One of my three main focus areas while being your Air Boss is "Leading Every Day"; we're called to be competent, courageous, and committed leaders every day. Our Sailors depend on us to strive to be the best possible leaders we can, and to do that we can never stop our quest for self-improvement. One easy way to do that is through reading.
The CNO recently released his Professional Reading Program, a list of books for leaders to challenge them, or really us, to "grow and always question the status quo." I think this is an excellent selection of books and I challenge you to find one, two, or more on the list that you find interesting to dive into and grow as a leader.
As aviators, we are a unique breed of warfighters, with unique leadership challenges. As a complement to the CNO's list, these are a few books that I've personally enjoyed, and have personally enjoyed the leadership development they've provided me.
Leaders, happy reading.
Today’s best leaders know how to
lead up, a necessary strategy when a supervisor is micromanaging rather
than macrothinking, when a division president offers clear directives but
can’t see the future, or when investors demand instant gain but need long-term growth. Through vivid, compelling stories, Michael Useem reveals how upward leadership can transform incipient disaster into hard-won triumph. For example, U.S. Marine Corps General Peter Pace reconciled the conflicting priorities of six bosses by keeping them well informed and challenging their instructions when necessary. Useem
also explores what happens when those who should step forward fail to do so—Mount Everest mountaineers might have saved themselves from disaster.
Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership examines today’s leadership landscape and describes the change it demands of leaders. Dempsey and Brafman persuasively explain that today’s leaders are in competition for the trust and confidence of those they lead more than ever before. They assert that the nature of power is changing and should not be measured by degree of control alone. They offer principles for adaptation and bring them to life with examples from business, academia, government, and the military.
In When Hell Was in Session, Jeremiah Denton, the senior American officer to serve as a Vietnam POW, tells the amazing story of the almost eight years he survived as a POW in North Vietnam. In 1966, he appeared on a television interview from prison and blinked the word torture in Morse Code, confirming for the world that atrocities were taking place in the Hanoi Hilton. And while in prison, he acted as the senior officer and looked after the morale of his troops at great risk to himself. After his release in 1973, Denton was promoted to rear admiral and in 1980-won election to the United States Senate where he worked with President Reagan to fight communism in Latin America. This new and updated edition of this classic book provides new insights into Denton's years in the Senate where he was a key leader in promoting the Reagan Revolution.
While many books focus on developing managerial competencies, most leadership failures are the result of a failure in character, not a failure in competence. But, just like how you don’t get in shape by reading a fitness magazine, you don’t become a Leader of Character by reading a book on Character. You have to DO what you want to BE! Leaders of Character is a “workout plan” designed to develop six Habits of Character by providing small, daily exercises that strengthen your character muscles for the bigger character tests all leaders face.
Here is a unique book that emphasizes the attainment of military excellence through reading and field experience. Written to help men and women prepare for positions of command in the American Armed Forces, it is a product of the author’s years of discussions with military commanders about their roles as decision-makers, moral standard bearers, and energizers of military organizations. This book is designed to raise new challenges to conventional thinking about the art of military command.
These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. “Blindspot” is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases. Writing with simplicity and verve, Banaji and Greenwald question the extent to which our perceptions of social groups—without our awareness or conscious control—shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential.
This is the true story of Jim Stockdale, a navy fighter pilot shot down and taken prisoner during the Vietnam War; and his wife, Sybil, who, back home in California, carried on a valiant fight on behalf of her husband and all other POWs during the eight years of his imprisonment. Vice Admiral Stockdale entered the fray as a commander in 1964, when the American commitment totaled about 16,000 men, and left it in 1973, when the number was about the same. In between, however, our commitment had shot up to over thirty times that number. The truth about the Tonkin Gulf incidents--and how they precipitated our huge investment of treasure and blood--is a story Jim Stockdale has protected for twenty years, almost eight of them at great risk in a Communist prison.
VADM DeWolfe Miller is the Navy's 8th Air Boss. A native of York, Pennsylvania,
he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1981. He was designated as a Naval Aviator, flying both the A-7E Corsair and the F/A-18 Hornet. VADM Miller has commanded
the USS Nashville (LPD 13), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) and served as the Commander, Carrier Strike Group TWO, participating in combat Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Resolve. The former catcher for the USNA baseball team, he is
a huge Baltimore Orioles fan.
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