all professional development," said Master Sgt. Craig Preston, 65th Force Support Squadron career assistance advisor. "Not only does it include classes from the Lajes Professional Development team, but it also includes Airman and Family Readiness Center classes and resiliency training. However, it does not include mandatory training like the First Term Airmen Center, Airman Leadership School and Noncommissioned Officer Professional Enhancement Courses; only optional courses are included."

The idea for this "one-stop shop" came from Chief Master Sgt. David Klink, 65th Air Base Wing command chief.

"Coming from Air Mobility Command, they had something called 'Leadership Pathways,' which is a sharepoint-based system that they were using to consolidate professional development," Klink said. "So as soon as I got here, I realized we didn't have anything like that."

Klink linked up with Tech. Sgt. Lavaughn Hardy, 65th Communications Squadron section chief of knowledge operations, and his team and they created a website following Dover's template and made changes to fit Lajes' demographics and private organizations.

Not only does this provide a place for Airman to find professional development opportunities, but it also gives supervisors a source to direct their Airmen to.

"A lot of people try to build their record and their repertoire for Below-the-Zone," Klink said. "It's one of the most common questions for Airmen holding the rank of Airman 1st Class, ask their supervisors. This program gives them a meter. If there are two A1Cs and one of them attended 10 of these classes and the other attended one, then they themselves, peer to peer, can identify that they may need to do more of what the other Airman is doing."

As the Airman is responsible for their own career, this gives them another outlet to develop themselves and possibly fill out another bullet on their Enlisted Performance Report or their Officer Performance Report.

"One of the things that I noticed is people like the carrot in front of the cart, not everybody, but some people have that checklist mentality," Klink said. "When they look at professional development, they may say, 'I am going to get five courses this quarter' and that is their personal goal. I want a way to reward and reinforce that."

One way to reinforce that mentality is that after attending 10 and then 20 of these classes, Airmen are rewarded certificates from Wing leadership.

When someone thinks of professional development, they may think of things like resiliency or bullet writing; things that are Air Force specific. The idea behind this program was to develop Airmen and their character and that doesn't have to be strictly Air Force material.

"We are open to any topic," Preston said. "We aren't constrained only by the typical Air Force courses, although they are important and we will continue to offer them, but we are also looking for 'personal-skills' type classes. If you want to showcase your flight or section to the Airmen of the Wing we are looking for people willing to do that as well."

One of the features of this program is that it is request-driven. Airmen can log onto the sharepoint site and click the "wanted" button and email the Professional Development team to request what class they want to see taught.

"I believe that there is a class in there for everybody and most importantly, if there's not, they need to get on there and request it," Klink said referring to the Airmen Ethos site. "If they look through this month's list and there's not a single thing on there that doesn't bore them to tears, then they need to get on there and request what interests them."

People come into the Air Force with different backgrounds, some of them very different from their fellow Airmen. Whether these Airmen have skills from a previous job or a hobby, they can teach these skills to others through this Airmen Ethos program. Knowing this, there is probably someone at Lajes who has the knowledge to teach what an Airman wants to learn.