Summary: Operational Readiness Inspection

I’ve always found it interesting coming across people in my line of work who seem to have a problem with authority, considering that I am in the active duty military. Where all the people I serve with and I had to voluntarily take an oath of enlistment, before getting on a plane, bus, or train to go to basic training. This oath, in part, required me to state that I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me. Needless to say, but issues with authority don’t quite fit well into the military structure. Now that I have enough rank and years in the military to be someone’s supervisor, it’s important to me that I develop different ways to advise people on how to be successful in a new work situation. What comes to mind, is a situation that occurred in either the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005 during my squadron’s preparation for an Expeditionary Operational Readiness Inspection (EORI). My career field functional manager, SMSgt Johnnie Gibson, decided to
I was only two and a half years in the military, but I was far from having anything close to that type of responsibility placed on my shoulders. In the same instance, I also felt extremely appreciative that she would open up to me. Considering her leadership position in our squadron and all the dynamics that go into maintaining effective authority, she would have been well within her rights to reserve any need to vent in order to keep me focused on the all too important task at hand. But instead, and to my benefit, she decided to acknowledge me as a peer on some level. She gave me the gift of perspective and the understanding that there is always a micro and a macro point of view of looking at any given situation. I’m certain that I had been told this before, but I believe that I truly absorbed the concept completely after listening to SMSgt Gibson that