LBL In Case You Missed it Edition

"Leadership isn't something any of us ever finishes learning."

SUMMARY

In this special Long Blue Leadership: In Case You Missed It edition, we return to eight conversations from 2026 and pull some of their most practical lessons: Slow down when pressure says rush, honor your word, separate the person from the performance, ask better questions, protect what matters, adapt to the moment, be the steady hand and notice when someone needs you to act.  

FEATURED SPEAKERS

00:02:00 - Mitch Torrel ’14: Slow Down to Lead Better
00:06:45 - Jessica Whitney ’10: Honor Your Word
00:11:15 - Joe Bledsoe ’11: Make Feedback Useful
00:15:40 - Jannell MacAulay ’98: Ask Better Questions
00:20:05 - Joel Neeb ’99: Protect What Matters
00:24:30 - Kim Ford ’90: Lead for the Moment
00:29:00 - Mark Michalek ’99: Be the Steady Hand
00:33:30 - Matthew Ayers ’99: Notice and Act

THREE LEADERSHIP TRUTHS

Truth One: Leadership begins with intention.

Slow down enough to think. Protect what matters. Honor your commitments. Don't allow the urgency, distraction or discomfort of the moment to make your decisions for you.

Truth Two: Leadership is deeply human.

Ask better questions. Give feedback that helps people grow. Adapt your approach. Create the trust and connection that allow people to bring their best.

Truth Three: Leadership is something we practice.

It's not reserved for extraordinary circumstances. It happens in everyday choices — in how we respond under pressure, how we listen, how we use our time and whether we notice when someone around us needs something we can give.

 

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 - Eight Leaders, Eight Lessons

00:02:00 - Mitch Torrel: Slow Down to Lead Better

00:06:45 - Jessica Whitney: Honor Your Word

00:11:15 - Joe Bledsoe: Make Feedback Useful

00:15:40 - Jannell MacAulay: Ask Better Questions

00:20:05 - Joel Neeb: Protect What Matters

00:24:30 - Kim Ford: Lead for the Moment

00:29:00 - Mark Michalek: Be the Steady Hand

00:33:30 - Matthew Ayers: Notice and Act

00:38:00 - Lessons to Carry Forward

 

CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LINE PODCAST NETWORK TEAM

Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor:  ted.robertson@usafa.org

Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org

 

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Ryan Hall | Director:  ryan.hall@usafa.org 

Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor:  bryan.grossman@usafa.org

Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer:  wyatt.hornsby@usafa.org

 

 

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

OUR SPEAKERS:

Ted Robertson, Narrator

 - Mitch Torrel ’14
 - Jessica Whitney ’10
 - Joe Bledsoe ’11
 - Jannell MacAulay ’98
 - Joel Neeb ’99
 - Kim Ford ’90
 - Mark Michalek ’99
 - Matthew Ayers ’99

 

Ted Robertson 0:03
Over the course of 2026, Long Blue Leadership and our host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkowicz, Class of ’99, have taken us into some extraordinary conversations with leaders whose experiences span military service, business, aviation, public service and community leadership. I’m Ted Robertson for the Long Blue Line Podcast Network. Long Blue Leadership starts now. For this edition, we’re doing something a little different. We’ve gone back through some of Naviere’s conversations, looking for the leadership lessons that are most meaningful, most approachable, and importantly, most useful. So think of this as Long Blue Leadership: In Case You Missed It. Eight leaders, eight lessons you can carry into your own leadership tomorrow. Let’s get started. We begin in one of the highest-pressure environments imaginable. In 2018, Mitch Torrel, Class of 2014, was part of the U.S. Special Tactics response to the rescue of a youth soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave system in Thailand. But Mitch’s lesson isn’t really about cave rescue. It’s about what happens when urgency starts driving the decisions. He learned that the leader’s job isn't always to act first or have every answer. Sometimes it’s to slow the situation down, bring the right people together and create enough space for the best idea, including the quietest one, to emerge. Here’s Mitch Torrel.

 

Mitch Torrell 1:46
I just happened to be in the right time at the right place. There was a team of air rescue men and combat controllers stationed out in Okinawa, Japan. There was a group of soccer players who got stranded in the cave after the monsoons came early and it flooded out a section. The Thai leadership and parks team, and then eventually the Thai Navy tried to attempt a rescue, and they weren’t able to action it. So they reached out to the U.S. Embassy and asked if we had anybody in in the region who could come help. And that just happened to be our team out in Okinawa. I think it was definitely a challenge. There wasn’t a lot of information when we left out the door. It was, hey, there’s 13 individuals stuck in a cave. We don’t know what the hurdles are. We don’t know what's been tried. We don't know anything. We don’t even know if they’re alive. And so, getting on the ground, it was a lot of information to take in. There’s a lot of people who are trying to help, trying to facilitate a rescue, working, you know, their own agendas, and I think coordinating and making sense of all that chaos was kind of the first task.


Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz 2:55
Like, how did you navigate that chaos?


Mitch Torrel 2:58
So I felt like I had the best job out of you know anybody there. I got to be the operations officer, and so I was kind of the troop commander for the team that we had out. And, you know, meanwhile, my leadership had to, you know, liaise with the other leaders. I got to be kind of down and in focused. All right, what plans are we working? How are we coordinating and liaising with our Thai counterparts? And got to be a little bit more down and in, and so I really enjoyed that part, and that was kind of why I got into special operations in general, is I wanted to be, you know, working with a team of really, really high-functioning individuals on very hard problems.

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 3:37
Right, and this was one of the first kind of very hard problems that you were working on.

Mitch Torrel  3:42
It was. So this was my first operational mission, you know, coming out of the pipeline. I got stationed in Okinawa, and this was kind of the first opportunity to showcase what I’d learned and employ. And it was kind of, you know— everybody’s dream is to go through training and then get to action some of those skills and traits that they’ve developed.

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 4:01
Right. Well, I imagine it was quite busy, you know, around the clock because you know time wasn’t on their side, and so you were really working against the clock. But I’m curious how you, you know, how do you navigate with urgency as a leader, but still safely? You know, like, how do you manage that, looking at that?

Mitch Torrel 4:19
Sometimes you got to know when to kind of pull the reins, and that it’s very easy— it was a very urgent situation, right? There’s 13 kids trapped. They don’t have food or water. We don’t know if they’re alive. The cave is continually flooding more and more every hour. But you got to have a plan to go off of. You got to be able to not rush into an emergency and make things worse. And I think off the start, nobody was monitoring who came and went from the cave, and that generated issues. John and Rick, the U.K. and British divers, stumbled on, you know, two would-be rescuers who got subsequently stranded in another section of the cave, and they were able to get them out. And then— and so we realized that taking a step back, generating a plan... When we arrived, there was a key leaders contingent that went into the cave to kind of get information first and foremost. And then we spent the rest of the team. “All right, download the gear, stage everything, prep everything, go get some rest, and then we’re going to generate and come up with a plan in the morning.” But sometimes you got to realize that you can’t move a mountain overnight, and so you need to take time, you know, do a little five-minute huddle and make sure that you have a plan that’s not going to get you further into trouble.


Col. Naviere Walkewicz 5:37
Yes, well, it’s such an important role, and I’m thinking about you know those moments where you were like, get some rest as the leader in this, and you know, kind of organizing this. What are the thoughts going through some of your, in your head? And I ask that because I'm thinking about leaders who are experiencing something difficult for the first time, and maybe there is some doubt or, you know, how do you calm yourself through some of those questions you have?

Mitch Torrel 5:59
I think for new leaders, especially, it’s you don’t have to have all the answers yourself, and that that is first and foremost. I on team and probably one of the most junior guys. Yes, I am in charge as the officer, but the guys who are working with me have been in the Air Force, have done rescue missions, have been doing the job for 15, 18, you know, upwards of 20 years, and so I think understanding that no matter where you’re at in a team, you’re a part of a team for a reason, and you should be able to leverage input, leverage ideas and you shouldn’t be beholden to coming up with everything on yourself. I think delegation is super important. I think getting input and opinions from others is extremely important because sometimes the quietest guy in the room is going to have the best idea, and you need to enable and empower them to speak out. Put them on the spot. You know, “Hey, what do you think? What do you— how do you think we should approach this?” And then your job as a leader is to take all these good ideas, is to empower the team to do its best. And so your job isn’t to carry the water, come up with a plan and do everything on your own. Like, you’re there as a facilitator, and I think that that is the biggest takeaway. I think especially young cadets: Please, please, please leverage, you know, the experience that you’re going to go out and be on a team with.

 

Ted Robertson 7:21
Mitch reminds us that urgency and leadership are not the same thing, but slowing down doesn’t mean avoiding difficult decisions either. Sometimes the most important leadership moment comes when you already know something isn’t going according to plan, and you have to decide what to do about it. Jessica Whitney, Class of 2010, offers an exceptionally practical way to think about that moment. Most of us understand integrity as doing what we said we’d do. Jessica challenges us to take that one step further. She distinguishes between keeping your word and honoring your word. Honoring it means speaking up the moment you realize you may not be able to deliver, resetting expectations, taking responsibility, and having the uncomfortable conversation before silence begins to damage trust. Here’s Jessica Whitney.

Jessica Whitney 8:20
I took an amazing class at the Academy, a leadership class that a friend of mine, again from the lacrosse team, recommended me, and she’s like, “Jess, this class — it’s called Transformational Leadership. It’s way more than that. I really think you need to take this course.” And she was so right because there are so many things that I carry over from that from that course into my leadership, and then just my everyday life, and it was taught by Capt. Carrie Granger, who's now Carrie Zeller. Kind of the main takeaways I had were, one, kind of heard the definition of integrity. We all know the Air Force's definition of, like, doing what you know the right thing when no one's watching, when nobody's looking, but she kind of defined it more as both keeping your word and honoring your word so we all know that keeping your word that’s easy but what does honoring your word mean? And her framework kind of laid out honoring your word is as soon as you realize you're not going to keep your word, notifying the person that it involves, saying when you are going to keep your word, and then cleaning up any mess that you made by not doing it. So a quick example would be, you know, you're running late to a doctor’s appointment. You get in the car, you realize, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be seven minutes late to the appointment.” Instead of like white knuckling your you know your steering wheel — “Am I going to make it in time?” And you feel guilty when you get there. You immediately call the office. You tell them, “Hey, I’m going to be late to the appointment. I’m going to get there seven minutes late, and you know I realize that this has an impact on you. Like, let me know if I need to reschedule.” Whatever it is, right? Most people are so shocked by this ownership that they are so much more gracious to you in whatever the circumstances are. And on top of that, you're not stressed. You’re not, you know, white knuckling.

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 10:22
When it really takes you nine minutes to get there…

 

Jessica Whitney 10:27
Exactly. So hopefully you overestimate…

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 10:28
Like seven minutes and 40. You’re like, “Mmmm, I’m gonna round down.”

Jessica Whitney 10:32
My husband calls that, like, Jess math. I’m like, “Ah, well, that’s fine, it’s fine.” But like, if you think about in the workplace, right? Like you have an assignment, you have something your boss gave you. It’s due Friday. You realize Monday, “OK, there’s no way I’m going to do this.” I can either stress about it, work super late hours, and, you know, like, cause all this extra stress, and then maybe still not accomplish and get the work done, and then show up to my boss on Friday and say, “OK, sorry boss, I couldn’t get it done.” Or on Monday, you bring up the conversation, you swallow your pride and you say, these are my challenges. You manage expectations, and your— you guys together can you know either reassign, get help, or bump the deadline, whatever it is. But now you're no longer living in this, like, fear of, like, I’m going to be late or whatever. Like, you’re able to perform better, and so they in the class they talked about how with integrity everything works, and they talk about the idea of, like, a bicycle wheel, right? There’s spokes on a bicycle wheel, and if all the spokes are intact, it’s gonna run very smoothly, right? That’s keeping your word and honoring your word. You’re performing really well, or when you’re not honoring those spokes, and you're not keeping your word, or you're not honoring your word, some of those spokes are missing. So it’s just going to be a little bit bumpier, and things are going to get done, but they’re not going to get done as well as they would if you were honoring your word.


Ted Robertson 11:58
Jessica's lesson gives us a useful way to think about accountability, and once an organization has that kind of trust, it becomes possible to have another conversation leaders sometimes avoid: honest feedback. Joe “Paveway” Bledsoe, Class of 2011, comes at feedback through the fighter pilot debrief, and the principle translates remarkably well beyond the cockpit. Joe says effective feedback isn’t about assigning blame; it’s about getting better. The debrief begins with the mission, identifies what happened and why, and ends with a clear path toward improvement. The person isn’t the problem to be solved; the performance is what gets examined? That’s a subtle distinction and a powerful one for anyone who leads coaches or develops other people. Here’s Joe Bledsoe.


Lt. Col. Joe Bledsoe 12:52
I think the first thing is transparency and honesty right up front. Like this, Naviere, if we were flying together, right, and you were my instructor, your job is not to degrade me as a human, but to prove to me that I made a mistake, with the ultimate goal of making me better, right? Your job is to always like— and the relationship you and I have as an instructor and a student is my. I’m going to sit here in the debrief and go, and Naviere is here to make me better, right? Like that’s your that’s your job, right? So once you start that as the foundation, like it can only get better if I know your job is to make me better, and your job is I'm supposed to make this guy better, right? And often we can, when feedback is provided, you’re like, this could be a personal attack, or like that's all left out, that’s all left outside the debrief room, right? Like we’re here to make everybody better, and I think that’s where it starts with that transparency and honesty up front of the expectation.

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 13:51
So you will actually say that?

 

Lt. Col. Joe Bledsoe 13:52
No. I think that’s just a common that's a common theme, right? That's the expectation in the community, and not just in the fighter community. I think it’s throughout the Air Force, right? I think that's what makes us really, really unique.

Lt. Col. Joe Bledsoe 12:52
Because feedback is something that we do, although maybe some can do it better than others. I think that's a really fantastic way. Before you’re giving someone feedback, you're really clear on this is what we're hoping to accomplish by having this time together. And so I think what you just said can make feedback so much more impactful because it's not about the person; it's about what are we trying to accomplish in helping you. I guess it is about you but ultimately helping you.

Col. Joe Bledsoe 14:34
Absolutely, right? Like where every debrief starts is we had a mission objective and we had tactical objectives. Do we do we do them? If we didn’t, let’s figure out why, right? So, translating to the business world or you know private sector, it’s a root cause analysis. It’s a root cause analysis, and we will get down to the nitty gritty of like, what type of error. Did you make a decision error? Did you perceive the environment wrong? Did your actions cause the error, right? And we get down to that level so that when the student, student Paveway walks away, Naviere knows— Naviere, you gave me the exact… “Like, you decided wrong because X, Y, and Z. Don’t do that again. Here’s your fix.” You know that, and that debrief can take hours, and that’s the beauty of it, right? We’re going to sit there, and we’re not going to let anything not be uncovered because we’re going to go do this again tomorrow, and we can't make the same mistake tomorrow, right? We can’t make the same mistake.


Col. Naviere Walkewicz 15:36
No, that’s fantastic. I mean, to have that clear and to know, like, “OK, we’re not going to, we don’t stay in that space. We’ve addressed it. We've we know we’ve identified a fix, and we move forward.” Is that what you would say?

 

Col. Joe Bledsoe 15:47
Absolutely.

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 15:48
There’s no like continue to revisit. Like—

 

Col. Joe Bledsoe 15:49
Yep, That’s the point, right? Like, I’ve learned something. I’ve acknowledged my mistake. Let’s move on. This wasn’t personal; this was you making me better. Iron sharpens iron.

Ted Robertson 15:59
Joe gives us a framework for conversations that improve performance, but leadership conversations aren't always about correcting something. Sometimes their greatest value is simply letting another person know, "I see you.” Jannell MacAulay, Class of 1998, gives us one of the simplest tools in this entire episode. It’s a question. Jannell suggests replacing the automatic question, "how are you?” with something more intentional. “What’s going well for you today?” The difference may seem small, but the answer can open a real conversation, create connection and even uncover someone who is struggling quietly. Leadership doesn’t always require a speech. Sometimes it begins by asking a better question and listening very closely to the answer. Here’s Jannell MacAulay.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jannell MacAulay 16:57
Stop asking people how are you doing, OK? I want them to rephrase that question and ask,
“What’s going well for you today?” And the reason we do that is for— there’s two reasons. The first one is when you ask someone how they’re doing, you're going to get— exactly. And most people are just going to give you like, “Busy.” “Good.” “Fine.” “Living the dream.” Whatever, right? But did I as a leader get any information from you when you say any of those in response? No. And then what we do as a leader: “How are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing?” And then we check the box. And if you happen to have someone who's like, “Oh my gosh, let me tell you,” you're almost like, “Oh my God, good for you. I gotta go. I gotta go,” right? “I didn’t mean for you to tell me.” Because that's our culture again, right? So I want leaders to start asking people, “What’s going well for you?” And that does two things. Now I’m going to get information from you based on your answer, and that information is also going to start training your mind and your psychological framework toward optimism and hope. Because do you know the biggest problem for leaders today, I think, is missing the hopeless people. We think that there’s this binary of optimism and pessimism, and so the optimistic people — we can find them easy. And the pessimistic people — we can find them easy too, right? They’re usually— and we usually focus on the pessimism because they're noisy and they’re loud and they're annoying and they’re bothering us and they’re bothering the whole unit, right? And sometimes we’re like, “Oh my gosh, Bob is so negative and angry. Like, we should worry about Bob.” But the thing is, is that actually, Bob’s not your worry, because people who are pessimistic understand they’re on a sliding scale. A pessimist thinks that there’s a genuine belief that things could get worse, but if you believe things can get worse, you know they can also get better, which is what optimism is: a genuine belief things will get better. So a pessimist— it’s not binary. I want people, leaders, to open up the aperture. There’s optimism, there’s pessimism, and then there’s hopelessness and hope. That’s the second thing. And then the last thing is leaders suffer from what I call compassion fatigue. OK, it's a very real thing. How many of us spend all day at work? It's kind of a combination of decision fatigue and compassion fatigue. You spend all day at work making decisions for other people. You make you spend all day at work taking other people's problems, and if you're an empathetic person, like you take it on, right? You're like, “Oh my God, I feel so bad. Like airmen are struggling with all these things.” Then you go home, and someone at home says, “What’s for dinner?” And you flip out about what's for dinner, right? And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, where did that come from? Like, I didn’t mean to snap.” Or someone in your— that's very important to you in your home life comes to you and needs you, needs your attention, and you're like, “I have no more attention to give you. I have no more compassion to offer because I’m done. I'm empty.” So it’s a very real thing, and it’s not an excuse. I might have given people a label for what’s happening when they go home at night.

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 19:49
Like, it’s this thing. I have compassion fatigue.

Col. Jannell MacAulay 19:52
Yes, which is very true, and it's a very real thing. And I’m not giving you an excuse; I’m telling you, you need to fix it. And here's how: You need to every time— like, the whole time you’re at work during the day, you need to shed all the mental distress that happens. You need to shed the empathy, right? Your empathetic— the empathy that you use when you’re in an interaction with someone builds like extra stress into your—  it’s actually in your like body, right?

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:20
You take it on.

 

Col. Jannell MacAulay 20:21
Exactly. You take on those physical— and it becomes a physical manifestation. You need to shed that. So what I have is called a waterfall technique.

 

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:30
Waterfall?

 

Col. Jannell MacAulay 20:31
Yes. So when you’re, yeah, yep. So when you're engaging with people, remember we don't want to be distracted and not paying attention. So put your phone away once you invite someone in your office. Like don’t have it. It distracts you by 20% if you have it on your body or in your view, right? Just have it put away. So now you’re more attentive. Then I’m going to listen to you when you tell me whatever’s going on in your life, and I’m going to envision we're at the top of a waterfall. Visualization is very powerful for our minds, so we’re going to visualize that waterfall. And I’m talking to you. We're having a conversation. I'm fully present. You might have some stuff going on in your life. Like I might have to take a note. I might have to be OK. Follow up. I might give you some mentorship. But when we’re done, your problems go down the waterfall, right? Like we want to feel “Oh, I’m their commander.” No, it’s still not your problem, right? The problem goes down the waterfall. So then the next person can come in. Now you’re at the top of the waterfall again. I’m fully present with my next person that’s coming in. I’m paying attention to them, not thinking about the other conversation. Then, when we’re done, your problems get to go down the waterfall. It will protect, right, your energy.


Ted Robertson 21:33
Jannell's lesson asks leaders to be more intentional with their attention, and that raises another question: Where are we choosing to put that attention in the first place. Joel “Thor” Neeb, Class of 1999, argues that as leaders grow, one of the hardest skills they may need to develop is not saying yes; it’s saying no. Joel describes an evolution many leaders experience early in a career. Saying yes can create opportunities, but later effectiveness increasingly depends on deciding what not to do. His warning is worth remembering: The enemy may not be failure; it may be distraction. If everything gets your attention, the things that matter most never receive enough of it. Here's Joel Neeb.

Joel Neeb 22:25
My philosophy and how I mentor people that are that are pursuing a path to their dreams and whatever that dream might look like is the following: I tell them, “If you’re younger than 35 years old, you need to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way.” What do I mean by that? When the boss asks you if you’re able to give the big sales presentation, even though the voice in the back of your head says, “You’re not ready for this, I don’t think you’re going to do well,” the answer is yes. You prepare yourself. You go out there. You embarrass yourself. You do it better next time, and that’s how you learn through that process. When they ask you if you’re ready to go lead this mission, your answer is yes. You’re going to figure it out. You’re going to do everything behind the scenes to make sure that you’re successful, and you’re going to push yourself into that discomfort zone and ensure that you’re leaning into all of those opportunities as aggressively as you can. Why? Because it’s exposure to all of those areas of discomfort that really owns the discipline for us to perform in this positive way when you get to those areas. Now, when you’re after 35 years old, the main advice that I give to people is that you’re flipping the script. You are no longer going to say yes to everything you’re asked. You’re going to aggressively say no to everything you’re asked unless it aligns to your key things that you want to pursue. So you’re completely looking at it in a different direction. I’ve said yes to everything for the first half of my life. Now I’m saying no to everything in the second half. Why? Because it’s the distractions that stop us from doing the big things in life once you pass about 35 years old. The better you are at saying no to things, the freer your time will be to say yes to the most important things. So while it looks like I’m juggling a lot of things, to your point, I’m aggressively saying no to everything else that doesn’t align with the few things that I have really focused my time on.

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 24:14
So let’s pull that thread a little bit more because saying no is uncomfortable, and it may feel to some that they are letting others down. How do you— how might you coach them through telling someone no?

Joel Neeb 24:31
Yeah, I would say that I don’t have that problem. I probably did, and certainly prior to cancer, I would have. I am at the place now after I’ve learned how short all of our lives are — not just my life, because I had a cancer battle. And the big surprise for me was not that I might die in 18 months; it was that I was going to die at all. Because for all of us, that notion of death is so far away, and really something that we don’t really come face to face with very often in life, that all of a sudden I had to, you know, accept the fact that I was going to die someday, and I better make good use of the time between now and then. So when people ask to have my time, I aggressively say no. I never feel bad about it, and then I also introduce gatekeepers to my time on top of that. So I don’t even— most of the time, you’re working with my executive assistant. Most of the time, you’re going to be working with somebody on my team, and that’s because I want to jealously guard my time at this stage so I can be as incredibly impactful on the few things that I want to do as possible. That desire dwarfs any emotional attachment I would have to say no to somebody else in that time. Really, just, I mean, it doesn’t even cross my mind to think twice about it.

Ted Robertson 25:48
Joel gives us permission to protect our priorities, but priorities shouldn’t make us rigid. Leadership still requires us to read the room, understand the mission and recognize what the people around us need. Kimberly Ford, Class of 1990, learned throughout her aviation career that effective leadership doesn’t always look the same. Kim describes leadership as something we adjust. There are moments that require assertiveness; others demand listening, patience or a different communication style altogether. The lesson isn’t to abandon who you are as a leader; it’s to develop enough range that your preferred style doesn’t become more important than the people and mission you’re there to serve. Here’s Kimberly Ford.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Kimberly Ford 26:42
In the military mission, it was more— it was usually time critical, and it called for often a very assertive type of quiet leadership. So you're still bringing that assertive type of quiet leadership, but you’re also bringing customer service to families and passengers who are getting to where they need to go, whether it be a vacation or to visit family, or, you know, taking a businessperson where they need to go. So you’re having that patience, letting people know that they’re welcome, that you're happy to see them on board. You’re working with crew members who may not have that sort of military background, and so there are different communication styles. Different, you know, there are different people, and so you’re really sort of reading who they are and making sure that you can communicate information in a way that is effective for them as a person and their age and experience level. So I think I had to just sort of maybe dial it back a little bit in my presentation, make sure I just gave that great customer service. I would say in the cockpit it is that same — in the flight deck, I’m sorry — you're giving that same pre-resource management, that same building, that same trust within the person who you know, letting them know that you know your job, and that you’re ready to execute. So I would say it’s probably more the same within the flight deck.


Col. Naviere Walkewicz 28:09
I would almost go so far as to say is the ability to understand when you need to assert more, and when maybe a more quiet and customer service-oriented leadership style needs to be used. You almost have a superpower of understanding when to employ them. How do you help others who maybe have the other side of the leadership spectrum, where they come in very a very assertive-type leader? How do you help them see the value in your approach that is natural to you?


Col. Kimberly Ford 28:38
We have a moment at the end of our flights at Alaska Airlines where we sort of we sit back and we basically say, “How do we think that went?” You know, “What could we change?” And so I'm able to sort of give my perspective and maybe how I might have done things or perhaps sometimes the we'll divide duties and the captain will say, “OK I see here maybe you would be great at doing this duty. Could you take this over?” And so I think that's how I can show that maybe a different style of leadership would be would be more effective in those certain situations. And we're trained to really listen and just take in the feedback that's coming towards us. And I would say all of the crew members are very good at listening, adjusting and taking in what's offered to them.


Ted Robertson 29:23
What we’ve learned from Kim is that knowing how to adapt is valuable when circumstances are changing. It’s even more important when they’re changing faster than you can comfortably process them. Mark Michalek, Class of 1999, experienced that kind of leadership test during the Boulder, Colorado, attack in 2025. His lesson is strikingly simple: Be the steady hand. When information is arriving in real time, the stakes are high and pressure is coming from every direction, a leader can easily become part of the chaos. But Mark offers us another approach: Trust the people around you, create clarity, stay steady. Leadership in those moments isn't about personally doing everything; it’s about giving others enough confidence and direction to do what they're prepared to do. Here’s Mark Michalek.


Mark Michalek 30:21
Boulder attack happened on June 1, on a Sunday, and so many things happen at one time. You know, our society has changed, where you know it's a 24/7 news cycle, and so this is happening, unfolding in front of you in in real time. And there’s so many things you’re responsible for as the leader. I think when it comes to times of crisis, people want stability. They want reassurances. They want a steady hand to land the plane, and that’s what my focus was on. That although I have the same emotions, anxiety, stress that is happening, we need to be the steady hand to land the plane. Being the leader in that situation, you are getting torn in multiple directions. So you have your employees responding to the scene. You have local law enforcement. You have elected leaders here in Colorado that want to know what’s happening. You have elected leaders in D.C. that want to know what what's happening. To the point where my, like, my phone broke. So many phone calls at once. Like it just— it was fried. And so again, like focusing on, I’ve got to be the steady drumbeat. I’ve got to be measured here to telegraph that we’ve got this, but also a trust and confidence that your people do have it, and to get out of the way. They’re the experts. I’ll block and tackle for them and let them run, and I telegraphed that in our culture and let them run, and they did phenomenal. And I focused on what my responsibility was on, was not on being at the scene and seeing what’s going on in that. It was engaging with executive leaders to be able to understand what we have, what resources we need and to be able to deliver. Now, at that time, given the context of what was happening overseas, we knew this would be an international— of international interest immediately. So it could either go very well and controlled, or it could be absolutely horrible. And so that’s another layer of pressure. And when you go back to the fundamentals at the Air Force Academy of when it matters most, that you buckle your chinstrap on the helmet and you just get to it, and you immediately go into that mode and distance your emotions and thoughts and anxieties and put those to the side and focus on the mission at hand, and we knew when we were giving statements in the press that it would be carried internationally. So a different layer of stress as a leader, you know, we had simultaneous operations. We had the scene. The subject had a makeshift flamethrower and threw Molotov cocktails. There was about 15 victims at the time that were transported. Luckily, he was arrested by a Boulder police officer on the scene. But we also had activity in Colorado Springs, where his house was, so generate search warrants and everything for that, and then a mobile command post to be able to assist Boulder PD.

Col. Naviere Walkewicz 33:19
I'm curious, because I remember the reason why you left active duty, or you transitioned from active duty to the FBI because you wanted to be in the things, doing the things. You find yourself now in positions where you’re leading. How have you grown as a leader yourself? What have you learned about yourself in this not being able to be the one doing, but like you said, blocking and tackling? Like, how have you grown yourself?


Mark Michalek 33:41
So I was a violent crime agent when I first graduated from Quantico, and I did that for about 12 years. And the— it was all about impact for me. So I worked bank robbery and armored car robbery scenes, and I remember this— I remember these scenes as we're talking. But you know, you go to a chaotic scene like that with yellow tape and local law enforcement there, and people crying, and physical evidence, and blood on the ground and people are looking for somebody to take control. And I remember walking out of my car with that gun and badge on my hip, and you could feel it. Here comes the FBI. OK, they’ve got this. And to be able to turn order into chaos, or chaos into order, and create— you know, develop evidence, make a case, prosecute it, provide that sense of closure for victims, that was the juice for me. But then I started to feel the calling of leadership from the military, and I started to see that as you move up the ranks, you’re able to make more and more impact with a greater group of people, but that really motivated me to be able to give back that public safety-kind of motivation in larger and larger groups of people. And often, when it comes to leadership, whether you’re in the military or the FBI, there's kind of this imposter syndrome of like, do I really have this? But you look back and say, “Look at all the things I’ve endured. Look at all the experiences I’ve had. All the different places I've led all over the world, and it's turned out just fine. I’ve got this.”

 

Ted Robertson 35:12
We’ve talked about leadership under extraordinary pressure, but I’d like to end our eight lessons somewhere quieter. No crisis room. No cockpit. No command center. Just a grandfather, an 11-year-old boy and a group of people who needed someone to notice. For Matthew Ayers, Class of 1999, one of the most important leadership lessons of his life came from watching his grandfather. His grandfather encountered people in need and did something deceptively simple. He became curious. He asked questions. He built a relationship, and then he acted. Matthew learned that leadership doesn’t always begin with authority, expertise or even a grand plan. Sometimes it begins when we notice another person and choose not to walk past. Here’s Matthew Ayers.


Matthew Ayers 36:07
I always continue to this day trying to live life like my grandpa. He just was so inspirational in the way he lived, and he’s a very relational servant leader. He pastored most of his life in the Pacific Northwest, but his beginnings were in Wuhan, China, where he was born and raised, and moved to the U.S. when he was 15. Got on a back of a cargo ship, and he and his brother John made their way here. He built railroad with the CCC and flipped burgers. Put himself through high school, college, seminary and he's just got an amazing life. But he was genuinely curious about everyone he met, and so he just modeled that with such joy. I just grew up thinking I want to be like my grandpa. He’s an amazing guy, and so he, yeah, he's got I got unlimited stories about him. That's anyone that really has left a mark on my life. And I was 11 years old, and we were pretty new, about a year or so into living in central Washington state. OK, and he came to guest preach at a local church there, and when he came to visit, of course, we would always go to the local Chinese restaurant. So he disappeared like usual, and we just knew he was back in the kitchen, probably washing dishes, hamming it up with the staff, and soon he comes back out, introducing us to staff, and we have all this free food, and he’s best friends with this couple, so we were just— this was like a normal experience with Grandpa, but on this particular visit, he had some pretty serious conversations after that with my parents, and he had found out that several of the staff were labor trafficked. They were new immigrants from China, and the next day, even as brought me along as a little boy, we go down in a little town into a back alley, knock on a door of a warehouse, no running water, no electricity, no amenities, dirt floor and I see the rats running around. I’m like, “What are we doing here?” And we get to sit down with these people who are serving at this restaurant and can’t speak English and do not know any way to navigate their situation. And he challenged us as a family. Well, he might have just volunteered us, but it was going to happen one way or another that this couple ended up moving in with us, and we got to be like family with them, and had the most incredible experiences cross culturally, just in our own home. And that was my first, maybe you know, shocking example of just the vulnerability of people in every community. It happens everywhere, but at this, what was even more powerful to me about that, and what stays with me, is just how simple it really was looking back, where he just asked the question, and it seemed like such an ordinary, easy thing that that he made it out to be. And looking back, I’m like, well, that that’s not easy for most people, but really, it is an ordinary thing that anyone can do.


Ted Robertson 39:26
And with Matthew’s lessons, maybe the most fitting place for us to end these eight conversations is with his reminder that leadership doesn’t always announce itself as leadership. Sometimes it’s simply seeing another person, recognizing what the moment asks of us, and choosing to act. Eight leaders. Eight very different experiences, and what strikes me after hearing them together is how accessible these lessons really are. If I were to carry three larger truths from these eight conversations into tomorrow, they would be these: Truth one, leadership begins with intention. Slow down enough to think. Protect what matters. Honor your commitments. Don’t allow the urgency, distraction, or discomfort of the moment to make your decisions for you. Truth two, leadership is deeply human. Ask better questions, give feedback that helps people grow, adapt your approach, create the trust and connection that allow people to bring their best. Truth three, leadership is something we practice. It’s not reserved for extraordinary circumstances. It happens in everyday choices, in how we respond under pressure, how we listen, how we use our time, and whether we notice when someone around us needs something we can give. That’s what I appreciate most about these conversations: different leaders, different experiences, different tools, but every one of them gives us something we can actually use. If any of these conversations spoke to where you are in your own leadership journey, I hope you’ll listen to the full episodes. You’ll find these conversations and many more with Naviere Walkewicz at usafa.org/longblueleadership. That's usafa.org/longblueleadership or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you know someone who could use one of these leadership lessons, share Long Blue Leadership with them, because leadership isn’t something any of us ever finishes learning. I’m Ted Robertson for the Long Blue Line Podcast Network. Thanks for joining me for this special Long Blue Leadership-In Case You Missed It edition. Until next time.

 

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The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation