Leadership Material

'That's nonsense, sir. I have nothing against flyers. I don't know many, and I have little interaction with them, so how can I have a bias against them?'

'My job as board president is to make sure there is no adverse bias or favoritism being exercised by the panel members,' Ingemanson reminded him. 'I look at the rater's individual average scores. Generally, everyone comes within ten or fifteen percent of the average. If it doesn't, I ask the rater to come in for a chat. I just wanted to make sure everything is okay.'

'Everything is fine, sir. I assure you, I'm not biasing my scores in any way. I'm calling them like I see them.'

'A flyer didn't run over your cat or run off with your wife… er, pardon me, Colonel. I forgot-you're divorced. My apologies.'

'No offense taken, sir.'

'I'm once divorced too, and I joke about it constantly-way too much, I'm afraid.'

'I understand, sir,' Norman said, without really understanding. 'I'm just doing my job the way I see it needs to be done.'

Ingemanson's eyes narrowed slightly at that last remark, but instead of pursuing it further, he smiled, rubbed his hands energetically, and said, 'That's good enough for me, then. Thanks for your time.'

'You aren't going to ask me to change any of my scores? You're not going to ask me how I score a candidate?'

'I'm not allowed to ask, and even if I was, I don't really care,' the two-star general said, smiling. 'Your responsibility as a member of this board is to apply the secretary's MOI to the best of your professional knowledge, beliefs, and abilities. I certify to the Secretary of the Air Force that all board members understand and are complying with the Memorandum of Instruction, and I have to certify this again when I turn in the board's results. My job when I find any possible discrepancies is to interview the board member. If I find any evidence of noncompliance with the MOI, I'll take some action to restore fairness and accuracy. If it's a blatant disregard of the MOI, I might ask you to rescore some of the candidates, but the system is supposed to accommodate wild swings in scoring.

'I'm satisfied that you understand your responsibilities and are carrying them out. I cannot change any ratings, try to instruct you in how to rate the candidates, or try to influence you in any way about how to carry out your responsibilities, as long as you're following the MOI. End of discussion. Have a nice day, Colonel.'

Norman got to his feet, and he shook hands with General Ingemanson when he offered it. But before he left, Norman turned. 'I have a question, sir.'

'Fire away.'

'Did you have this same discussion with anyone else… say, Colonel Ponce?'

General Ingemanson smiled knowingly. Well well, he thought, maybe he's not as stuck in the world between his ears as he thought. 'As a matter of fact, Colonel, I did. We spoke last Saturday evening at the O Club over a few drinks.'

'You spoke with Colonel Ponce about the board, at the Officers' Club?'

Ingemanson chuckled, but more out of exasperation than humor.

'Colonel, this is not a sequestered criminal jury,' he said. 'We're allowed to speak to one another outside the Selection Board Secretariat. We're even allowed to discuss promotion boards and the promotion process in general- just not any specifics on any one candidate or anything about specific scores, or attempt to influence any other board members. You probably haven't noticed, but Slammer spends just about every waking minute that he's not sitting the panel at the Club. That seemed to me the best place to corral him.'

' 'Slammer'?'

'Colonel Ponce. That's his call sign. I thought you two knew each other?'

'We were assigned to the same wing, once.'

'I see.' Ingemanson filed that tidbit of information away, then said with a grin, 'If I'd run into you at the Club, Norman, I would've spoken to you there too. You seem to spend most of your time in your VOQ or out jogging. Neither is conducive to a heart-to-heart chat.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Harry and I have crossed paths many times-I guess if you've been around as long as we have in the go-fast community, that's bound to happen. I've got seven years on the guy, but he'll probably pin on his first star soon. He might have been one of the Provisional Wing commanders out in Saudi Arabia or Turkey if he wasn't such a hot-shit test pilot. He designed two weapons that were developed in record time and used in the war. Pretty amazing work.' Norman could tell Ingemanson was mentally reliving some of the times they'd had together, and it irritated Norman to think that he could just completely drift off like that-take a stroll down Memory Lane while talking to another officer standing right in front of him.

'Anyway,' Ingemanson went on, shaking himself out of his reverie with a satisfied smile, 'we spoke about his scores. They're a little skewed, like yours.'

'All in favor of the flyers, I suppose.'

'Actually, he's too hard on flyers,' Ingemanson admitted. 'I guess it's hard to measure up with what that man's done over his career, but that's no excuse. I told him he's got to measure the candidates against each other, not against his own image of what the perfect lieutenant colonel-selectee is.'

'Which is himself,' Norman added.

'Probably so,' Ingemanson said, with a touch of humor in his eyes. He looked at Norman, and the humor disappeared. 'The difference is, Slammer is measuring the candidates against a rigid yardstick-himself, or at least his own image of himself. On the other hand, you-in my humble nonvoting opinion-are not measuring the candidates at all. You're chipping away at them, finding and removing every flaw in every candidate until you come up with a chopped-up thing at the end. You're not creating anything here, Colonel-you're destroying.'

Norman was a little stunned by Ingemanson's words. He was right on, of course-that was exactly Norman's plan of attack on this board: Start with a perfect candidate, a perfect '10,' then whittle away at their perfection until reaching the bottom-line man or woman. When Ingemanson put it the way he did, it did sound somewhat defeatist, destructive-but so what? There were no guidelines. What right did he have to say all this?

'Pardon me, sir,' Norman said, 'but I'm not quite clear on this. You don't approve of the way I'm rating the candidates?'

'That's not what I'm saying at all, Colonel,' Ingemanson said. 'And I didn't try to correct Slammer either-not that I could even if I tried. I'm making an unofficial, off-the-record but learned opinion, on a little of the psychology behind the scoring if you will. I have no authority for any of this except for my experience on promotion boards and the fact that I'm a two-star general and you have to sit and listen to me.' He smiled, trying to punctuate his attempt at humor, but Weir wasn't biting. 'I'm just pointing out to you what I see.'

'You think I'm destroying these candidates?'

'I'm saying that perhaps your attitude toward most of the candidates, and toward the flyers in particular, shows that maybe you're gunning them down instead of measuring them,' Ingemanson said. 'But as you said, there's no specific procedure for scoring the candidates. Do it any way as you see fit.'

'Permission to speak openly, sir?'

'For Pete's sake, Colonel… yes, yes, please speak openly.'

'This is a little odd, General,' Norman said woodenly. 'One moment you criticize my approach to scoring the candidates, and the next moment you're telling me to go ahead and do it any way I want.'

'As I said in my opening remarks, Colonel Weir-this is your Air Force, and it's your turn to shape its future,' Ingemanson said sincerely. 'We chose you for the board: you, with your background and history and experience and attitudes and all that other emotional and personal baggage. The Secretary of the Air Force gave you mostly nonspecific guidelines for how to proceed. The rest is up to you. We get characters like you and we get characters like Slammer Ponce working side by side, deciding the future.'

'One tight-ass, one hard-ass-is that what you're saying?'

'Two completely different perspectives,' Ingemanson said, not daring to get dragged into that most elegant, truthful observation. 'My job is to make sure you are being fair, equitable, and open-minded. As long as you are, you're in charge-I'm only the referee, the old man what's in charge. I give you the shape of one man's opinion, like Eric Sevareid used to say. End of discussion.' Ingemanson glanced at his watch, a silent way of telling Norman to get the hell out of his office before the headache brewing between his eyes grew any worse. 'Have a nice day,