Category: Military Lifehack

Everyone is here for a different reason. Remember that.  In training, in conversation, and in work don’t be fooled.  You are there for a different reason than your contemporaries.  Your leadership has designs on capitalizing upon time spent in uniform and your subordinates’ snappy responses are likely separated from the reality of their plans – or neither have plans at all. Don’t assume. Your greatest military asset is understanding the commodity of military membership and Managing Expectations. This is not to encourage abandonment of expectations, but achieve an active management of occurrences at in internal level.  Manage how you react…

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As a First Sergeant in the US Air Force I am asked to give advice on a near daily basis.   If I had to put a percentage on it, around 80% of the time, it is in reaction to some kind of event or problem. When Pred asked me to write an essay for Military Cheat Codes, I jumped at the opportunity as it gave me the chance to offer some proactive advice so that I could help enhance a career, and not just fix a problem. With that offer on the table, Pred asked me to write about……

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Impermanence.  I wish that someone had illustrated how important that word could be to me as I was leaving MEPS for the airplane headed to Navy boot camp at Great Lakes in the 1990s. Being an unapologetic extrovert, I’d generally not experienced bona-fide stage fright, but I certainly had a full-blown case of it on a warm Hawai’i February day in 2018: it would be my final moment in military leadership there – or ever – standing before my 202-Sailor Department conducting morning Quarters (Navy-speak for “morning formation”) before I would begin my retirement out-processing.  I knew the day was…

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