Should You Apply for Squadron Command? What Air Force Officers Need to Consider

If you’re considering whether to apply for squadron command, you might be wondering if you’re ready. Or you’re calculating the cost of command to your family, your mental health, and impact to your career. You’re thinking about the right things — and that alone tells me something important about you.

Whether you’re a brand new Lieutenant trying to figure out what a squadron commander actually does all day, or a field grade officer where command is the next logical step in your career, you’re not blind to the fact that command is a demanding and unforgiving role.

If done incorrectly, you could ruin someone’s career. It can mean mission failure or even loss of life. It can cost you professionally and personally. You could be asking yourself: Is it really worth it?

I hope in discussing some of the top concerns about command helps you figure this out. Below are five of the concerns I hear most often from officers considering squadron command.

1. Work-Life Balance

The phrase work-life balance implies there’s a neat way to distribute your work and life between two pans on a balance scale, preferably without either one crashing to the floor.

But neither pan has to break the scale for command to work.

Go into command with your boundaries established. Resist the urge to be available to your bosses and squadron 24/7. Put your family time into your calendar so you can leave early to attend your kid’s baseball games. Have regular days and times for fitness and stick to it. Take family vacations.

I get it if you’re concerned about the perception of never being there. You wouldn’t want people to wonder if you really exist, or if you’re just a name on an org chart and a photo on the wall.

Your time away from work doesn’t need to be an all-the-time thing, but you must be engaged and productive when you are at work. You never want to be the commander that people say, “It’s not like it makes a difference when he’s here anyway.”

Yes, there’s an art to work-life management.

By prioritizing your health, your family and friends, you are signaling to your squadron that they can do this too. Never be the boss who allows yourself time to be there with your family but prohibit others from doing so.

When you’re with your family or friends, be sure you’re fully engaged with them. There’s no point in taking time off to be with them if your mind is still at work.

Your squadron will move on without you, but so will your family. Which would you prefer?

Lastly, leaders forge other leaders, and one of the best tests of your leadership skills is whether continuity of operations goes smoothly or not in your absence. Train a deputy to fill in during your absences.

Being deliberate about your time will help you manage your work and life, and reduce chances for burnout.

2. Burnout, Workload and Self-Awareness

We’ve all heard about burnout. The state of being so stressed that it feels like there’s no end in sight and nothing you can do about it.

Can command cause burnout?

Sure.

But burnout isn’t caused by command alone. It’s caused by a plethora of factors, but if you control your controllables, you can reduce the chances of burnout.

First, make sure your personal life is squared away. The fewer personal stresses you have, the easier it is to manage the stresses in your professional life. Personal stresses include personal relationships, family, finances, and health. I’m not saying you have to be stellar in each of these areas, but you need to be at peace with where you are.

Be self-aware. Someone with a high sense of self-awareness is comfortable with their strengths and weaknesses. They’re willing to accept feedback from others without letting it derail their entire existence. They’re emotionally resilient and know how to lean on others when they need help.

It is extremely important for a commander to be self-aware because they know when they’re starting to get overwhelmed and can do something about it before it is unmanageable.

Command is stressful, but you don’t do it alone. You’ll have your command team, known as the triad, which consists of the commander, Senior Enlisted Leader and First Sergeant. You’ll have your fellow squadron commanders, as well as your Group, Wing or Delta commanders to support you.

At the end of the day, you are the commander. The decisions you make will be your own.

Everyone is under-resourced, undermanned and overworked. No one is asking for miracles.

As a commander, you need to be able to elevate information up the chain that explains what your squadron is unable to accomplish and why. That may be stressful, but it’s a far better alternative than forcing your squadron to squeeze blood from a turnip.

And maybe it’s possible you’re told to just make it happen. At least you’ve done your due diligence of having explained your position. At that point, do the best you can with what you have.

Stress happens, but you can mitigate it.

3. Is Command Just Endless Queep?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “queep,” it’s slang for the never-ending time-consuming administrative paperwork, computer-based training and other frivolous tasks that take away from our core missions. A lot of it must be completed, and some you’ll just have to make the executive decision to skip.

I’m not going to lie. Commanders have a lot of queep. But so do officers who aren’t commanders.

Some of you identify yourselves as your career field - doctor or pilot for example. You don’t want to become a commander and stop doing seeing patients or fly. But you’re an officer first, and officers lead.

When you’re a commander, you lead operationally, develop Airmen and create a culture that you can call your own. You don’t have to let endless emails, briefings and taskers get in the way. And you can be deliberate about making time to see patients or flying.

The most important thing you can do as a commander is grow future leaders. Investing in people takes time but it should be your number one priority as a commander.

This might be part of queep, but you should ensure they’re getting proper direction and feedback. You must ensure their evaluations are honest, accurate and submitted on time. You should be seeking opportunities for them to grow, even if it means you might have to sacrifice having them out of the duty section for a few weeks.

And you should be holding them accountable. It may feel like life coaching at times, but it’s necessary for good order and discipline.

Holding Airmen accountable can be tough for some. Bad behavior will never have a chance to improve if you never address it. When you’ve established your standards and expectations, and given honest feedback, people should not be surprised to face the consequences of any bad choices they make.

It’s normal if you find it difficult to hold people accountable. Find a way to get over your reluctance because ignoring bad behavior is the same as condoning it. And that will unravel good order, discipline and morale in a squadron faster than an Airman leaving work when the base commander announces early dismissal.

4. The Risk of Command and How to Manage It

Command can seem like a job where it’s all risk with little reward. It’s high visibility and all your mistakes are greatly magnified. A single mistake can derail the rest of your career. Plus, your peers of the same rank basically make the same amount of money for far less stress.

You wouldn’t be wrong.

Everyone is watching. Haven’t you been watching your commander closely? The rest of the squadron is watching too. And the commander’s boss, and the boss’s boss.

All those eyes!

If you develop a strong working relationship with your boss(es) and you communicate with them regularly and provide transparent updates, they will be there to support you. They can advise you before you head down the wrong path, and they can support you if you need to recover from a mistake.

I wish I could say across the board we’re not a one-mistake Air Force, but the truth is, it just depends. If you made a minor faux pas in how you interacted with the squadron, it’s probably forgivable. As long as you don’t keep doing it. A bigger mistake with greater consequences may not be so easy to recover from, especially if you knew better.

We’ve all seen those articles where a commander was fired for “loss of confidence.” It’s the only term ever used when someone is fired from command, and it can be frightening when you don’t know exactly what that person did wrong. How will you learn from other people’s mistakes if you don’t know what they were?

You really don’t need to know the details to learn from their mistakes. Typically, the commander was warned to knock it off, or knew better.

Loss of confidence can happen if the commander's choices show he or she is incapable of making good decisions. For example, if he or she took no action knowing there was something amiss about mission operations, threat to the safety and welfare of the people, or unethical, immoral or illegal activities taking place within the squadron.

What about toxic leadership? Other than clearly immoral and illegal things, toxic leadership seems to be defined a little differently depending on who you talk to. A leader who is nice can be a toxic leader because she allowed an environment where standards were treated as suggestions, under-performance was rewarded and bad behavior was never checked.

Consistently holding people accountable to clearly established standards is not toxic leadership. People who don’t like to be held accountable like to drop terms like “toxic leadership” to describe how they’re feeling about it all. Often these are the same people who won’t think twice about airing their grievances to the Inspector General, their legislator or social media. Don’t let the threat of this hold you hostage from maintaining the standards in your squadron.

At the end of the day, you need to do your best. Your Senior Enlisted Leader, First Sergeant and mentors are there to help you.

If you follow these three rules, you’ll probably be okay:

1. Keep to yourself: non-constructive thoughts, inappropriate thoughts, all body parts, and photos of private parts.

2. Sleep in your own bed with your own spouse.

3. Don’t do anything illegal, immoral or unethical.

These may sound obvious, but every relieved-for-cause commander violated at least one of them.

Command is not about watching your p’s and q’s and having eyes everywhere to make sure you don’t get in trouble. It's about executing the mission, managing resources, improving the unit, and leading people (as stated in AFI 1-2 Commander's Responsibilities).

Guess what? No one looks back on their time in the Air Force and thinks, I just loved how the commander executed the mission, managed resources and improved the unit. Instead, they think about the commander who inspired them to exceed their potential and achieve excellence.

Command concentrates risk, but it also concentrates influence.

It warms my heart when people who were in my squadrons reach out and tell me I made a difference in their lives.

Is the reward worth the risk? I will always say yes, it is definitely worth the risk and stress.

5. Are You Ready for Squadron Command?

You can read all the books on leadership and still not feel ready - which is reassuring, because none of the books come with an answer key. The officers who worry they aren’t ready for command are often the ones most prepared to do it well.

Officers train their entire career for command, whether they realize it or not. We’re expected to lead in some form or fashion. It may start out in an area of expertise we’re familiar with, but as we move up in the ranks, we start branching out and find ourselves in situations where we have no prior experience. We just have to rely on our experience and do the best we can.

When I was at Squadron Officer School, I was “in charge” of getting 7 people over a wall and across a tree stump path. The catch was the people were “blind” and the area around the tree stump was a simulated lake filled with imaginary alligators. I had no idea what I was doing, or how this exercise improved my leadership skills, but there was a lot of shouting and encouraging.

Command can feel like that. I had no instruction book for this, but I did have experience climbing walls and stepping across tree stumps at a playground. I did the best I could with what I had.

Every day commanders encounter things they’ve never seen before. So when you ask yourself whether you’re ready, just know, you’ve been equipped with the tools you need. If your supervisors, mentors, peers and especially your subordinates think you should be a squadron commander, you’re ready.

Why Squadron Command Still Matters

Squadron command directly shapes the daily experience for our Airmen, and a great commander can make a huge difference in someone’s life.

If you avoid command to avoid risk, you also avoid the chance to protect Airmen from bad leadership.

As a commander, you create the culture of your squadron. You can choose to make it an Us vs Them scenario when it comes to policies that come down from above (not recommended) or you can deliver that policy in a way that will resonate with your Airmen. But it’s your choice. The harder the environment becomes, the greater difference a good commander makes. That’s the power you have as a commander.

At this point, you may be wondering why some officers still say yes to command. The reasons vary. If the only reason you want to be a squadron commander is for the promotion opportunity, then command is not for you. But other people choose command because of a sense of duty, the opportunity to fix what they can, and a way to take care of, develop and protect Airmen.

If after you’ve considered all of the above and you decide you want to apply for squadron command, it means you know good leadership matters, that you’re willing to be accountable for people and programs, and you are prepared to make decisions, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable you feel.

Command isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If you decide command isn’t for you, it doesn’t mean you don’t believe Airmen deserve great leaders. You can still positively lead and influence Airmen in other roles.

But if you’re considering command and quietly wondering whether you’re ready—apply. The Air Force needs leaders who think this deeply before saying yes.

Comment below: Did you have a commander who made a positive difference in your life? What was it about this person that you will never forget?