In today's episode, I sit down with my first boss...first leader ever, Ken Bryson, to talk about his experience from his over 25-year U.S. Air Force career and what he learned as a leader. Ken is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and one of the best leaders I ever had.
This episode is perfect for anyone learning how to prepare when you’re a leader, tips on how to keep a notebook (yes this might seem simple but his technique has some interesting tricks!), and inspiration for how to keep going when you might feel stuck in a role.
Grab something to take notes because you’re going to want to remember some amazing things Ken discusses!
The notebook and pen Ken uses: Moleskin Notebook & Pen with highlighter
Reach out to Sara: hello@leadintoit.co
Instagram: @leadintoit
Facebook: @leadintoit
Lead Into It now offers coaching! Visit leadintoit.co to learn more.
In today's episode, I sit down with my first boss...first leader ever, Ken Bryson, to talk about his experience from his over 25-year U.S. Air Force career and what he learned as a leader. Ken is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and one of the best leaders I ever had.
This episode is perfect for anyone learning how to prepare when you’re a leader, tips on how to keep a notebook (yes this might seem simple but his technique has some interesting tricks!), and inspiration for how to keep going when you might feel stuck in a role.
Grab something to take notes because you’re going to want to remember some amazing things Ken discusses!
The notebook and pen Ken uses: Moleskin Notebook & Pen with highlighter
Reach out to Sara: hello@leadintoit.co
Instagram: @leadintoit
Facebook: @leadintoit
Lead Into It now offers coaching! Visit leadintoit.co to learn more.
Sara Greco 00:00
You're listening to Episode Two of the lead into a podcast. I'm Sara Greco, and I have over 10 years of experience in various roles and industries. During this time, I learned just how crucial leadership is as both an employee and a leader myself. This has led me to a mission to inspire and provide resources for those who have a desire to be a leader in their field. The lead into a podcast is designed to help you learn how to be a leader with advice, tools, tips, and inspiration from people with all different types of background. Let's get started. Hi, everyone, I'm so excited for y'all to listen to this episode. Today, I thought it was only fitting that my first interview would be with my very first boss. His name is Ken Bryson. He retired as a colonel in the military. And he was the one who really helped mentor me during those first crucial years in my military career. And I learned so much from him during this couple of years, I worked for him. And I learned some extra fun bits during this episode as I was interviewing him. So I hope you all learn just as much as I did. And really enjoy this episode and take a few nuggets with you. Enjoy.
Ken Bryson 01:30
Oh, hi, Ken,
Sara Greco 01:30
thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Ken Bryson 01:34
My pleasure.
Sara Greco 01:35
How are you doing today? You're living the retired life.
Ken Bryson 01:37
That's right. Every day is a great day.
Sara Greco 01:41
I decided for my first interview to bring you on because you were my very first leader that I had in the military as a second lieutenant. I'm sure you remember those days as I was a very energetic young lieutenant
Ken Bryson 01:54
that is putting it mildly.
Sara Greco 01:57
I really do look back on those days. And I'm just like, how did you have so much patience with me? I had no idea what I was doing. But I really wanted to do a good job. That's all I knew.
Ken Bryson 02:08
Well, that's the main component energy and the desire to do something.
Sara Greco 02:13
So to get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background. And we can start from there. sure
Ken Bryson 02:23
that we're talking about leadership, I'll focus mostly on what I did professionally. And my professional career was, as you know, in the military, a little over 26 and a half years. And early on in that career, I wanted to focus on leadership, positions and opportunities. So my career was fairly varied, started off in as a nuclear missile officer and did everything from counter drugs to basic training, and got the opportunity to be in leadership positions throughout my officer career starting as a lieutenant all the way through Colonel,
Sara Greco 03:03
that's awesome. And what was your favorite position that you ever had?
Ken Bryson 03:09
Well, I've got to say my favorite command position was squadron commander, simply because of the more personal interactions with that level of leadership. My most rewarding leadership role was where you're at as a group commander, mostly because it was broader in scope. And it was more challenging because of the different organizations that fell underneath me. And that I did not have a lot of knowledge initially, about what each one of those squadrons did. And I had to do a lot of learning and, and figuring things out kind of on the fly, which is always a leadership challenge.
Sara Greco 03:53
Now that the Mission Support Group command that was really interesting learning about it, I was a very young Second Lieutenant, and you brought me in as your executive officer, which is similar to executive assistant for those who are listening that are in the civilian sector. And I always saw you and admired what you did, because you were able to bring a room together and really have a good command presence in any sort of room, whether it was a larger room, or even just our weekly staff meetings that we had with all of our leadership. So could you talk about how you prepared for that type of role? And were in the mindset that you would prepare yourself in?
Ken Bryson 04:42
Well, I've, I've got to say, first off that, you know, there's always a discussion in leadership, whether someone's born to leadership or you create a leader and discussions and managers and leaders. My perspective on that is and the military does this really well. Wow, you groom people for leadership. So, like you said, How to, to command a room is something that you have to study and learn, and how to bring a very diverse wide audience just like, and in most areas, they people say, you've got to understand your audience, you really have to do that, and be prepared for the unprepared. And I think that's probably the first point in leadership that I really wanted to bring up during our discussion is, is, if you're prepared, really prepared, then you seem really lucky. And the more prepared, you are luckier you are. So for preparing yourself for different types of things, like a staff meeting, a small group or a, like a command brief, where you're briefing, a lot of people in a very broad audience, it's the preparation side of that, and then how you present the information that you're prepared to give. And when I say prepared, that's being prepared for what you should expect and not expect. And that just takes a lot of experience and kind of going through things, studying your mistakes from previous meetings and discussions and how things are done in. And for me, I kept up while you remember my little black book, right?
Sara Greco 06:25
I do you always you had notes, and you had very artistic doodles in them, which are always very, pretty heavy. And the doodles were notes.
Ken Bryson 06:33
So yeah, I have dozens of those books throughout my career. And a lot of those notes, were just reminders to myself about what to do in a meeting and how to construct my meetings to present information. So for example, when I came into the mission support group, and for your listeners who aren't sure what a mission support group is, that's kind of like being the the mayor on a base, all the normal things a city has, that's what the Mission Support Group is in charge of preparing for that. And to be ready for that, you've got everything from your police department, to your fire department, to your civil engineering, to your logistics. So each one has a group of specialists. Each one has a different set of priorities, problems, outstanding areas. So you've got to study up on all that. But the main thing is you have to find a string that binds us all together. And for us at the mission support group that was supporting what the wing did. And as the exact officer, you, you saw what we did on a daily basis. And it's doing what we did, and as best as we could to support the mission of the overall base. So once you find that string that binds everybody together, you have to construct your meetings around that all the time, even if it's in little, tiny spaces, as far as you know, if we're getting ready for an inspection, or if the Wing Commander isn't happy, because, you know, fights aren't going well. We were in charge of a lot of things that supported the flight. So how do you do those things better. And as you saw in a lot of those meetings, sometimes you have to be firm. And sometimes, you have to cajole, and other times, you just got to kind of just ride the wave and figure out it on the fly. But you always, always, always try to keep the team together towards that specific goal, depending on what that goal is. That makes sense.
Sara Greco 08:43
It does definitely. And when you say you talked about those notes that you had in your notebook that talked about bringing that together, or being prepared, where there's some notes that you used consistently, or were they mostly did they change throughout your career? To remind you how to be prepared?
Ken Bryson 09:04
Oh, that's, that's a great question there. The answer is yes to both of those. For example, when I was a young lieutenant, like you were when you first came to missions for group, I had to sit through commanders calls that were an hour, hour and a half, two hours long. And myself and all my peers, everybody else in there. We are always bored out of our minds. And I had written in my little notebook saying, if I ever get a chance to have commanders calls, I'm gonna make mine short. So that he did Yes, I had very clever memory that, yep, 30 minutes was always my goal. And I tried really hard to stay within 30 minutes. And if you remember, when we started off the commanders calls, I always said, Hey, we're gonna make this short and be out of here in 30 minutes, so that everybody understood this was the goal. And this is why we went through things very quickly. And what we always brief the people that were to come up to speak Hey, you have five minutes. So it was a, I was the commander and I had to get certain things out during those commanders calls, but at the same time, your timekeeper. And that was why the executive officer and the other Squadron commanders were all kind of there, everybody understood that there was a time. So I set expectations. And I try to complete as quickly as possible those expectations. Those were notes that I kept in my notebook, throughout my career, which kind of changed like, you know, there's certain things and I commanders call you have to breathe, that has to be done periodically, like safety and those kind of things. So it was a matter of how do you get the stuff that's mandatory to be brief to be brief enough to short short enough? And how do you also make it interesting with the flow, which is why we had certain PowerPoint slides deleted out of my commanders call, and why we put in some fun things at the same time. So yeah, the notebook. Also, I use those notebooks, a lot of things I put in there, were only put in once, perhaps in a notebook. So I referred to notebooks that I kept in my drawers. So the ones I had as a second lieutenant for a different size notebook, I would periodically slipped through those to check for the reminders, which I highlighted for a particular meeting or instance, that was going to come up where I wanted to make sure that I was prepared for
Sara Greco 11:28
Is there a notebook that you referred back to more than others,
Ken Bryson 11:31
there was, it was always the most current one in my hand. And what I would do, if you remember, I would take those notebooks and you never saw a blank one, I didn't just have a fresh one. Because when I took a new book, I would write in there the things that I wanted to make sure I was hitting on a day to day basis, which was bits and pieces of the other notebooks. And that's when I would spend an evening going through my notebooks to make sure I passed on the information that I wanted that other notebook, or the two dues or the list, that kind of stuff. So this is
Sara Greco 12:07
so funny, because I do remember seeing all those notebooks, because at one point, I had to organize your office for some weird reason. And you had warned me, you're like, you're gonna find a lot of these blank notebooks. And I was like, Okay, sounds good. And I went through them. But I didn't realize that you had such an intricate process behind them. I knew you're very particular about the size and the type of notebook, and that you always had one with you. But I didn't realize you had all this behind you.
Ken Bryson 12:32
Yep, then I was particular about the pin. I was wondering to pin with a highlighter, if you remember that.
Sara Greco 12:38
I forgot about that.
Ken Bryson 12:39
The highlighter was used a lot, I would highlight things Ben pages, the drawings that were in the notebook, actually were ways for me to identify different parts of the book. So I would use different types of doodles in order to remind myself to go back to that portion, later on to transfer it to the next notebook.
Sara Greco 12:58
And for the audience. The these doodles are not just doodles, they're actually pieces of art, because you were a very good artist as well. Well,
Ken Bryson 13:06
thank you.
Sara Greco 13:08
I do remember that. Out of curiosity, when you would have a weekly staff meeting, about how much time would you use preparing for something like that?
Ken Bryson 13:18
Well, the staff meeting has always had an agenda. Remember the agenda slides. And when I came into the position from taking taken over from Colonel Mark Brown, he had a set number of slides. And we went through those together during our changeover. From those slides, those actually prepare you for what's going to be in those meetings. For example, the logistics, guys always said, this is our on time deliveries. This is what's going on, you always had the Security Police saying these were the issues that were happening, somebody calls you may. So those things you don't have to prepare a whole lot for because they're going to brief you what's going to happen. But if my boss, the Wing Commander, or one of my fellow group commanders had an issue, and the issue was something that was fell onto the responsibility of us in the Mission Support Group, I took probably a good couple of hours the night before, to prepare myself a list of questions to ask the other commanders and other people in the staff meeting so that I could come up with an answer or a solution or a way ahead, to go back to either my peers or to the Wing Commander. So probably probably a couple hours before each staff meeting. And
Sara Greco 14:37
I hoped you would say a couple of hours because I believe so many people go into their meetings that they're running as a leader, with very little or no preparation and all the leaders that I know have done amazing jobs as leaders put so much effort and time into those weekly staff meetings because they want to Make sure that they know what's, what the agenda is, and that they have a direction for their team to go during that meeting. This is so interesting. I didn't realize how much backstory I would get by interviewing you for this, like, bringing me back to about 10 years ago.
Ken Bryson 15:15
Yeah, time goes by way too fast, that's for sure. It has, you bring up a really good point, when you're talking about how people prepare for staff meetings. That was actually a note and one of my early notebooks, I think it was like a captain. And I was with the joint task force that counterdrug ops at California. And we I initially worked for a major that was in the Marines, his staff meetings were short to the point, he was always super prepared. When he left a Navy Commander came in and took his place, he was the opposite, he was much more free flowing, the meetings took way too long. So I had written in my notebook, if I ever get to run a staff meeting, again, make it short, because people only want to spend so much time. But there was something that the good major from the Marines told me that if you're wasting time in a meeting, you're not wasting just your time, but you're wasting the time of everybody that's sitting in that meeting. So if there's 10 people in that meeting, you're wasting all their time. So
Sara Greco 16:18
yes. And if you think from the from a corporate standpoint, that's actually a lot of money.
Ken Bryson 16:23
Yeah, time is money. Exactly.
Sara Greco 16:26
So I want to roll into what we're going to talk about next. But it relates to staff meetings. I remember when I was your exact, and we were in a specific staff meeting, and at the end of it, you told me to go back to the office that you needed to talk to all of the leaders in there alone. And you had never done that with me before you It always made me be a fly on the wall for anything that was discussed, which I really appreciated. I learned a lot from just watching everything. But this was the first time you had ever asked me to leave. So afterwards, you followed up with me? And can you just go through this whole process, because this is something that has stuck with me for years, and I absolutely love this story. Yeah, that's,
Ken Bryson 17:10
there's a little backstory that we didn't, we've never really discussed on on how that all came about. When you first take over as command, or as a leader in any organization, there are certain things that you've got to do, you naturally prepare yourself before you get to that unit. Or if you're being flooded up within a corporate type of setting, you probably know a little bit about it. But again, that part of being prepared. So you prepare for your organization, part of that preparation is meeting with your senior leadership team. So those are the people that are your direct reports. When you meet with those direct reports, initially, that's the time that you want to really start setting how you're perceived as a leader. So part of that perception is do you want to be perceived as someone who's angry, or somebody who flies off the handle somebody who's methodical, that's all business? Do you want to be a people person, you want to be seen as friendly, easygoing, all those things have to go into your equation of how you want to be perceived as a leader. Now, a lot of people say you want to be perceived as all those things? Well, I will tell you through many different opportunities, it's tough to be all those things all the time. So one of the ways that you can achieve that is to be completely neutral. So you find where you're most comfortable with. And when you briefing, the senior leadership team, you set that standard as here's my leadership style. So as you know, my style was to be pretty carefree, easily approachable, that kind of thing. I didn't like to be seen as somebody who flew off the handle, especially if I was angry. So to do that, I only wanted to have my senior leadership team see me as being angry. In a setting that was private, I did not like things to be public. That's why I would never yell at somebody in public. I would always congratulate people in public or highlight somebody in public. But if you're going to do something negative to one person or a small group of people, you do that in private. So the meaning you're talking about is something had gone wrong. And my senior leaders in my group were directly responsible for that. So I had to ask you to leave because it wasn't appropriate for me to kind of lay down the lawn and hammer them in front of a junior officer. So that's why you were asked to leave. Because I didn't really go off the handle a lot. And I didn't do this. I mean, it was a very rare occasion that I would do this and that has more impact when you do it only once in a while. So you have to really pick your your times when you have to do that. So If it's something really egregious, then you want to clear the room, have the people there, you make statements like I want everyone to listen, I don't want anybody to interrupt, you make it clear that you are the commander or the leader. And what you're saying is, it's not up for discussion. It's this needs to be fixed. And this is why you don't just yell and scream. But when you start talking, it's almost like talking to your, to your child, a parent talks to their children, when they're upset, but you don't want to come across yelling and screaming, because you want them to understand the situation and why they're upset, and why you don't want them to keep doing what they are doing. So if you do that, as a leader, and you can do it in a controlled environment, and not yell and scream, it's much more effective least I've found, to get results out of your team, your leadership team by doing it that way. And it actually brings that team leadership, or that team together more. There's a lot of pluses. Yeah. And I'm making it sound way too simple. Because there's, there's a lot of follow up that goes with that, I mean, there's a lot of one on ones, you will naturally have issues from that meeting, that have to be taken care of some may never get resolved. And that's again, a part of that, being prepared. But from a outside perception. And even from an inside perception. You as leader, you want to, in my opinion, you want to be seen as someone who is deliberate in their decision making and deliberate, and how they make steps. And somebody who is emotional is not seen as deliberate. they're seen as wanting to live wire, you're not really sure what's going to happen. And that's not good for any organization is to have a leader that people can't really predict. So I would highly recommend to anybody that wants to go into leadership, that they are methodical they think about their style, they prepare, and that they always remember, it's never good to have someone see you get really, really angry. And if you're going to get really, really angry, you need to clear the room and just be by yourself. And I learned that the hard way as a junior officer, and it's something that stuck with me my entire career.
Sara Greco 22:30
I know that you've mentored lots of people, including me, throughout your career, how would you recommend that they figure out what emotion they're most comfortable with or how to be perceived?
Ken Bryson 22:42
Well, first, you got to kind of know yourself, and you can't put on you can't put on a persona, that's not you, like you are a very outgoing happy person for you to come across as Miss I'm, I'm the my way or the highway all the time. It just wouldn't, it wouldn't come across. So it would be you would be seen as insincere in your leadership style. The other thing is, you can't switch leadership styles. So you have to, you have to kind of sit down and do an assessment of yourself and say, Okay, what kind of personality Do I have, if you're a outgoing person that likes to talk and is I vicious, you use that to your advantage, you got to taper it down, maybe a little bit, you got to use it the right times. But you you do a study of how you are how your personality is. So like, believe it or not, I'm I'm a pretty big introvert. And I learned that fairly early in my career by doing a personality test with the Air Force. And what was interesting about taking the personality tests, and you can take these online now very easily, is if they tell you you're an introvert, or you're an extrovert, you need to know that. So when you start developing your leadership style, you know what you're weak at. So I was weak at, you know, approaching people being out there, that kind of thing. Because to me, it was mentally exhausting to walk or work or room or, you know, talk in front of a lot of people. But because I understood that was a weakness when I worked on it. And two, I always kept it in the forefront of my little notebook that if I was going to talk to somebody be prepared, and then have a process afterwards. Like I would always need to rest. So I wouldn't try to do a lot of work at at home. I only when I got home, I'd rest and then do work. So you come up with different processes and work you have to do what works well, consistently for you. You can't bounce around you got to just find what's comfortable with you. Stick with it and then improve upon it with each opportunity and that's learning from mistakes and that kind of thing.
Sara Greco 24:59
It In addition to that, which was everything you said, I'm so happy I've learned all this to, is get feedback. Because one feedback piece of feedback you gave to me and I don't know if you remember this is I, you said when I'm angry, I smile. And so no one could tell when I was angry. They just you Everyone thought I was always in a good mood. And it's so true. I still do it to this day, but I'm aware of it.
Ken Bryson 25:25
That's right. And, and that's, that is Sarah. So I knew when you were angry, because I've around you a lot. But folks that didn't really know you. And that's why I pointed it out to you, you don't have to do a lot. But when you're angry, all you have to do is not smile as much. And people go, oh, there's mad. So and there's ways in you, you hit it right the nail right on your head, I'm not on your head, but on the head. That you you took that feedback, and you you worked with it. So even though you you acknowledge now that, hey, I still do that, but I'm aware of it. If you're aware of it, you can correct it. And that's the main thing. And you're right, feedback is extremely important. And you get feedback informally as a leader all the time. So if you're giving a presentation, it's pretty easy to see that people are bored, you know, nodding off that kind of stuff. So that is feedback in formal that, hey, your meeting is either really boring, or it's taking too long. So you should learn from that and go Okay, what can I do to make the next meeting better?
Sara Greco 26:33
Write it down in your notebook?
Ken Bryson 26:34
Yeah, exactly. Right. Don't show that slide. It was a really stupid slide. That's the other thing. We talked about leadership books a while ago, and I was flipping through my notebook about leadership books, and, and about how to present in a public setting. And a lot of the things was like, put your audience at ease and that kind of stuff. And there was always there was one line in there, it said, you know, a good way to get a crowd or a group prepared for what you're going to say is an attention getter. Such as a joke, that kind of thing. If you're not good at, at attention, getters, and you're not good at telling jokes, don't try using those. During big time. I've seen some pretty disastrous meetings, though, of someone telling a joke that was not good, and everybody kind of goes. And it just gets worse and worse from there. So it sets the tone for the entire thing it does. And tone is key cuz you're the leader. So whatever tone you set, that's pretty much how that meetings gonna go. It
Sara Greco 27:38
sounds like a lot of what you're saying is to also be very self aware.
Ken Bryson 27:42
Yes, definitely. In fact, you have to be so self aware that, like, if you go to visit someone in your organization that you're in charge of say, you go down to one of your smaller organizations, you meet with the team, the meeting goes disastrously so you know, people are upset. And the main thing you got to do from that is, first you got to walk out of that meeting, go back to your office, you sit down, you might be angry, you might be upset, that's when you have to go, Okay, why am I angry? And this is part of the software things. What went wrong in that meeting? What have I done as the leader to fix that meeting? What should I do to follow up with that meeting? These are all self aware type of questions. Because again, it goes back to how is your team perceiving you? And is that perception, the perception that you want as a leader, that that gets you to a goal of that particular meeting. And again, that goes back to that preparation? If you know what the goal is, you know what that common thread is, then that self awareness piece should be the loop that kind of brings you back to Okay, how am I going to fix this? Or how am I going to repeat a good meeting, that kind of thing?
Sara Greco 28:58
So how long do you think it took you to realize that all those things were intertwined?
Ken Bryson 29:04
years, it really did. Which is funny, because if you read leadership books, they tell you that, and you and I talking about right now, people will hear this and have Oh, yeah, naturally, it's all intertwined. But to actually, as a leader return, remember that in the heat of whatever you're doing day to day, is really, really hard to do. And if you remember when we used to make my schedule, and I always said, I need to have traveled time, that travel time, and I always told you has to be at least 15 minutes, even if I was in the same building. I need time to collect and figure out okay, what had just happened and what am I going into, again, something you learn, you know, through years and years and years of doing something, but a part of that was the thread if I had a few minutes to just sit down with myself and go okay. I need to get prepared with this meeting. What is this meeting for? Okay, what's the common thread? How does that tie back to the mission? How does that tie back to the goal that we're trying to reach? These are strategic kind of things you have to say to yourself over and over and over. And if you don't incorporate that into your, your day to day timing of meetings and that kind of stuff, you don't prepare for it. And you don't tell your support team, how to help you prepare for that, such as putting 15 minute breaks, which I didn't tell you guys, I need 15 minutes in order to, you know, to prepare for this. I said travel time, as long as the team understands it's 15 minutes of travel time. For me, it's 15 minutes of prep time. And you've got your your little niche in there to get ready for the next meeting to figure out that thread. So it's something that took a while to learn. And there's different ways of doing it. And a lot of times, you're not in control of it because of your where you are in the organization. But if you, if you can kind of get the same common steps in there, then as you go up the ladder of leadership, you can control it more and more and become a better and better leader.
Sara Greco 31:09
That's really, really good. I, again, all these things I'm learning, I had no idea that use that 15 minutes for other things, I really thought it was all for travel,
Ken Bryson 31:19
besides useless, slowest guy ever.
Sara Greco 31:22
No, actually, the other part was, I thought that you were like, he wants some time to catch up with people afterwards. Because sometimes you do get caught up in conversation.
Ken Bryson 31:30
That's true. And well. And that's a good point, that 15 minutes of prep time, might be catching up with somebody, again, going back to the common thread, you might have a somebody in your leadership team that is having personal issues. So you don't want to write on your schedule, meet with someone, so to discuss this family issue with them. But if I have 15 minutes between meetings, then I could say, hey, whoever it is, you have the minute and I could, I could touch base with them, see how they're doing how that situation is? See what I can do to help that person. Because by helping that person, you're helping the organization. And if you remember, we always said you know, people first mission always, that's part of that, going into taking care of your people. So the mission gets done correctly. Multi uses of the same amount of time, that's all part of that thread of, of making sure things stay together.
Sara Greco 32:31
So let's go back a little bit. And you're talking a little bit about your career path. And you actually helped me with mine, when I probably month into me coming to work for you. We had a conversation, I think you were writing an editorial for our base newspaper, and you had me edit it. And I brought it back to you. And I think you were impressed with my edits. I can't quite remember we got into a conversation. And you have learned that I had wanted to do public affairs, or a communications career moreso than what I was in at the time. And through this conversation, you asked me You said Do you still want it? And I said yes. And you said, okay, long story short, you eventually got me into that career, which was amazing. And I'm still in it to this day as a reservist. But you really helped me along the career with where you came from in your career and where journey that you took, how did you feel like your career went? And do you feel like it was a great one that you had?
Ken Bryson 33:38
Wow, that's a that's a lot in one question.
Sara Greco 33:44
It's very, it's a whole hard question.
Ken Bryson 33:46
Well, let me let me answer that in two parts. First, the first part is, I remember very clearly, it was an article for the bass paper. You did the edits that you did you did as edits that somebody that's in journalism uses. And that's what brought around the conversation. And we had a little career conversation on what do you want to do as a career, you know, because if you remember your exact interview, you did really put off the vibe that you wanted to be my exec. And which, at the time, I can remember talking to my my deputy saying that you were the best candidate, so you're going to be my exact and, and when we talk. It struck me that Wow, she she really knows what she wants, even though she smiles because she's angry, but you knew what you wanted. So and you were a very, very good officer. So I wanted to make sure that we did what we could to help you get there. So the reason I work so hard to get you into public affairs is first and foremost you have the desire to it second, you have the background to do it because your schooling and everything else. And third, it was the right fit for you and the organization. So as a leader, you want to put people where they will excel, because if you excel, if that person excels, then the organization is going to excel. And that's how I always looked at my mentoring, if I was going to be able to help someone, the only way to really, really help them is to put them where they wanted to be, or trauma, a best to get there or build a path on how they could get there. And for you, things fell perfectly, and we were able to get you into public affairs. Now, for me, my career had a lot of ups and downs. Just from the brief intro, I mean, I changed career tracks is the best way to say it. Throughout my career. I always enjoyed where I was at, even if I didn't want to be there. And let me explain that a little bit is I too wanted to be a public affairs officer actually wanted to make Air Force now films because of my background of photography, never got to. But in that journey of trying to get to that place, I discovered that I loved leadership. And starting with a very small opportunity to lead and then growing, growing, growing, I always tried to be happy and excel wherever I was at. And I also never selected a job, because I thought it would put me in position to have a better career, I always selected a job that I thought would be interesting fun, because I felt if I did that, and I did well, then I would be given opportunities to do something better next. And it just kind of happened. Throughout my career that I just signed up for things, a lot of things that people didn't want to sign up for. When I got there, I had a good time and did to the best of my ability, which worked out great, which actually got me promoted and allowed me to do the job that I ultimately wanted to do is leadership. So for those who are trying to figure out how to work their way up the ladder, if you're looking, if you're looking on how to get up the ladder, first look where you're at, and have a good time where you're at. And if you do, you'll do well, and then people who are above you will notice that and then they will help you try to get up that ladder,
Sara Greco 37:30
how would you recommend those go about a position where they're really struggling to have fun, and they're struggling to find the growth opportunities in their current position?
Ken Bryson 37:42
Well, it's gonna be a little bit different for each person. But there's a couple of things you got to always think about when you're, when you're in one of those positions. Like no matter who you talk to, they hate their job. If you start talking to them about their job, they want to be good at their job. So no matter how crappy of a job that is, and how much they want to leave that job, they don't want to be seen to be somebody who's not good at that job. Because that won't help them get away from that job. So that's the first thing I would tell you is, if you're not having fun at that job, then figure out how to have fun with that job. Is it your co workers, if you hate all your co workers in your leadership team, then can you find joy in the actual work, if you can't find joy in the actual work or with the people you're working for with, then you need to make a a true change, you need to go find something else to do. Which is hard to say because a lot of people can say well, I there is absolutely nothing else. To that, I would say you're wrong. Because there's always something else, there might be a pay cut in that. Or that might be a transition to a job that you don't think you'll like. But if you go into a job, thank you, you're not gonna like it. And you probably won't. When you're in a job you don't like try to find things to make it likeable. There's a saying like bloom where you're planted. Part of that bloom where you're planted thing is, if you just figure out how to have fun doing whatever job it is, people notice, and they're gonna want to put you in a different job. So as you bloom in that job, you'll be have opportunities to move somewhere else. And we can all we all know that person that they allow that person is so fun to work with. And he has the crappiest job in the world. And usually they move that person because they want that person in a different part of the team because they feel it's going to make their team better. If you're seen as that person and not the person that's grumpy all the time. And it looks like they're miserable. You're going to be a team player that they want to add to their a team. That would be my advice to somebody who's in a job that they just don't like. The other piece is and and I know it's harder in the corporate world than it is in the military. But all things change in whatever job you have. And if you can if you can hang in there and do the job to the best of your ability, knowing that there's going to be a change. And that's how I would look at it is man, I really dislike working for this particular person. But I know that person is either get promoted or I'm going to get promoted out of here in a year or two years, then you have to build a plan of Okay, what am I going to do to make myself as best as I possibly can in that timeframe and break it into that timeframe. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work. But if you don't, if you don't try to have a plan to succeed in things that you are doing right now, and you will probably never be happy and whatever job you're in. Mm hmm.
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