Building Better Leaders

Your reputation as a leader has a dramatic impact on your career, for good or ill. While there are always areas you can improve, you shouldn’t try to be something you’re not. Gen. (Ret.) Lester Lyles, discusses his perspective on leadership through a remarkable career.   General Lester Lyles is a retired four-star general in the United States Air Force. He served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Unit...

Intentional leadership requires knowing your people well. Chief Master Sgt. Vincent Fasano discusses the opportunities and challenges of leading people you don’t see every day.   CMSgt Vincent Fasano is the command chief of the 109th Airlift Wing, Stratton Air National Guard Base, New York. He serves as the wing's senior enlisted leader and is the principal advisor to the wing commander on matters...

Building trust with employees is a vital leadership quality. Gen. Bussiere explains what “leading from the front” means and how trust is built from the top down. Gen. Thomas Bussiere is the former commander of Air Force Global Strike Command. In addition, as a command pilot, Gen. Bussiere accrued over 3,400 hours of flight time and has decades of leadership experience both in the air and on the gr...

How to develop your employees, learn from the leadership principles we’ve inherited, and show your team you genuinely care.   Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell is a retired F-16 pilot, wing commander, and senior leader developer who’s trained thousands of young leaders in the Air Force. Today he’s a Senior Resident Fellow for Airpower Studies at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.   Book a l...

Setting goals for your employees means more than setting a target: Your job as a leader is to clarify your vision, establish key performance indicators, give them the resources, identify obstacles, and help them stay on track in the midst of changing circumstances.

Spacepower isn’t just about technology—it’s about the people, legacy, and mindset driving it forward. We talk to Dr. David Arnold, a renowned expert on space, General Bernard Schriever’s enduring impact, and the leadership principles that shape today’s Air and Space Forces. From historical perspective to modern-day relevance, Dr. Arnold shares insights on innovation, optimism, and what it means to...

Military spouses are the prime example of how a behind-the-scenes support role can drive change, build trust, and inspire leaders wherever they are. We talk to Debbie Schiess, a nonprofit leader, parent, and spouse of Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, on the role military spouses play every day in empowering Space Force and Air Force leadership.

Elite leadership is earned through self-discipline. Take charge of yourself and you’ll inspire your followers to do the same—learn how in this power-packed episode with CMSAF David Wolfe and SEAC #4 Ramón “CZ” Colón-López.   Colón-López's 2026 book, “ Carnivore Leadership: Taking Charge Instead of Taking Shit, ” is available for purchase now .   #leadershiptips #leadershipdevelopment #leadershiptr...

Most leaders don’t look forward to having difficult conversations with their employees, but giving honest, actionable feedback leads to a culture where speaking up makes the whole team stronger. Here’s Chief Master Sgt. Katie McCool, Command Chief of Pacific Air Forces, on how to achieve that.

Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna—the highest-ranking enlisted Guardian—describes the habits that real leaders follow, and how they inspire those habits in their followers.

Here’s how to develop employees effectively with a 4-step method from Dr. Patrick Donley, host of the “Building Better Leaders” podcast and director of the Doolittle Leadership Center. This practical leadership training breaks down a simple 4-step framework—Discover, Teach, Model, and Coach—to help you grow your team’s skills, behavior, and performance.

Senior leaders from the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base in Japan explain how to develop leaders, own up to mistakes, and prioritize people while operating in non-stop high-stakes scenarios.

Col. David Wilson knows he isn’t the smartest person in the room—and that makes him an excellent leader. He digs into his experience as a wing commander and senior leader to share his hard-earned lessons of leadership. The Doolittle Leadership Center's podcast, Building Better Leaders, features candid conversations with a wide range of influential leaders about their stories— and how they have lea...

Leaders set the tone for an organization’s ethos and policies—not by dictating what to do, but by modeling the required behavior. Lifelong leadership coach and retired U.S. Air Force CMSgt. Craig Neri delves into how you can set the standard of behavior you want to see in your followers.

AFCENT’s commander and enlisted command chief explain the importance of providing steady leadership to roughly 10,000 to 13,000 deployed personnel who constantly rotate in and out of their organization in the Middle East.

There’s arguably no military service in the world with a group identity as deeply ingrained or cherished as the U.S. Marine Corps. How did the Semper Fidelis, “Oohra!” culture come about? More importantly, how can leaders of other organizations create an identity that encourages similar buy-in and team motivation? Giles Kyser explains. The Doolittle Leadership Center's podcast, Building Better Lea...

It’s hard for leaders to accurately assess whether they’re leading well simply based on results. Dr. Patrick Donley—a global leadership instructor and host of the “Building Better Leaders” podcast—shares a simple, 10-minute drill leaders can start using today to can boost intentionality and team-wide performance. Learn more at www.afa.org/DLC

Lt. Gen. Andrea Tullos joined “Building Better Leaders” a few weeks before retiring as the President of Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. There she oversaw the entire spectrum of education programs within the U.S. Air Force, from professional military education, continuing education, and granting academic degrees to 170,000 students each year. The Doolittle Leadership Center's pod...

Gen. Kevin "Gumby" Schneider leads U.S. Air Force activities in the Pacific, a responsibility that encompasses more than half the globe. In this episode of "Building Better Leaders," Schneider shares leadership lessons on how to effectively manage an organization of such enormous scale, especially one that's centerstage in geopolitical tension. He offers insights on building culture, staying flexi...

Perhaps no modern organization understands the symbiotic relationship between leadership and culture better than the U.S. Space Force, which was founded in 2019 and saw thousands of military personnel (mostly Airmen and Pentagon civilians) transition into its ranks. So just how did the Space Force establish a culture unique from its sister service—and what can leaders learn from this ongoing cultu...

Fresh off the release of their new book “Get Back Up: Lessons in Servant Leadership,” the 24th Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Heather Wilson and the 21st U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, USAF (Ret.) join “Building Better Leaders” for an incredible breakdown of cooperative leadership. They tell stories—from death-defying combat operations over Serbia, to navigating the culture and...

When the U.S. Space Force was founded in 2019, Gen. John “Jay” Raymond was tapped to serve as its inaugural leader and America’s first-ever Guardian. Now three years retired from the historic role, Raymond joined “Building Better Leaders” to share behind-the-scenes stories about building the identity and culture of America’s first new military branch since the WWII era, and how the monumental proj...

What’s happiness? A high salary? Raw power? Rainbows and unicorns? Or something far deeper? It might sound trite, but happiness is more definable and objective than some would have you think—and knowing what happiness looks like professionally might just be the key to leading others well. Jackson Kerchis is the co-founder of Happiness Means Business, which helps business and military leaders ident...

Nearly 30,000 people come to work through the gates of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma every day. For the last two years, the safety, security, and wellbeing of those thousands of personnel have been in the hands of two leaders: Col. Abby Ruscetta, the commander of the 72nd Air Base Wing, and Chief Master Sgt. Chris Gradel, the wing’s command chief and Ruscetta’s right-hand man. Ruscetta (who re...

21-year-old Tap was one vote away from being kicked out of the U.S. Air Force for a litany of violations, a long record of bad behavior, and even an apprehension—when one leader spontaneously put his own reputation on the line to give this “bad Airman” yet another chance to prove his worth. That leader’s risky act of faith transformed Tap’s life of delinquency into a decorated 31-year career of mi...