How did we lose this young Airman?

Shared risk and sacrifice means you are with your Soldier-Airman-Marine-Sailor and you know them - you care about them, being with them when its tough and sharing risk builds the team and creates an environment where the leadership really cares (and knows their people).

I appreciate that this senior officer shared this experience while pointing out his own faults as well - he brings up some great points, I shared the article with my 1SG's

There are indeed leaders out there who refuse to understand the humanity of their high performers. The AF spend billions on training and support of resiliency, yet they fail to teach/ emphasize to SOME senior leaders the value of human relations. To quote Collin Powell, " "Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."

Leadership is lonely, they say… not because you are lonely, you have to make other miserable and feel less valued. But I hope this article will bring some sense to the leaders how to maintain balance between resiliency and "mission/need of the AF"

Toxic leadership does not just mean those "bat crazy"chair throwers and screamers. I knew some senior leaders who couldn't become distracted from their pursuit of their own Ph.D.