What do all of these have in common? Join us for a fun and engaging conversation about the intricacies of leadership learning and education. Wax on, wax off.
Dr. Bob Reimer is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the United States Air Force Academy where he helps students, faculty, and staff discover performance possibilities that they are missing. Bob holds a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Penn State with a focus on enhancing workplace performance to include leadership and talent management. Bob is certified to administer and interpret assessments to help individuals and organizations succeed. Bob has applied experience advancing the performance of global companies, government organizations, professional associations, and educational institutions.
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Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
What do all of these have in common? Join us for a fun and engaging conversation about the intricacies of leadership learning and education. Wax on, wax off.
Dr. Bob Reimer is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the United States Air Force Academy where he helps students, faculty, and staff discover performance possibilities that they are missing. Bob holds a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Penn State with a focus on enhancing workplace performance to include leadership and talent management. Bob is certified to administer and interpret assessments to help individuals and organizations succeed. Bob has applied experience advancing the performance of global companies, government organizations, professional associations, and educational institutions.
Select Articles by Dr. Reimer
Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:01
Today on the podcast, I have Bob Reimer. And he is an associate professor. He's at the United States Air Force Academy. He is the director of the leadership core curriculum at the United States Air Force Academy. He has an incredible career a PhD from Penn State. Bob, you were in theater in Afghanistan, and you were in charge of training and education for the Afghani Air Force. I can't wait to explore that a little bit. You're publishing your publishing? I mean, you have a lot going on. And so maybe fill in some blanks, what have I missed, and introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners?
Bob Reimer 0:37
Well, of course, thank you, Scott, I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to have this conversation. You know, we've had a number of conversations over the last couple of years, we've, we've talked about student development, but this is, this is really kind of the first chance we've had to have this type of conversation in depth. And it helps that we're on the verge of the semester, but not quite there yet. On syllabi, some of those good things, some of those administrative things. So, you know, I think it might be helpful, actually, for some of your listeners who may not be familiar with what the Air Force Academy is...to share a little bit there first, you know, so the Air Force Academy is both a public university and the military service Academy. So our mission, like a lot of institutions, is to educate and inspire men and women who are really motivated to go out and do incredible things in their fields. I think the nuance that your listeners need to understand is that we specifically do this, our graduates become officers of character. And they serve predominantly, there are a few exceptions, but predominantly, our officers, our graduates go on to serve in the United States Air Force, and now in the United States Space Force. So we have just over 4000 students at any given time, about 30 programs of study, you know, there's, we have got a great division one athletic program. And, and our student to faculty ratio, we're sitting right at around eight students for every single faculty member. So. So that tells you that we're a teaching institution. And you know, so as a military faculty member, and for my other faculty members, the Air Force relies really heavily on us in the areas, particularly in teaching and in service.
Scott Allen 2:15
Yeah. Well, and what I love about your, your background, or another element that I love about it is that you had an undergraduate degree in engineering, correct?
Bob Reimer 2:24
I did? I don't know that I quite figured out what the right path for me was at that point in time. It was an incredibly valuable experience. I learned a lot about myself what I was capable of learning. And it really set me on a path that I never imagined that it would have when I was leaving the institution.
Scott Allen 2:43
Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, let's, let's start with the path that you took to get into training, development, education. I think that's really interesting because to make that shift from engineering as an undergrad, to then throughout your career, shifting into training and education, talk a little bit about that.
Bob Reimer 3:03
So that shift actually started, as I was completing my degree at the Academy, I had a really close friend, who saw something in me that I did not know about myself at the time. And so she had connected me I was just a few months out from graduation, I was new that I was getting ready to head off to pilot training, I wasn't sure how much time it was going to take for me to get in the pipeline. So I was looking for a few options. We call them casual lieutenants. There's nothing casual about it. You're hard at work from day one, once you report for duty, but I was looking for different options. And she connected me with our Director of the Academic Success Center here at the Air Force Academy. And so I ended up spending my first year in the Air Force as a learning skills instructor. And so I worked with students who were incredible, they had a lot of high potentials. But that potential was not necessarily grounded from an academics performance perspective. So the I mean, statistically speaking, these cadets were going to be behind their classmates academically, they had a history statistically of washing out at a higher rate. And so, because of that friend's investment in me, I ended up spending a year working directly underneath the mentorship of some highly dedicated faculty and had an incredibly rewarding experience where I got to lead young cadets, and help them to discover the value that they added to the institution. So, I learned the value of building relationships with students, I helped, I was in a position where I learned how to help students uncover their hidden talent and areas that they needed to grow. And let them kind of choose the path that where they were motivated, where they wanted to invest, where they wanted to get something more out of their experience in the Academy. And I think I also discovered some initial insights and how important it was to help someone understand the progress that they're making. So, you know, that was an incredible year had an incredible experience, working with faculty, I knew as I was heading out the door about a year after graduation, and then the head of the pilot training that I wanted to get back to the Air Force Academy, that I wanted to be a part of education and development. And so what was neat was I took that foundation I learned in that year as a lieutenant in our student or Academic Success Center. And, and I started applying it. You know, I saw the lessons, I remember showing up the first day of pilot training you check-in. And, you know, not a whole lot, everything was paper-based at that point in time. And I had a stack of popular publications that was probably about three feet high that I was expected more or less to commit to memory. So, one, I took those lessons, and I applied them to my own approach to learning and really kind of had a spark that was kindled for lifelong learning. At that point in time, I think I looked at that experience differently. Because at that time, as a learning skills instructor I wasn't, is thinking about it as much as learning a technical skill. As I was thinking about, what was I learning? How was I learning? How can I translate that to other people? And so it took about 10 years, so I flew for the Air Force for about 10 years, and Air Mobility Command, so big heavy airplanes, all around the world, and all and all kinds of places. But about 10 years after leaving the Academy, and heading off the pilot training, I got the chance to come back. And the Air Force had picked me up and sent me to us a master's degree program where they really invested in my soft skills as a leader. Yeah. And so that's a partnership program with the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, where we got to spend a year with 19 other high potential officers. And we really got to dive deep into leadership, and the program has was set in a counseling department. So we really got to spend a lot of time talking about those soft skills that are really essential to influencing and guiding others.
Scott Allen 7:04
Well, isn't that interesting? It's so interesting to me, where were academic leadership programs are housed in institutions of higher education. Sometimes it's the College of Agriculture, agriculture, sometimes it's in counseling, education, sometimes it rarely, it's in the business school. But and then so then you had some time later go on to do a Ph.D. in I/O psych at Penn State.
Bob Reimer 7:27
That's correct. Yeah. So so when I completed my mat that master's degree at UCCS, I got to serve as a leader developer for three years here at the Air Force Academy. So I work both at our prep school and at the Air Force Academy and was responsible for a given year for about 100 cadets. And so these cadets have all kinds of experiences, I kind of hit some of those stats earlier, you know, the division one athletes, we also have like 90 clubs, and the cadets within their units within their organizations are responsible for the leadership and the guidance and the accomplishment of the mission on a daily basis. So, you know, I got a lot of practical experience right off the bat. And, and during that time period, I was able to start leveraging that master's degree, and teaching our core leadership curriculum that looked a lot different 10 years ago, but teaching cadets about leadership in academic settings as well. And that's what really opened the door for me to head off to Penn State, and to study industrial and organizational psychology.
Scott Allen 8:28
That's great. That's great. Well, as you think about your role as the Director of Curriculum, leadership curriculum, at the institution, what are some questions that you all are pondering? As we think about this, I oftentimes on the podcast will refer to developing leaders as it's a bit of a puzzle. I mean, there's a number of different ways we can approach this. There's a number of different lenses we can look through. But what are you thinking about right now? What puzzles you? What are you working on that you're excited about?
Bob Reimer 9:06
That's a great question. I certainly don't think you want to have this conversation devolve into a political commentary on what's going on in the nation right now. But I'll use that as a backdrop. Okay, to simply say that you know, regardless of your political views, I think all of us could quickly agree that our nation really has a great need for highly effective leaders. I think this has always been true. I think you can look back at the birth of our nation, whether you whether you're looking at pioneers and colonists who had to figure out how to make things work, you know, 400 years ago, or if you're or if you're looking at how do we set up the ideology? How do we make sure that everyone has a voice, you know, leadership is always been kind of central to the effectiveness and the health of our nation. I think one of the great challenges that I see today, we've seen a great proliferation of leadership, ideas, plans, programs, products, you name it, right. So and you just hit on it, right, just in terms of as, as a discipline, if I can call it that. We don't really have objective standards. You know, I think I think there's a place if you went to a university, there's a place you would expect to find students who are studying medicine. And I and, and odds are, it's not going to be in that the Department of Agriculture, right, as an example. And please don't get me wrong. I think each of these schools serves such important,
Scott Allen 10:41
of course, but you're right, you're right. Yeah,
Bob Reimer 10:42
But we just don't have those standards. And so I think when we have that little bit of standardization, then then it's really hard to know, as a consumer, as an educator, what it is, we really ought to be doing sometimes to better our organizations, and to better our society. No. So one example that comes to mind, you know, I think if you've ever lived in an area, where you've been affected by a natural disaster, whether that be tornadoes, hail storms, hurricanes, fires, we've seen some of those in Colorado in recent years, you understand what it's like to have damage to your home, have damage to your property, and to really face a pressing need, you know, so I think about something like having to have your roof repaired. You know, it's one thing to know you have to repair your roof. It's an entirely different problem that chooses how you're going to deal with it. And so you feel that pressure to get do something very quickly, right. Because if you don't fix the roof, the rain comes in, the wind comes in, you're pouring heat out of your home when you're trying to keep your family warm, those types of things. So you've got that pressure to really get it done. And odds are, particularly if you live in a community, that's there's the weather, it's been widespread effects, you have more options to choose from, then you know what to do with. There's, there's plenty of organizations that will kind of come in, knock on your door, promise you a quick and affordable fix. But the challenge is, and that situation, much like leadership is when you put those interventions into practice, you don't really know if you got what you paid for. Until the next storm. Yeah, right. And then it's too late. If you find out that someone did a shoddy job when the next hurricanes rocking and rolling, and you've got the water in the wind, damaging again, or probably doing worse, you're in bad shape. And I think the leadership industry, honestly is a lot like that, you know, I think the need is very real, we have to do something, we feel that need to do something, there's no shortage of options for us as individuals, as consumers or as organizations, members of organizations know, the real problem. And the real challenge, I think, is sorting it through. And there's a lot of practical wisdom out there. And I think a lot of it comes from very well-intended sources. But at times it proves to be neither practical nor wise. And so and that's really the challenge I see, as we start to think about how we're going to influence our students our clients our organizations in terms of the culture, that leadership culture in terms of how we think how we feel and act as leaders. And so, so no, so I think the challenge, that that I would come back to with regard to Why you ask the question, I think there are two answers to it. I think it's not an either-or it's really a both and, and it's really about constantly blending these things together. I think one is we're wrestling with this idea of what "evidence-based" looks like. Right? And so, you know, I think if you if you anyone who has taught leadership in a classroom setting, and you've got great introspective students, invariably, you're going to be asked the question, why would I trust this academic's perspective on leadership? They are scholars there, they're in there, they're doing research, they're in the lab, but have they ever led anything? And so, you know, that's, that's certainly a barrier that I often have to address with students on a pretty regular basis. And, and also getting them to look at some of their assumptions when they do look at great leaders. As a military organization, you know, we've got examples all around the campus in terms of artifacts, right. So they may be a painting may be a marble statue, they may be a bronze bust, but we celebrate our leaders of the past. The tricky part is how do you take that the lessons that the leader had and translate them to very different contexts?
Scott Allen 14:44
Yeah.
Bob Reimer 14:45
So you know, that leader may be very astute, very self-aware, able to really look at a situation look at the environment that they lead in and have some examples or advice for how to lead but as a consumer, how do you know that that advice is Just as relevant for you today, in the environment that you're leading So, no, I think that evidence is a big part of it. The other thing I think I really struggle with as an educator, and I say struggle in the sense that it's a challenge. It's something that I think about a lot. Is how that take that, that evidence and orient it. So it's practically accessible to the student. Yeah. So so I know when I, when I walked out of my, my graduate program at Penn State, had an amazing experience had an incredible advisor, Rick Jacobs, who just guided me through that entire process and challenge me in ways that I did not anticipate challenging, being challenged, right. So really, really an incredible experience really a momentous turning point, as I think about what I'm able to do for the institution today. I had a lot of passion for leadership from a scholarly perspective. Yeah. And I learned, I've told this story to students to know, I remember my very first class, I was teaching graduate students, that program that I graduated from about 10 years prior, I laid my syllabus out, I laid the plan out. And the very first question very first hand that went up in class that day, a young officer sitting on the front row, this sounds all really good, sir. But could you just tell us what we need to do to be effective as a leader and tell us what not to do. So we don't get into trouble. And I realized at that moment, I'm like, I just, I just laid out some things that I am very passionate about. But my students don't yet share that passion. And so they didn't see the relevance of why I was going to cover the topics I was going to cover, they didn't understand why it was important that we are approaching this from the perspective that one, the studies measured what we thought they're measuring, they were reliable, and two, that we could actually make some useful inferences from what we were reading. And so the idea, you know, my students remind me on a daily basis, that they don't really necessarily want to study leadership as a topic. But every single one of them is actively engaged on a daily basis with practicing leadership. And so my job as an educator, the challenge as an educator, my job as a director, when I work with faculty who are teaching these courses, as well, is, is creating environments where we can really tie together the knowledge with the skills and the abilities that that really, really mattered to the student.
Scott Allen 17:32
Yeah. Well, your comment about professionalizing, leader development, leadership, education, leadership learning, we don't even have common definitions that are agreed upon, which would be problematic if you were a pilot or a surgeon.
Bob Reimer 17:49
So you mentioned earlier, in our conversation, my time in Afghanistan, you know, one of the key things that I had to do there, that that applies to this question you're asking. So in, in some of the native languages, and there are many native languages in a tribal society, there are simply no words to describe technical things. So they would have to be created. So so for example, you know, one of the things I the prop my primary mission with training, education, advising the senior Afghan officials, who, who really own the programs, my role was there, it was large as an advisor to help them make good decisions. But one of the key things we did was leader, excuse me, was English education. So before I could, I could ask a young Afghan officer, to be a pilot, to be a maintenance officer, to be a commander, they had to understand the English language, because when we're going to put a technical order, so kind of a, an owner's manual, if you will, for an aircraft, in front of a young airman, they had to know what those words meant they're reading. And so one of the examples that were given to me is in one of the native languages there, there was one word for petroleum. Now that petroleum may mean aircraft fuel, it may mean lubrication in the form of oil, it was also the same word for grease. And so so you can imagine it, you know, anyone who's ever you know, change the oil in your car, you have to even know the right type of oil to put in and you got to put it in the right spot, or there are not so good effect. So, you know, so some language is really important. And language is important because it comes down to shared meaning. If I say leadership in a classroom, and I have a personal definition, and my 15 students each have their own personal definition. The question becomes, what are we really talking about? And so so and but you can appreciate there's this is where we have to blend that that evidence and that practical orientation. Yeah. So because ultimately, you have to make meaning of it as a practitioner as a leader in a way that makes sense for you. But if you start with just what makes sense for you, what else are you missing? Right? So we missed the evidence. So it's not a, you know, it's kind of a chicken or the egg. And I would say it's a chicken and the egg, you know, where those two things work hand in hand. We don't, we don't put students through, you know, multiple semesters of leadership, education analysis, okay, figure out how it works, they get to practice it on a pretty regular basis. Nor do we just simply put cadets or our students or our clients in situations where, okay, go figure it out. And so it's that. And so it's, it's always a constant battle to figure out the right timing of the right lessons with the right students, I think you can appreciate how individualized leadership development is, there are things that are generally useful. But they don't always, you know, depending on the student's background, their perspective, their culture, where you know, what part of the country they're from, what experiences they had, and me and my students who are in who are leading cadet organizations have different perspectives than those who are part of kind of the, you know, of other less influential roles. So, you know, some are thinking about what applies right now, some are thinking about, okay, when I graduated with me immediately responsible for 150 airmen, so they're more forward-thinking. So it, it's always that constant, start constant give and take to connect with each student in a way that the content and the application of it is meaningful.
Scott Allen 21:34
Yeah, because we're all entering in so many different places person, and you can just look at all the variables of personality, background, culture, I mean, you name it, right? So if you were to look at that, if you were to look at how we approach leader development, and leadership development, through the lens of pilot training, what are we missing? What are the opportunities you see? And I know, I'm just jumping this on you? You are? You know, that's a great question. So so if we want to develop a world-class pilot, and you've been engaged in that work, and you have a sense of what that work looks like, what are some potential opportunities when it comes to this domain? Which is just another training domain? It's, I think it's, I think it's in some ways, unless, of course, we're in combat where everything is shifting very, very quickly. It's, it's a little bit of a contained system. Now, you might disagree with me, because I'm not a pilot, and I don't know. But when we get out, to leadership, there are so many variables, but you still have variables of personality background, any number of different variables as a pilot, individual differences variables. What are some opportunities based on your experience in that domain, that could serve leader development well, and I'm going to give you one that I think of right away, just some clear definitions of stuff?
Bob Reimer 22:59
Clear definitions are a great place to start. You know, and, you know, I would say, I'm having some flashbacks to pilot training, which was a very demanding experience. You know, we started every mission. within the first few missions, you as a student were expected to brief the mission. So you set all the expectations for the different phases of flight, where you're going to go, how are you going to navigate all those types of things? So no, I think it starts on a foundation of, of what's knowable. And I think those definitions are a key part of that, you know, so much of flying a plane is technical. It's not the only part of it. But there is there's a lot of technical expertise, you've got to know what happens when you push this button. You got to know, and, you got to know what happens. In some cases, what happens when you push it harder? And so it's variable, right? So it's not, you know, it's not just as simple as you push the stick forward, and houses get bigger and you push this pull the stick back, and houses get smaller. Because eventually, eventually, if you pull back long enough, they start getting bigger again, because the airplane doesn't keep can't go up forever, right. I think I think from a foundational perspective, that technical expertise, that technical knowledge, and the skills that are associated with exercising, that physical machine is complex, or complicated as it might be, are foundational, and I kind of alluded before, I don't remember how many trips I had to make out to my car after going into the publication's office and being handed ream upon ream of printed paper of things that I was expected to one, organize so I could find that what I needed to find when I needed it, and for to start committing things to memory. So you start with those foundations. So much of you know, when I look back on my experience, and I know I've been an instructor and into two major weapon systems, to big heavy airplanes did not have the opportunity to be an instructor in a pilot training environment. But when I look back on those experiences, the things that challenged my students the most typically, were not the technical knowhow, students, you know, I worked with incredibly bright, incredibly capable people on a day in and day out basis. They had, every one of them had the horsepower to learn definitions to learn what switches did to get mechanically down, what was the fly the airplane. And so this kind of leads me to that second aspect. And I think it's the, you know, I started reading a book here recently that talks about the idea of radical uncertainty. And, and this, this concept is simply a way to explain that there are the things that we do not know, that we do not know. Yeah. Okay. And so, and so, so much of what makes an Air Force pilot, any pilot, and I think this applies to a lot of professions. What really matters and what really sets people apart. You know, technical competency is a foundation. But it's the professionalism. And so the term we use when we talk about developing judgment in our pilots is this idea of airmanship. And so it's making decisions where there are no clear answers. Yeah, you may not know what the effect of your decision is, or that you even need to make that decision in this moment. You know, and so, so I think that's the great challenge we're really up against. Yeah, there's the technical, I'd like to think it works this way. And that's the question my student on that first day of class several years ago was asking me, yeah, just give me the tech, give me the tech list that says how to be an effective leader. Yeah. And, and I, I freely admit that we had a good laugh about it at the moment, right. And so we talked about, you know, if I if I had that checklist, do you think I'd be here teaching? You know, we had a great laugh, you know, it was a great conversation with the students on that day, and it really set the stage, but what we're really getting at no leadership, you can be informed, you can understand the theories, you can understand how the theories are supposed to work. . But our organizations are complex. And the complex is the right word to use here, you know, you know, if either one of us actually had to have gotten a car and commuted to work this morning, you can get in the car, you can, you can put your seatbelt on, you know, foot on the brake, you push the start button, and it in, assuming everything's in working order, it works the same way every time. As a leader, if we fall into the trap, that it's going to work the same way every time. We're in trouble. And we're severely limiting not only our own status and influence as a leader, but we're having a profound effect, or lack thereof, upon the organizations that were there to serve. And the people that were there to serve, because they are not all the same. And they're not even the same this morning. And this afternoon. Right. So I think, you know, the idea is that those organizations or organizations are complex. And, and as leaders, we have to adapt. And that's that idea of judgment and those unknown unknowns, right. So when we, when we discover new things, we have to give up sometimes that there's got to be a right answer, and we have to find a good one, we have to find the one that's going to work well, we have to be willing to accept risk. And when it goes, Well, wonderful, and when it's not going the way we wanted to, we have to be active and engage with that, and make adjustments. Right. So you know, when I think about what I would train a student, in an emergency for preparing for emergency situations, we did a lot of that training in simulations. So I think that's, that's a great, great and I think about what we do from an education perspective, bringing simulations into the education process, whether that's through something like a leadership assessment center, whether that's through activities, and active learning environments that we create in our classrooms, those are all great examples of where students in a relatively low stakes environment can try stuff out. You know, if you crash the SIM, that the same instructor hits the reset button, right? It's like playing a huge video game. Yeah. If you don't, if your tactics and your strategy won't work, you get another life and you get to try it again. You know, it doesn't quite necessarily work the same way in the real world. But, but when students can build that, that self-efficacy in that simulated and training environment, yep, a large reason why an institution like the Air Force Academy exists and why we invest so much authority and And power in the cadets to make decisions early in their adult lives is so they, when they go out in the real world, they do understand what some of the consequences can be. They understand that there are still safety nets, but they're a little bit further down, and they're not as soft. And so, so you know, getting them to accept and act with confidence and those in the face of those unknowns, and, and getting them to start thinking about how they learn from each experience. Yeah, no. So you know, so much it was, you know, here's another lesson I would share from my flying time. No, oftentimes, we'd fly very long missions. You know, when I was working on the staff at the wing down at Charleston at the time, about 10 years ago, I had a full-time job in an office where I was supporting the wings mission and ensuring that we were ready for exercises and inspections and those types of things. Yeah. And, and so that meant that I still need to maintain proficiency as a pilot. I was, that was my core technical expertise. So what that meant was, I routinely flew on either Friday night or Saturday night. And the benefit of doing that was, you know, I know we have their checkboxes right there. We call them games. So I had to get so many landings every month, I had to get so many certain types of landings every month. And so if I did the night assault landing with NVGs, on it counted is my it was more difficult was more complex. So I could not I could check off more things by doing the more complex version of it. So I routinely flew on those late-night sorties, so I could get more bang for the buck. So when I would, when you come back as an instructor, see, you go, you go up, you fly, you do your things to maintain current same proficiency. Here, that was just part of the mission. The other part of the mission is the debrief. Yeah. So in the debrief. And bear in mind, now, if you started your story at eight o'clock, maybe Elena at around two, by the time you made it back to the debrief room, it's now like 233 o'clock in the morning. And so you can imagine, so there's, and there's a couple of options there, right. And so, you know, a lot of times we would come, we would, we would do maybe an initial debrief and try to schedule coming back during the daytime, but depending on everyone's schedule, particularly and the time when I was flying to C17 out of Charleston, oftentimes, those training missions were so critical to making sure that our fliers, were ready to turn back out the door and head down downrange in a theater. So oftentimes, what we had to do was take care of that debrief at the moment. And the risk, or the or the, or the temptation at that moment, is to talk about what went wrong. And certainly very important. Unfortunately, what that meant was it came at the cost of talking about what went right, yeah. And so, so much of development that I see in a student and a client, in a colleague, you know, it's incredibly valuable to make sure that people are aware that something that's going on is not going the way they intended or planned, I think it is just as important to build that self-efficacy. And remind people that you did this, right, that does produce the desired outcome, and getting them and asking questions. I, you know, I was eye-opening sometimes to see a student do something right. But sometimes you had the sense that they weren't confident they were doing it, right. So you would ask students questions about it, and you come to find out, you know, they, they did it, right, because they remember seeing it done that way, maybe when they're in pilot training, maybe when they're getting another training schoolhouse, but I hadn't seen it so long, they couldn't remember if that was exactly the right way to do it. And so they may or may not do it that way, the next time if it's not reinforced. And so, so so getting them to understand not only what's right, but why it's right, and why it was right for that particular situation was so critical in that training environment. And I think, you know, I routinely use some of these analogies when I talk with my students, and you know, about 40% of our graduates do go on to be pilots from the Air Force Academy. So this connects with a large percentage of the students, not all of them, I have to bring in examples from other places as well. But I think, you know, it's a, it's a really interesting question. I haven't quite thought in those terms. But you know, ultimately, I think it's it's that blend between what we know about leadership, and what we don't know about the context where students are going to be applying and bringing both of those things into the conversation, I think is so incredibly important.
Scott Allen 34:39
So Bob, you had my mind cooking, so I'm going to go I'm going to talk for like two minutes here and just please do download what I heard, but also try and, and make some sense of based on kind of my perspective, and this is really really, really cool. Have you ever read the article, A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. It's an HBR article, Harvard Business Review,
Bob Reimer 35:06
You know what I think I have? I think it's been a few years.
Scott Allen 35:08
Okay. I will. Yeah, I think it's older, I'll put it in the show notes. And I'll send you a copy. Thank you. But they do this really cool. They divide problems, from simple to complicated to complex, too chaotic. Now, this is January 7. Yesterday, January 6, we had a little bit of a chaotic situation happening in Washington, DC, that was very different than some of the decisions that a leader was making at Sherwin Williams. And it was a simple problem as a leader that and then, of course, you have CEOs who are making complicated and very complex decisions. And so for me, what's interesting, it's different if you're learning on a Cessna than a C17. The complexity is very different. I would imagine, stop me if I'm wrong.
Bob Reimer 36:02
You can get yourself in trouble and assess that really quickly. But there's a lot more than that. I mean, yeah, if for no other reason, then you're managing a crew. Yeah, it's complex enough that it takes multiple people to operate all a sudden, yeah, yeah.
Scott Allen 36:14
So so when I think about how I'm reflecting on what you've said, is, I think one limitation, maybe we have at times about leader development, is that this is simplistic, but there are these four different levels. So at times, if you think about, for instance, the curriculum of the collegiate leadership competition, that's very simplistic decision making. That's simplistic, but it's foundational and it's needed. Right?
Bob Reimer 36:39
Correct
Scott Allen 36:39
But great leaders have to have an understanding at all. So So what I'm doing is the connection I'm making as a limitation can be that maybe we don't have some of the core definitions. But also a limitation can be that we don't have levels of complexity. I don't know of a course maybe it exists on, leading through chaos, leading through complicated problems leading. And this article does a very nice job of beginning to have that conversation. But I think at times, we don't scaffold. And I did another podcast with a scholar named Susan Komives, and we talked a lot about scaffolding. If I want to teach negotiation, I probably should build some listening skills in the individual, some skills of influence tactics, and we can scaffold up to this person being masterful at negotiating. But we have to scaffold that. And I don't know in leadership education, that we have that scaffolding or even models of scaffolding. I don't know if that makes sense.
Bob Reimer 37:44
It does, you know, if I could jump in real? That's, that's one of the things that we've spent a lot of time in, in the ongoing continuous process improvement of our leadership corps at the Academy. And thinking about that very issue. Our legacy model at the Air Force Academy, it's referred to as the Officer Development System kind of builds on that complexity. I think one of them, to anyone who's listening, I think the word of caution I would offer here is I think you're exactly right, Scott, in terms of scaffolding, in terms of building upon foundations, what we can afford to do is ever to, you know, as we define those levels, and the way those levels are defined at the Air Force Academy is in terms of personal leadership, in interpersonal leadership, teams, and then the organizational level of leadership. But you can appreciate while for the novice, the talk about how to lead yourself, how to be self-aware. Now, those would be foundational things we might do in that individual-level course. One of the things that we've run into in the past is a particular challenge is that we, my words get conceptually lazing. And we talk about individual leadership as if it exists by itself. When it always I mean, it always exists in that broader system, where leadership is interdependent. Yeah, you are part of units and groups and gyms, and those unit groups and teams, work together and entertain systems, multi-team systems to really that's how the organization most organizations, particularly large ones, are structured, you know, in any kind of certainly harkens back to some industrial area. Era, excuse me. ideas on how production could be efficient. Right. And so, you know, that the challenge there is that how do we provide that foundation to the individual, and make sure that individuals are aware that it's not just my identity, and our identities are incredibly important. But our identities always exist in a system. Right? And so it's, it's that blending, it's actually in that tension and those paradoxes. Yeah,
Scott Allen 40:04
Well, and I also heard and you're some other elements, I mean that you have the element of practice, there's a practice field. One of my favorite topics is technologies, enabling disruption. And I can't wait until we actually have a Star Trek holodeck, a simulator, where we can put someone in a situation and they actually can practice negotiating, they can practice a complicated problem that they need to lead or navigate the team through. I think that's going to be invaluable. We don't have that yet. But there's so much opportunity there. Because in the context of flight, you have an opportunity to practice, you have an opportunity to debrief make meaning of that experience. And it's real, you were actually flying. It wasn't a five-minute experience, kind of in a classroom where we did a fishbowl activity, and then we're done. It's, it's, there are consequences. It's real practice, right? So yes, and you
Scott Allen
go ahead.
Bob Reimer 41:03
I was gonna say, but you can appreciate how expensive that is.
Scott Allen 41:06
and time-consuming
Bob Reimer 41:07
time getting that right, the time the resources, you know, and I think, you know, the leadership field has done really well, with things like leadership assessment centers, and I got some really wonderful experience at Penn State. We, the I/O program, the industrial Organizational Psychology program, ran one for the Schreyer Honors College there at Penn State. And so know, a couple of times a semester, we got to bring in students who had aspirations of going off to work in businesses and industry. And it was intensive, they had homework they did before they showed up, just like they were getting hired for a new job. And it wasn't a five-minute experience, it started at you know, we'll say eight o'clock in the morning, it went to four o'clock in the afternoon. So you had to him and those experiences they had throughout the course day tied together. So it's still there's still certainly an element of simulation, right. But when you look at what the students experience in that, they really immerse themselves into the roles they took on the job titles that they were given. And, and, you know, not only did that, you know, you have a lot of trained assessors, but you have, essentially what I'll call actors who set the stage, you know, people who walk in the room like a boss, people who walked in the room as a disgruntled customer, and, and wanted to have those conversations. And then the real value, I think of those experiences for the student, was what was offered to the student after the fact. It wasn't just their own experience. But they did some structured reflection on their own, we, we provided them an interpretation of psychological instruments that explained their tendencies, and why those tendencies were strange in one situation but were their downfalls and others. And so, but, but you can, I mean, to put that on, and it's been, it's been a number of years, you know, maybe 15 to 20 students who participate, you probably had another 15 to 20 graduate students who are supporting it probably had on top of that, another 15 to 20 alumni that we would invite in from industry who helped provide that perspective as well. So very intensive, very valuable, but you can appreciate, you know, once we find something that works, we love to teach it to the rest of the organization as something that everyone ought to be doing. And but when you look at something like that, the scalability of it, what I can really do in an undergraduate environment at a teaching institution, is keep my section sizes low. So as I can, has, I had the opportunity to provide feedback on activity in class, as I have an opportunity to provide feedback on the assignment that a student turns in that I'm actually able to do that to some degree of meat that's meaningful to the student. But that is wholly inadequate, or wholly different than providing that one on one, here's eight hours, you're going to immerse yourself in this. And now we're going to spend another three to four hours debriefing it with you over the course of the next couple of weeks. So that so so you're right now we have a real challenge. I know we particularly in an undergraduate environment where our students, you know, have a number of years more and more often than not before they're going to step out into the workplace and step out into the world. Helping them to make those connections is really difficult. I can't imagine what pilot training would have been like if I'd spent, you know, several weeks in academics, but when I got to the flight line, where I actually had a fly,
Scott Allen 44:41
Right? Oh, it's no different than a surgeon saying, you know, you go to the surgeon and they say, you say have you ever done this? They say no, but I've read a lot about it, you know?
Bob Reimer 44:52
Yes, yes.
Scott Allen 44:53
So I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Bob Reimer 44:56
That fixes everything, you know, I'll never mind Very first training sortie, I was still a cadet the academy going through a program called flight screening that kind of got me set up and for pilot training had, you know, done all my study and had read had had had a conversation with my instructor. And, you know, he kind of walked me through taxiing the airplane out and it was all I could do it, you know, at a pace that was barely faster than a walk, they keep the airplane centered on the taxiway. Yeah, you know, it's just, it's, it's your steering with your feet instead of your hands. It's not like driving at all. And, and so we, we get to the whole short line. So that's that, that line that says you're not in the controlled airspace, and if you cross it, you're on the runway. And so we've got clearance from tower takeoff, and the instructor looks at me and goes, you've got it. And, and, and, and, you know, if you want to talk about faking it till you make it like I had no confidence that I could do it.
Scott Allen
But that's another challenge. I mean, so yeah, scale, you've got the scalability challenge, you've got the time challenge. But I think the learning sometimes is distant from the work. I think I said that I said, I think I've said that on this podcast before. But if it's medical education, that's generally happening in the healthcare system, I'm with patients, some of the time, if it's flight training, the learning is very close to the work, I'm actually going to fly at some point. When it's leadership development, oftentimes, we're sitting in a classroom, and they might Two hours later go to a student organization that they're a member of, not have any of that learning on their mind. Because it's not close, it's not close to the work, it's not observed. It's not supervised. It's so too, to flag that learner to lock back into this content, they have to be cut, because that first time you flew, you are concentrating right in that old kind of unconscious incompetence. What is unconscious incompetence? conscious incompetence? conscious competence. I mean, you were and then you get to unconscious competence, probably a flight number 100. You don't even think about it anymore. A lot of it right. And so that's another challenge at times, is that what we're training for at times? And I think the military has a better advantage than most. But that what we're training for leadership. It's sometimes distant from the work. I don't know if that makes sense.
Bob Reimer
It does. And so what comes to mind is you're sharing that, and I'm going to date myself here a little bit. But I think you'll appreciate this analogy. And if you haven't, if it doesn't work for your listeners, I've just encouraged him to the stream and check it out. But you remember the Karate Kid?
Scott Allen 47:49
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been watching Cobra Kai.
Bob Reimer 47:51
Yeah. And you remember that Daniel did a lot of chores. for Mr. Miyagi. It did not understand how that connected to the actual he was learning. Yeah, but he didn't understand how it connected to the work. Yeah. And there's this kind of culminating scene where Mr. Miyagi presses ham. And the light bulbs go off for Daniel. Yeah. Right. And so one of the things that, that I think is often missing in our, in our learning environments is, and I think there's great value in allowing the student to wrestle with their personal definition of leadership. Sure, and I'm not suggesting that we don't do that. At the same time, one of the things that I've picked up, particularly in our students, and this is likely to be true elsewhere in the world, seen as how we pull our students from society, is this idea that leadership is a position. And, and, and, and to the extent that a student, professional latches on to the idea that being a leader means holding a specific role, to the extent that they do not hold that role, or don't see the role in the light of the content that they're learning. those lessons Get lost. Yeah. And so I think one of one of the great strengths of the work we're doing at the Air Force Academy that day, is really working to bridge that learning and the work experience together. Yeah, where it's timely, it's relevant. When a student comes to understand leadership, as a solution to the problem of bringing people together to do things collectively, that that changes their perspective on what leadership is and they cease to think about if I'm going to be the this was at any store, if I get to be the squadron commander, the cadet who's in charge of the unit that cadets are a part of, and gets them to bring the lessons into their experience that - wait a second, I don't have to be the team leader, to have a role in influencing how my teammates come together, and we work interdependently to get work done. So to the extent, we can start shining light on those perspectives for our students. I think there's a lot of ground to be gained.
Scott Allen 50:02
Yeah. Yeah. Well said, I think we pause there we've given we've given listeners plenty and ourselves.
Bob Reimer 50:12
I got more homework. Thanks.
Scott Allen 50:14
Well, I also I just want to say one final thing I did appreciate your, your mention of, you know, the kind of the appreciative nature, the need for the appreciative nature of that debriefing that it's not all the negatives, of course, there are areas for development for all of us, many of them. And sometimes our strengths are our areas for development, but really taking the time to reflect on what we did do well, what our strengths are. I think that is a nice balancing activity for sure. Because it's hard, it's difficult to work, right?
Bob Reimer 50:48
It's very hard. And, and, and, and as we latched on to our tried and tested industrial era paradigms. If it isn't broke, we don't fix it, which often means we don't pay attention to what's working well. And so I think it's it's a great reminder that we need to understand how it works, why it's supposed to work that way. And, and attend to that as well, because it's not as not everyone is going to discover those things on their own. And we have a great role as educators and trainers to influence that next generation in that way.
Scott Allen 51:21
Bob, what do you I always end up the podcast by asking folks what they're listening to streaming. I mentioned that I'm watching season three of Cobra Kai, which is nice. Watch that. Have you watched it?
Bob Reimer 51:33
I have not.
Scott Allen 51:34
Okay, you need to watch that series that's on Netflix. Bob, if you're a karate kid fan, you need to watch that season three is getting a little. It's getting a little too campy for me, but it's it is. It's a really great series if you like those movies.
Bob Reimer 51:47
I'll check it out.
Scott Allen 51:48
But what are you listening to? What are you streaming? What are your favorite podcasts? What stands out?
Bob Reimer 51:52
I'm gonna poke fun at you because I haven't committed for the better part of 11 months now. And so, commuting is when I did all of my streaming my podcast and, and my audible books and somebody to I've done something that's rather archaic. I started reading again. So let me think, you know, I think there are some good ones and some bad ones. You know, I think the two that had the biggest impression on me, as I look back about the last year I read endurance, which is Lansing his account of the Shackleton expedition. And I read that with two of my kids, my two oldest, oh, no, that's a really, really interesting conversation, not only about Shackleton's leadership but really just about the team that he built. And, and, and what it meant to be. I mean, you want to talk about setbacks. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong and went wrong and crazy degrees. And yet, somehow on that expedition, you know, they brought back every original crew member, if I remember the book, it's been almost a year now. But remember the book right now, the one person they lost was actually a stowaway. But you wouldn't know that by the way that that person got incorporated in the crew. And then the other book that really has gotten me thinking a lot was David Epstein's range. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. But he takes a look. He takes a look at specialization and generalization. And so, you know, so much, you know, when I was growing up, I was told if I was ever going to play professional baseball, that I had better been enrolled in T ball when I was three years old, right? I needed to figure it out, right? You've seen the picture of, you know, someone like Tiger Woods. Yeah, very early in his childhood learning that game. No, someone, someone like Michael Phelps, who, from, you know, from the time that he was learning to crawl and walk was also learning to swim. Yeah. And so. But when we look at the modern world, and some of the things we talked about, particularly about those, that radical uncertainty, those unknown unknowns, now, it seems like there's this growing importance that we need people who are innovative and creative. And so that probably means they're integrating experiences along with a wide range of what life has to offer. So that was that one really kind of tickled my brain and got me thinking quite a bit too, is I think about the one I think it resonated with me as somebody who graduated with an electrical engineering degree, went on to become a Learning Skills instructor flew for the Air Force for 10 years and, and then transition into being an educator. But I think about how I bring those experiences together on a pretty regular basis. So it resonated with me that in that way. But it's also got me asking more questions, in terms of what we're doing to best prepare leaders for the challenges that we haven't even thought of yet.
Scott Allen 54:44
Yeah, I love it. That's great. Well, sir, I hope I hope you have a wonderful 2021 we need to do this again. Please. Talk about what we're learning.
Bob Reimer 54:56
You know, such an important part of leadership is reflection. And you forced me to do that. I don't always make time for it. Thank you.
Scott Allen 55:05
We'll take care and be well.
Bob Reimer 55:06
Will do it's been greatly appreciated and really an honor to have this opportunity today. So thank you for thinking of me.
Scott Allen 55:12
Thanks so much. Bye. Bye.
Bob Reimer 55:14
All right. Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai