Leading the way
Private John Wellfare talks with one of the instructors who helped start a quiet revolution in Air Force officer training.

 

FLTLT Glenn Buesnel-May teaches Australian Air Force history to students at the Officer Training School, Point Cook.

Photo by SGT Dave Grant

WHEN Flight Lieutenant Glenn Buesnel-May graduated from the Officers’ Training School in 2001, while his fellow graduates chatted excitedly with family and instructors about their future Air Force careers, he told one of his trainers, “I’ll be back”.

He said it without malice, but rather as a statement of his firm intention to return to the school and have an influence on the way future Air Force officers were trained.

Four years later, with an operational tour of the Solomon Islands as 2IC of No. 1 Joint Movement Group under his belt, Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May is a Course Director at the Point Cook-based school, and has been working with a highly talented team of officer and airman instructors to raise the bar for Air Force officer training.

“I was inspired, while I was a student here myself, to see that there were improvements that could be made to the culture [and] to the curriculum to justify our role as a centre of leadership,” he says of his motivation for helping change the system from within.

“When you contrast that against other leadership centres, I saw that OTS could be doing things much more effectively. I mean, we were pushing out the same product – future leaders.”

“So my passion is to see the school really fulfil its rightful place.”

Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May was no amateur at gauging leadership when he attended officer training. Having enlisted in the Air Force in 1990, he worked in a range of clerical positions in movements, warehousing and information technology.

During his corporal promotion course he was identified as an ideal candidate to become a facilitator with the Airmen Leadership Flight. After a gruelling three-day selection and three months of leadership and instructor training, he became a leadership facilitator, and later a course director with the Corporal promotion centre at Richmond, before being convinced by his OIC, then-Flight Sergeant Garry Cottle, to seek a commission. He was accepted in 2000 and came to OTS the next year. A difficult transition, he says.

“It was incredibly daunting because you have an image in your head of what it is to hold a commission – it’s built up to be quite a privileged position, and it is a privileged position.

“When I got [to the school], what was probably more daunting was that I had that contrast between airman leadership training and officer training and I felt that the school had a lot of scope to do things better and more effectively.

“That’s when I decided that I was coming back so that I could play a part in creating a centre of leadership that rates against other military leadership centres, such as Duntroon and Creswell, which I think is only fair to OTS.”

And shortly after his graduation from OTS, Professional Military Education and Training (PMET) provided some well-timed curricular improvements to make the OTS learning experience more relevant.

So, upon his return to OTS as a member of the directing staff last year, Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May teamed up with an equally enthusiastic group of current and newly appointed instructors to further examine the way the school and its curriculum was run and find ways of improving it.

One of the initiatives he designed was a peer development program, which empowers all unit members, including the civilians, to coach each other on their performance. The school now applies this program across its entire staff. This, he says, shows how open OTS is to embracing contributions from all staff, both service and civilian, in enhancing the way the school does business, and makes OTS a great place to work.

“A coaching and learning culture is something that can be found in all successful businesses and organisations right around the world, yet we didn’t have that type of culture,” he says. “So now we’ve started developing each other as staff members. We keep ourselves honest and working as an organisation to show our commitment to being a true learning organisation.”

Introducing the staff to an inward-looking philosophy also has a positive flow-on effect for the student body.
“One of the core focuses for the staff at this school has been to promote the importance of effective role-modelling.

“Being a positive role model is probably the most important function that any of the staff here perform and the students are very quick to pick it up when they don’t see it or where they feel there is a double standard. Also, we have the most committed civilian members, from supply personnel, to clerks and transport drivers, who show, by their personal examples, that the unit as a whole is honestly committed to effective role-modelling.

“That just highlights how important it is to be an effective role model, because as we say, we’re always on stage; students are always watching us, and for good reason.”

The OTS approach to developing new leaders is where a lot of progress has been made in recent years, with the work of the committed and enthusiastic staff. It’s an issue about which Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May is very passionate.

Gone are the days when creating good military people meant breaking them down and building them back up in the organisation’s image. For a start, he says, that doesn’t create thinking leaders.

“Another more tragic circumstance happens, and that is that a person stops being who they naturally are,” he says, and is quick to point out that the personal development approach to effective leadership training is not his idea.

“Harnessing individual abilities, it’s written in policy. We have a whole equity policy that says we should be making the most of people’s abilities, and a Chief who backs that with his own, well-publicised leadership philosophy of the Air Force valuing it’s people.

“Breaking them down and building them up in your own image – there is something, I believe, fatally flawed with that type of process.

“I know what the standards are and we don’t need to break these people down – every single one of them, to a man and woman, wants to have high standards and they want a challenge. They also want professionalism.

“So we harness their individual abilities – what they bring to Defence.

“The last thing we want to do is stifle their individuality or their individual persona in making them good military people.”

Officer cadets now learn a great deal about being a leader away from the classroom, and the commissioned instructors are not the only ones giving the lessons. A mix of airfield defence guards, military skills instructors and other airmen and women are posted to the school to provide the manpower behind the students’ introduction to core military skills.

“These people, time and time again, remind officers of the standards of leadership that they expect. That check and balance in a centre of leadership is fantastic.

“Being an officer and having a commission is about leadership. It’s about leading your teams, which are full of people of substantial experience.

“These people have awesome experience and the responsibility to effectively manage that experience should be taken quite seriously, because they deserve it.”

The stigma that was once attached to an instructional posting to OTS is most certainly beginning to fade and experienced officers are seizing the opportunity to play a part in the development of future Air Force leaders. Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May is quick to acknowledge the impressive wealth of talent and experience of his service and civilian colleagues.

“It’s a humbling experience, actually, to realise you are surrounded by such a wealth of operational and Service experience.”

Students are encouraged to succeed in the course using their individual talents and instructors work together to continually improve their approach to teaching. A training development flight makes sure everything on the training program is based on the latest doctrine and gives the students the knowledge they need to be effective junior officers and successful leaders.

Fifty-five years after the school was first formed, Flight Lieutenant Buesnel-May says, cringing at the catchphrase, it’s the beginning rather than the end.

“What’s important for prospective staff is the fact that a posting to OTS gives a great opportunity to positively influence the next generation of Air Force officers.

“Officers who have had the opportunity of being a member of directing staff leave here and go back as line officers where their students may eventually be their peers. So we are careful to help develop individuals into officers we would personally want to work with. It’s only natural.”

“These students are going into extraordinarily important roles and positions.

“Further down the track when they get down in the dirt, especially on deployment, they’ll have substantial influence on people’s lives. Knowing that you’ve done everything you possibly can to make sure that it’s a positive influence, I think that’s the privilege of working in a place like this.”

 

 

 

 

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