Introduction

Major Rick Hanrahan:

In this interview, we speak with Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass, the first female senior enlisted service member of any U.S. military branch. We discuss her insights on the Air Force we need, including on people, readiness, and culture; the challenges the Air Force and DoD face; how she utilizes social media to effectively communicate; to resiliency and leadership tips, especially as we all continue to work through the global pandemic. Here are a few clips from today show:

[Upbeat Intro Music].

Show Excerpts, Chief Bass:

Right now, we are at an inflection point where the stakes are high. We’ve got to modernize. We’ve got to change because of where we are in this global landscape.

The greatest competitive advantage that we have over every single one of our adversaries is our people.

Announcer:

Welcome to The Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Reporter Podcast, where we interview leaders, innovators, and influencers on the law, leadership, and best practices of the day. And now to your host from The Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School.

Maj Hanrahan:

Welcome to another episode from The Air Force Judge Advocate General's School, at Maxwell Air Force Base. I’m your host, Major Rick Hanrahan. Remember, if you like the show, please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform and leaving a review. This helps us to grow in outreach to the JAG Corps and beyond.

Well, we have an incredible guest on the show today and one that really needs no introduction, at least within the Air Force and DoD circles. We have the privilege to welcome Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, JoAnne Bass, on the show to talk about the Air Force we need along with some of her tips on leadership. Chief Bass, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Chief Bass:

Absolutely, Major Hanrahan. It’s very exciting to be here. I’ve always enjoyed all the touch points that I’ve had with JAG Corps community, and so I’m excited to be able to just have a little bit of dialogue with you and share some thoughts that I have.

Maj Hanrahan:

Well, ma’am, we are very excited to have you and thanks again. Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass is the senior noncommissioned officer in the United States Air Force. In August of 2020, Chief Bass became the 19th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force and the first female senior enlisted service member of any U.S. military branch. In this capacity, she serves as the personal advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Brown, and the Secretary of the Air Force on all issues regarding the welfare, readiness, morale, and proper utilization and progress of more than 600,000 Total Force Airmen.

Over her career, spanning nearly three decades, she’s held a variety of leadership positions serving at the squadron, group, wing, and major command levels. She has significant joint service and special operations experience, and has participated in numerous deployments and exercises in direct support of Operation SOUTHERN WATCH, ENDURING FREEDOM, and IRAQI FREEDOM. And prior to her current position, she was the 2nd Air Force’s Command Chief Master Sergeant at Keesler Air Force Base, in Mississippi.

So Chief, kind of with that backdrop, maybe you could offer to our listeners a little more background on your current position and what your focus is right now?

Chief Bass:

Absolutely. So, first of all, you know, again, thanks for letting me be on the show. If we were in person, I would’ve cut you off like after the first sentence only because, you know, nobody ever wants to hear their bio read in its entirety. You know, and it always amazes me, you know, kind of hearing a little bit about background, but I’ll tell you, it’s really—the highlight of my background and the highlight of my career has always been the Airmen that I have been so richly blessed to be around, and they’ve helped shape who I am.

And so, in the capacity as the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force it, again, is really the distinct honor to be able to be an advocate to our Total Force Airmen. And I’m not just the advocate to our enlisted corps, but also I advocate for our officers and our civilians alike. It takes a team to be able to grow our Air Force and so I’m focused on the Total Force in its entirety. But I advocate and I advise the Secretary of the Air Force and my boss, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Brown, on all things concerning force management, force development, the pulse of our force and where we’re going; and then, of course do my best to make sure that I’m a good listener to the things that are going on in our Air Force so that I can remain credible and relevant as I advocate for the needs of our force.

The Air Force We Need

Maj Hanrahan:

Absolutely, Chief, that’s the great stuff. So, today’s topic is the Air Force we need. And maybe we can kind of just dive into this kind of in a broad sense, what do we mean by that when we say “the Air Force we need”?

Chief Bass:

Yeah. So, when General Brown took command, he pushed out an eight-page strategic approach on accelerate, change, or lose. And really, his focus there, along with the four action orders that he pushed out, ABCD, Airmen Bureaucracy Competition and Design, were all focused on strategically getting after where our Air Force need to be in the future; how today we must modernize and get after where we need to be.

And so, I look at, for instance, what’s my role? Well, I’m focused on, you know, pretty simply, people, readiness, and culture. And in those focus areas, my long-range goal, my end state is how do we build the Air Force of 2030 and beyond, and how do we build the Airmen of 2030 and beyond. So, I’m very focused on that being the end state, making the appropriate necessary changes and evolution to focus on how do we grow the Airmen that we need for 2030.

And so, lots of policy things that we’ve got to get after, lots of identifying how do we best recruit the talent that we need, and once we’ve recruit them, how do we retain them through training and educating and developing them into the Airmen that we need for a time like this. And then, how do we, of course, off board those Airmen when one day they take off their uniforms, which we all will.

Biggest Challenges

Maj Hanrahan:

Yes, Chief. And obviously with CSAF’s focus on to accelerate, change, or lose, kind of infers the notion that we’re facing challenges, right? What do you see as some of the biggest challenges right now?

Chief Bass:

Yeah, so some of the biggest challenges is the global landscape that we are currently serving in has changed and we’re in an era of contested dominance, and we have to be mindful of that. When I think about that, I often share a story about when I first joined our Air Force we were almost double the size that we are today and in manpower and in Airmen. We were also very focused on just one AOR, primarily, you know, we were focused on the CENTCOM AOR. And we were really just focused on three domains: air, land, and sea.

And fast-forward to where we are today, and where our future high end fight is going to be. We are focused globally, because again that global landscape has changed. And so now we have adversaries, near-peer and I would argue peer adversaries, across the globe, and now we have these other domains that have crept up and are very credible, and that’s our space domain, cyber domain, information domain, or sometimes I like to say the disinformation domain. And we’ve got to be able to prepare and grow the Airmen of the future, the Airmen of 2030, to be able to be relevant in those domains, not just air, land, and sea, but air, land, sea, space, cyber, information, etc.

Maj Hanrahan:

Obviously, as you mentioned in the past we had double the manpower, we had less domains, less AORs than we are in today. So, how do we grapple with that? I mean, folks may be thinking less manpower, but yet kind of more things on our plate, so to speak. How do we kind of address it, is it the leverage of technology and the training and expertise of our personnel?

Chief Bass:

Yeah. I think it’s probably all of that and a whole lot more than we can probably cover in a quick show. But it’s really—we’re very focused on, we’ve got to modernize our force. So, how do we do that? Some of it’s going to be in terms of the weapons systems that we currently have, modernizing and acquiring weapons systems that we don’t already have, capabilities that we don’t already have, and also tapping into our greatest resource, which is our people; and tapping into the talent aspect of our people, drawing out all of their talents, their creativity, their innovation.

Which, by the way, innovation tends to get a bad rep, right, because it’s kind of the buzzword of the year, but the reality is the United States Air Force has been innovating for over 70 years, and we do it all the time. But right now, we’re at an inflection point where the stakes are high. We’ve got to modernize, we’ve got to change because of where we are in this global landscape and again, we cannot afford not to. So, we’ve got to cultivate a culture where every Airmen sees himself in the Air Force—and they’re heard, and their ideas, and all the things that they want to do in support of our nation, there’s a place on the table for it.

Focus On People

Maj Hanrahan:

Right, Chief. I’ve heard you talk on Facebook and some other platforms on social media and just through interviews, and I know the focus on people has been a big one. Maybe you could just kind of discuss briefly with folks today, right, we’re in the midst of COVID and hopefully getting through that here in 2021, just any tips you may have on resiliency and how folks can work through those challenges.

Chief Bass:

Well, so I struggle through it myself. I will be honest with you. But let me first share just one piece real quick on the people piece and why I’m always so focused on it. You know, when we talk about our people are our backbone of our Air Force, and when we talk about why is United States Air Force the greatest Air Force in the world, it is hands down because of our people. And while we have near-peer and peer adversaries, the greatest competitive advantage that we have over every single one of our adversaries is our people. And so that’s why I’m constantly focused in on messaging the people piece, because without the people piece, we will never be able to take care of the mission.

And so, now to your question on the resiliency, goodness gracious, you know, I struggle with that myself. I have my amazing days and my amazing piece and that’s where you see me kind “Rah-Rahing” it, you know, with our Airmen. And then of course, I’m a person just like everybody else where, you know, I tend to struggle. I’m like man, you know, we’ve been going through this pandemic for over a year now, and it can be extremely exhausting.

But some tips that I would offer all Airmen and some tips that I would use for myself, is as much as possible, we have to stay on a routine. And I think for me, the routine is what has helped me. I’ve tried my best to stay on the same battle rhythm and get my PT on very early in the morning, as well as listening to some podcasts like this one, and feeding my brain. I found that if you don’t feed your brain good stuff, then you stand the chance of feeding your brain not so good stuff. And so, I’m very cautious in what I feed my brain. So, take care of myself physically, keep the routine, take care of myself and feed my brain some good stuff, do my due diligence and try to be the best Airman, and wingman, and leader that I can be.

And then I’m very guarded about my family time. And I haven’t always been like that, but I think it is, you know, one of the pillars that—one of the Comprehensive Airmen Fitness pillars that we have is social. And I think that social pillar is critical, especially at a time where we are physically disconnected with people at times; we need even more opportunities to socially connect with them at some way or another.

And so, for me, that is the family; my immediate family and then connecting to my family through FaceTime, and to include, you know, very close friends. And so, I would offer, you know, the Comprehensive Airmen Fitness pillar: physical, social, spiritual, and mental are all huge things that you have to get after.

And let me tell you, the connection is pretty interesting, because prior to COVID, I never FaceTime’ d like, anybody, maybe mom or dad. And a year into COVID, like, sir, I would have FaceTime’d you, I mean, and you know, we’d be in like, in pajamas or whatever and I don’t care anymore because I actually crave that eyeball-to-eyeball connection, and I miss it a ton like I know so many of our Airmen do.

Diversity and Inclusion

Maj Hanrahan:

Yeah, Chief, I concur I think it poses a lot of challenges, especially maybe that you kind of alluded to here, the work-life balance or work-life harmony, or whatever you call it. Sometimes it’s hard to delineate what that even is, right, with people working from home and then hybrid work schedules, and all these kinds of things. So, thank you for kind of offering some tips there. I think that was very helpful.

Another area that you've talked about, having a diverse force and an inclusive force, I was wondering if maybe you could speak to that and what the differences are between a diverse force and an inclusive force, and why that’s important.

Chief Bass:

Yeah. So, a diverse force is one that I believe that we have. It’s a matter of fact, you know, we have Airmen from all various backgrounds, genders, ways of life, religious affiliations, and sexual orientations. We have a diverse force. What we have to aim to have is a force that is inclusive where every single one of our Airmen, regardless of what they bring to the table, the talents, the gifts, the strengths, and diversity, they feel included and that they feel valued, and ultimately they can thrive. And I think that’s pretty important because, you know, when you look at most high-performing teams, they are all teams that are very diverse. There’s studies that show about how your strongest teams are ones that are diverse, diverse in thought and diverse in all sorts of other ways.

And so, again, I also often share that, you know, diversity is inviting somebody to the dance, and inclusion is actually asking them to dance. And so, we need to have a force where we are actually mindful of that.

Maj Hanrahan:

That would be happening at the ground level, so to speak, right, the flight level?

Chief Bass:

Sir, throughout all levels. I’ll be honest, I think what’s interesting is I think that if you look at the Air Force holistically there is more diversity at the tactical levels, at the flight and squadron levels there’s more diversity. As we continued to grow in hierarchy of organizational levels, I think that diversity starts to get limited and more scarce. And that’s what we have to work on as well, and that’s why the inclusion piece is pretty important because if we don’t have that culture that breeds inclusiveness, then some of those diverse backgrounds will eventually peal itself out of the organization because they don’t feel valued and they aren’t in an organization where they feel like they can thrive.

Maj Hanrahan:

And Chief, I think your comments are kind of a natural segue into a question I know you’ve had many times, but being the first female Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, how have you approached that now? You’ve been on the job here about seven months, curious just to see what that’s been for you, maybe based on what your expectations were versus reality.

Chief Bass:

You know, I’ve been in the Air Force almost 28 years and while I’m very well aware I’m a female, I don’t ever like, I don’t feel like I’ve kind of worn that sign that I’m a female Airman. To that end, I very much recognize and it’s not lost on me that by being a female Airman, I am, you know, to many people, a source of inspiration because of that representation piece that I shared earlier. And so, it’s not lost on me. I feel there is an incredible sense of, man, I’ve got to get this right because folks are counting on me. And I don’t think it’s a you know, I don’t think it’s just female Airmen that are inspired or look up to me, but, you know, I think it any Airmen who perhaps can’t see themselves ever maybe being a Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. I’ve certainly got lots of letters, and e-mails, and messages from people, men and women alike, saying that, you know, because of you I can see myself continuing to serve. So, thank you. And so, that’s minorities, that female Airmen, and anybody again, I think perhaps had some struggles in their life.

So, it’s an honor. It’s very humbling. If I can help make the way better for the people that come in after me, then man, that’s so worth it. But I’ll be most excited for the day when there’s no longer firsts, seconds, or thirds, but it’s just who we are, and it’s just leaders.

Chief Wright

Maj Hanrahan:

Yeah, Chief, great comments there. I can tell you’ve got a lot of fans here at the JAG school as well. Also curious to see how your transition went with Chief Master Sergeant Wright, your predecessor, who also had a pretty dynamic presence within the Air Force and DoD.

Chief Bass:

He did. Let me tell you, so I am probably one of the biggest Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force 18 Wright fans. We knew each other in Germany. Again, our Air Force is small. The people that, you know, that you’ll come across, you’ll come across, over and over again in your career. And so, we knew each other in Germany.

Let me just share, if I have like, a few minutes I’m going to share my quick Chief Wright story because people also always ask me, where you intimidated by following his steps? And what’s funny is a year ago, I remember, you know, speaking to a lot of Airmen and they would ask, "Hey, who’s going to take Chief Wright’s spot", and I was like, "I don’t know but I feel sorry for whoever does." And so, it’s me.

But anyway, you know, about a few months before Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Wright got selected to be Chief Master in the Air Force, I was already sitting in the Pentagon as the Chief of PME and we were not in a good place at that time; we had just come out of sequestration, we had some PME rule sets that just didn’t make sense anymore at that time, and as a result, we had 40,000 Airmen ineligible to promote or reenlist. It was not a good place to be, and we had to make some big changes.

So, when Chief Wright got into the seat, what I love about his leadership style is he empowers those around him. And so, being the Chief of PME, you know, I quickly had a meeting with him and I let them know, hey, we have got to make some massive changes to enlisted PME, our Airmen are paying the price in the field, I need you to trust me, let me make these changes. I’m really paraphrasing everything down. But bottom line, he lets me make the changes and we change EPME. It was like, you know, the whole Air Force was cheering. Because of that change, he becomes enlisted Jesus. And I call him up and I’m like, "Hey dude, like, if you’re enlisted Jesus, I must be Mary because I did all the work." [laughter from both].

So, I laugh because again, it is humbling to be able to replace such a great leader like him. He did a great job in providing me just some thoughts on success in this position, gave me some very frank and candid feedback, as did all the other former Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force. And so, you know, I maintain communication with all of them. I try to speak with them all monthly, and I’m just very grateful, again, to be able to follow in their footsteps.

Sister Services

Maj Hanrahan:

Great stuff there, Chief, really, really interesting. So, kind of moving on to just kind of another topic here, just curious on how you kind of work these initiatives at the Air Force level with the sister services. Obviously, this is a very important initiative, things that General Brown is working here, but obviously if we don’t have the buy-in from the sister services, it could be challenging for the DoD to kind of be moving in that direction. And just curious how you kind of collaborate or work with sister services on these big strategic policy type of movements.

Chief Bass:

Well, the good news is we have an organization called the “DSELC”, The Defense Senior Enlisted Leader Council, where we meet up pretty frequently. And that’s myself and my sister service counterparts and chaired by the SEAC, the Senior Enlisted Leader to the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman. We huddle quite frequently. We’re talking about the things going on in our services, the things that we’d like to collaborate more on, and how we can synergize some of our efforts so that we can have more momentum as those things go out to the hill.

In fact, we’ve got one coming up next week, where we will take some thoughts on things that we want to get after, because a lot of the things that affect one service impacts another one. And so, the more synergy that we can have going forward, the better.

Social Media

Maj Hanrahan:

Great stuff there. One of the things in this show that we focus on is leadership, and one of the pillars of leadership is effective communication. And obviously, you are no stranger to communication on all kinds of platforms, including those on social media. Just curious what your approach has been to utilizing social media to effectively communicate.

Chief Bass:

Yeah. So, we have a social media strategy on my team, and it’s pretty simple. We use it for a few reasons, and the first one is, first and foremost, to be able to hear and listen to the ideas that are coming from our Airmen and it’s a great took for that.

Second, I very much appreciate it for the opportunity to be able to share what we are doing on a strategic level across the force.

And then third, I think it just provides a great opportunity for flattened communication.

You know, communication is constantly a challenge across any organization, but especially one as large as the United States Air Force. And so, to that end, social media is a great tool to listen, to share, and to flatten the communication.

My specific approach and LOEs on social media, though, is that we really want our strategy to be diverse. I very much value heritage in our Air Force, and I want our Airmen to also appreciate the heritage that we have. So, we tend to highlight a lot of the historical moments and we highlight heritage. We love the opportunity to be able to highlight strategically where we are going.

And so, if that means we are going to put a meme out there and attach our action orders to it, it may seem unorthodox to folks, but man, if we get 60,000 clicks on the action order because I have a Bernie Sanders meme on there, then we’re going to do it.

And then, we love to highlight our Airmen. There are so many times I wish I just had a Go-Pro on me and every single Airmen could see and meet the folks that I do, because there is not an Airman that I meet that I’m not amazed and so very grateful that they joined our United States Air Force. I’m talking about Airmen who come in with PhD’s in quantum physics, to Airmen who came off the streets and were homeless and had nowhere to go, but has incredible character and leadership skills and are killing it leading other Airmen. So, I love the Airmen highlight piece of what we do on our strategic messaging campaign.

Leadership

Maj Hanrahan:

And Chief, speaking of leadership, which you just opined on there a bit, do you have any tips for our Airmen or just listeners in general on how maybe to improve their leadership abilities in 2021 and beyond?

Chief Bass:

I would tell Airmen, you know, focus on where you are, the organization you’re in, and making it better. I would also, if I can offer three kind of quick things, if you go into my office at the Pentagon, I have three pictures posted in there. And under each picture, I have a little plaque.

And one of them is a picture of me and my dad giving me my oath of enlistment and it says, “Never forget where you came from.” So, I would want every one of our Airmen to never forget where they came from, and remember those humble beginnings, so that you can continually stay true to who you are.

The second is, “Never forget why we do what we do.” I have a picture of A1C Jacobson who was the first female Airmen that we lost in the Operation IRAQI FREEDOM conflict and so, I never want to forget why we do what we do.

And then the last thing to all Airmen is, “Never quit learning.” I have a picture of the Barnes Center over at Gunter Annex, and it reminds me that you are never too old to learn, especially as leaders.

When I look at my career right now where we are, I have grown so much in the past 28 years, but I’ll tell you, I’ve grown so much over the last two years and I constantly grow every day. So, never quit learning. That would be the advice that I would share with our team.

Resources

Maj Hanrahan:

Well, Chief, thank you for those great tips. I really appreciate that. Are there any resources or other things you might recommend to folks where they could kind of continue on that path of learning and taking the initiative?

Chief Bass:

Absolutely. I would ask them, hey, on my social media site, I believe, on both Instagram and Facebook, I have a list of the things that I am reading, to include now, podcasts. And so, I would ask our leaders again in their effort to continue growing and learning to go check those out. And if that’s not it for you, whatever you do, just continue to grow and learn every day.

Final Thoughts

Maj Hanrahan:

Thanks, Chief. And kind of as a last question, obviously our topic today was the Air Force we need, I want to see if you want leave any final thoughts on that particular topic for our listeners.

Chief Bass:

Absolutely. I never close anything out without just saying thank you. All of those who continue serving, whether you’re an officer, enlisted, or civilian, we’re an all-volunteer force, and you don’t have to serve yet you continually do, and you’re part of the 1% that makes us so very special. As I shared already, our people are the greatest competitive advantage that we have over the enemy. So, I can’t thank you all enough. I’m humbled and honored to serve with each and every one of you guys. And for all your listeners out there, I look forward to seeing you guys at your bases.

Maj Hanrahan:

Thank you so much, Chief.

Chief Bass:

Awesome. It was great chatting with you, sir.

Maj Hanrahan:

All right. You have a great day.

Chief Bass:

You too.

Takeaways

Maj Hanrahan:

That concludes our interview with Chief Bass. Here are three of my takeaways from the interview.

NUMBER ONE, we are in an era of contested dominance. As Chief Bass mentioned, we have to remain mindful that we are living at an inflection point of contested global dominance. She stated how this has changed during her career, when she first enlisted nearly three decades ago, we, as U.S. military were almost double the size and manpower, focused on primarily one AOR in CENTCOM, in the three traditional domains of air, land, and sea.

Today, in 2021, the landscape is much different. We’re focused globally with peer and near-peer adversaries, with additional domains including space, cyber, and the information or disinformation domain. And this leads to greater complexity and challenges from a national security standpoint.

NUMBER TWO, the greatest competitive advantage is our people. Chief Bass emphasized this point throughout the interview. And that’s why her focus is on people, readiness, and culture, with the vision to grow the Airmen we need for 2030 and beyond. She reiterated that we need to inculcate a culture of innovation where we leverage the talent of our people. We need a culture that promotes innovation, not as a buzzword with a negative connotation, but genuine innovation that the U.S. Air Force has been delivering for over 70 years. And all Airmen are called upon to this duty.

The questions then become, how to modernize our force, improve capabilities, and draw the talent and innovation from our people to meet the national security objectives of the nation, especially as we continue to work through the global pandemic.

This leads me to my last point, NUMBER THREE. Resiliency is more important now than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has been with us for over a year now. While there finally looks to be light at the end of the tunnel, Chief Bass offered some great insights on how to improve your resiliency and to be mindful of the four comprehensive Airmen pillars of the physical, social, spiritual, and mental pillars. She highlighted utilizing routine with the same battle rhythm, such as with physical fitness and education. She mentioned to look to feed your body and your mind with the “Good stuff, not the bad stuff.”

Be mindful about your family’s needs. When we’re physically disconnected, we need more close family and friend time. Chief Bass said how she’s very guarded now about family time, which centers on the social pillar. She’s also using new technologies to stay connected like so many of us, including FaceTime, Zoom, and other apps for that eye-to-eye contact and connection.

[Upbeat Music].

That concludes our interview with Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, JoAnne Bass. Hopefully, it fed your brain with some of that good stuff for the last half an hour that Chief Bass was talking about. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Reporter Podcast. You can find this episode, transcription and show notes along with others at reporter.dodlive.mil . We welcome your feedback. Please subscribe to our show on iTunes or Stitcher and leave a review. This helps us grow, innovate, and develop an even better JAG Corps. Until next time.

Disclaimer:

Nothing from this show or any others should be construed as legal advice. Please consult an attorney for any legal issue. Nothing from this show is endorsed by the Federal Government, Air Force, or any of its components. All content and opinions are those of our guests and host. Thank you.

Glossary

• ABCD: Airmen Bureaucracy Competition and Design
• AFJAGS: Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School
• AOR: area of responsibility
• CENTCOM: U.S. Central Command
• CMSAF: Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force
• CSAF: Chief of Staff of the Air Force
• DSELC: Defense Senior Enlisted Leader Council
• EPME: Enlisted Professional Military Education
• JAG: judge advocate general
• LOE: line of effort
• PME: professional military education