Navigating People (Supervisors, Peers, and Conflict)

Your First Supervisor

"He was the example of a leader I would never want to become."

People are difficult. I'm going to start there, because if you walk into the Air Force expecting everyone to be professional, competent, and fair, you're going to be disappointed fast.

People are difficult because we all come from different places. Our values don't always line up. We carry different moral compasses. Someone can seem weird from where you're standing, and that doesn't mean you get to treat them as less than. I believe everyone has something they're good at that the team can use, even when it's buried under a bad reputation.

Some of the people who supervise you are going to make your life hard. Not because of the mission. Because of who they are. And some of them are going to change your life for the better. You rarely get to pick which one you get. What you control is how you carry it.

The Worst Supervisor I Ever Had

When I retrained into Crash Fire Rescue, I was a SSgt. I'd just graduated from the DoD Fire Academy as honor graduate, and I'd decided to take a break from all the maneuvering for advancement. I wanted to focus on my faith and learn my new job well. Just do good work. Simple.

My supervisor was a TSgt, also a retrainee, about a year ahead of me. He was the type who maneuvered for his own benefit. That's how he saw success: positioning, politics, climbing. And that's how he supervised me.

When I told him I was focusing on my faith and learning the job instead of chasing the next stripe, he took offense. From that point on, we never saw eye to eye.

He was never there for me. He gave me the demeaning jobs and handed the meaningful work to people junior to me. It was hard to learn my new career field because he never put me in the positions where I could actually learn it. And the part that hit me personally: he mocked my faith openly, in front of the team. Not behind my back. To my face, in front of the people I worked with every day.

I never smarted off to him. I held my tongue because he was my superior. I never badmouthed him behind his back either, and I didn't need to. Everyone already knew what kind of person he was. He'd gladly put you down if it meant he came out looking taller.

He was the example of a leader I would never want to become.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I kept being the positive influence to the people around me, and I let his comments float. I didn't engage. I'd chuckle at the awkward remarks and move on. The people watching knew the difference between us, and that mattered more than anything I could have said back.

He thought I was indifferent about progression. What he couldn't see was that I was pouring myself into another part of my life entirely. If he'd ever taken the time to know me as a person, he would have seen that. He never bothered.

That TSgt was the final push for me to separate and go for a commission. That didn't end up working out either, but leaving was still the right call. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is recognize a situation that isn't going to change, and walk.

The Best Supervisor I Ever Had

Now let me tell you about the other end of the spectrum, because I had that too.

The best supervisor I ever had was a SSgt early in my career. If I'm being honest with you, it's the same man who once had me shredding paper for a week straight when I was brand new and convinced he had it out for me. (That story is in Choose Your Mindset, and it's worth your time.) The person I was sure was my enemy turned into the most important professional influence I've ever had.

Years later our paths crossed again and he became my supervisor for a stretch. He eventually became the functional manager over the entire 1C3X1 career field, the senior enlisted leader responsible for every command and control Airman in the Air Force. That's how good he was at this. But that's not why he mattered to me.

He mattered because his whole approach was making me better than I was. He saw potential in me that I genuinely could not see in myself. He was tough. He was also completely fair. He held me to a higher standard than I held myself, and at the time, honestly, it was hard. I didn't always enjoy it.

I'm in my mid-40s now and it still sticks with me. When I hit a low moment and I don't feel capable, there's a steadiness underneath it that says: you're more capable than you feel right now. That came from him. He believed in me more than I believed in myself, long enough for me to start believing it on my own.

That's the whole difference between the two of them. The TSgt never took the time to know me, so all he ever saw was an Airman who wouldn't play his game. The SSgt took the time, saw what I could become, and pushed me toward it. Same person being supervised. Two completely different sets of eyes.

The Relationship You Actually Control

Your supervisor writes your EPR. That relationship matters more than almost any other at your first base, and you don't get to pick who you get.

But don't mistake "you don't get to pick" for "you have no say." How you show up, how you take feedback, how you handle the boring work and the hard work. All of it shapes how your supervisor sees you. A bad one, you absorb and outlast (more on exactly how in the third section of this module). A good one, you give everything you've got, because a supervisor who believes in you is one of the rarest and most valuable things you'll find in this entire career.

Want the details on how the chain of command works and why that structure matters? Check out Chain of Command in AF101.

Empathy as Tactical Advantage

Empathy Is a Superpower

I've heard people say that empathy in the military is a weakness. I disagree completely. It's a superpower.

Your ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes gives you a perspective you wouldn't have otherwise had. It gives you better information, better reads on situations, and better outcomes. It doesn't make you soft. It makes you smart.

The "Lazy" SrA

When I was the training manager in the Command Post Reserves, there was a SrA with a reputation for being lazy. Nobody wanted to work with him. He was the guy everyone wrote off.

I took the time to get to know him. And what I found was someone who was extremely creative. He didn't perform well being micromanaged, which was exactly what was happening, because when you're labeled "lazy," people start watching your every move, which makes the problem worse.

I gave him a project: revamp all of our checklists. I told him to research new and creative ways to do it. And then I left him alone. No hovering. No daily check-ins. Just here's the problem, go figure it out, make it yours.

When he came back, he'd rebuilt everything in Microsoft OneNote. Not only had he digitized all our checklists, he'd solved a continuity problem nobody had asked him to solve. When we relocated to our alternate location, the checklists were online. Multiple people could run them simultaneously from their own workstations instead of crowding around a binder in the middle of the console.

He thanked me for giving him the freedom to work.

One conversation. One act of seeing someone for who they actually were instead of who everyone said they were. That's empathy as tactical advantage.

Everyone Has Individual Talents

The lesson isn't "be nice to lazy people." It's that the person everyone's already written off might be the one holding exactly what the team needs, and you'll never find out if you treat everyone the same, especially if you treat them all the way that works for you. That SrA didn't need a better attitude. He needed someone to stop hovering long enough to find out what he was actually good at. One person taking the time was the whole difference between "lazy" and the guy who solved a problem nobody else could.

The Fire School Apology

I want to tell you about a tension I've never fully resolved.

When I was in Fire School, we were doing charged hose advancements in a two-story building. Timed exercise. Pull the charged hose up to the second floor, push it against the wall, advance, get back down. I was the class leader.

I missed a critical step. My team was affected. So I took my mask off, looked at my team, and said, "That mistake was on me. I'm sorry."

The instructor, an Army Staff Sergeant, pulled me aside afterward and told me to never apologize for a decision I made.

I thought that was short-sighted then, and I still think it's short-sighted now. I made the mistake. It was my fault. The team needed to know that I knew it, and that I'd do better next time. They were junior Airmen. I was one of the first SSgts they'd interacted with as a peer. I felt I owed them the truth.

Taking ownership of your mistakes publicly doesn't make you weak. It earns respect. Your team doesn't need a leader who's always right. They need a leader who's honest about when they're wrong.

Empathy applied to leadership means saying, "I see how my mistake affected you, and I'm owning it." The alternative is pretending it didn't happen, blaming the circumstances, acting like the leader is above accountability. That's what kills trust.

Your supervisor writes your EPR, and how you interact with them matters. The nuts and bolts are in AF101. See Enlisted Performance Reports.

When to Push Back, Absorb, or Escalate

Don't React in the Moment

The single most important rule for navigating conflict: don't react in the moment. When emotions are high, your judgment is low. Every time.

I always try to ask questions first, so I understand where the other person is actually coming from before I decide what to do. Showing kindness and empathy when someone's being difficult doesn't make you a pushover. It means you're gathering information before you respond, which beats firing off the first thing that comes to mind every single time.

Almost every real conflict I've navigated came down to one of three moves: absorb it, push back on it, or walk away from it. Here's what each one looked like for me, and how I learned which was which.

Absorb: The TSgt

The TSgt who mocked my faith and handed me garbage assignments? I absorbed. I held my tongue. I didn't badmouth him, didn't try to win the argument, didn't go over his head. I just kept showing up, doing good work, and being the positive influence to the people around me.

Was it satisfying? No. Did it feel like losing some days? Yes. But picture what happens if I react. I become the difficult SSgt who can't take feedback. The people watching see two people fighting instead of one person clearly in the wrong. By absorbing, I let his behavior speak for itself, and everyone in that shop already knew exactly what kind of person he was. My silence was louder than anything I could have said.

Push Back: FEMA

At FEMA, a friend of mine got promoted into the supervisor position. I was happy for him. But when he started putting systems in place that were dragging the organization backward, I confronted him about it. I brought evidence. I brought rationale. My argument was sound.

He took it as a personal attack. The team started revolting against him, and he decided I was the one stirring the pot. He called me in on my day off, brought his own supervisor into the room, and accused me of insubordination. I tried to explain that I was actually trying to calm everyone down, that I'd been the one telling the team to give him room to find his footing. He didn't believe me. I got an official counseling in my record.

Here's the part I left out for years, because it's messy and it's real. The rumor at the time was that while he was deployed, he'd been sleeping with someone on our team and trying to keep it quiet. He was convinced I was the one who'd spread it. I wasn't. People in other offices had noticed on their own. I eventually left that organization because he made my life impossible. And after I left, someone wrote to tell me he'd divorced his wife and married the woman from our team. The part that still sits with me to this day: I'm the one who helped her get hired there in the first place, through a friend of a friend.

I still wish he knew I was only ever trying to support him. But that's the thing about pushing back. Even when you're right, even when you've got the evidence in your hand, it can blow up in your face if the other person isn't in a place to hear it. Timing and delivery matter as much as being correct.

Walk Away: The IRS

I took a supervisory GS-14 position with the IRS. On paper it was perfect: promotion, supervisory role, great pay, fully remote. The reality was a different story.

The team was already upset because an internal candidate had been passed over, and I was the outsider they brought in instead. The longest-tenured person took offense to every question I asked. Basic things, like "what exactly is our team responsible for?" When I said we'd be using Microsoft Teams to communicate, I got called a racist in a meeting, in front of the entire organization. Instead of talking to me about it, my supervisor went straight to the Senior Executive Service director. No conversation. Nothing.

That was a Wednesday. I turned in my resignation Thursday, effective Friday. Not because I couldn't do the job, but because the environment was poisoned before I ever walked in, and nothing I did was going to fix it. I didn't dislike a single one of them. I prayed for them often. It just wasn't going to work, and I knew it.

I could make that call without panicking for one reason: I had the financial foundation to do it. Six months of expenses in the bank turns "I have to stay in this toxic job" into "I get to choose." That's not an accident. That's Invest in Future You.

Which One, and When

Absorb. Push back. Walk away. The skill was never memorizing the three. It's reading which one fits this person, in this moment, with this much at stake. A few questions I run before I pick:

• Will speaking up actually change the outcome, or just make me feel better? If it won't change anything and the person can't hear it right now, absorb it and let their behavior speak for itself.
• Does this touch the mission, safety, or someone getting hurt? If yes, push back, but mind the timing, and do it privately when you can. Being right isn't enough; being heard is the goal.
• Was the place poisoned before I got here, and is staying costing me my health, my family, or my integrity? If yes, and you've built the foundation to move, walk away as a decision, not a reaction.

The TSgt at the fire department was absorb. The FEMA supervisor was push back, and I learned from how sideways it went. The IRS was walk away. None of those were easy. All three were right. And the only reason I could see them clearly is that I'd spent years getting it wrong first. Pushing back when I should've absorbed. Absorbing when I should've walked. That's the learning curve. You don't skip it. You just get one decision closer to right each time.

And for the love of God, never badmouth your supervisor. Even when they've earned it. Let their behavior speak for itself.