By James McCarthy

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Keith James, 21 September 2018

It is a senior leader’s duty to mentor junior officers and prepare them to take the reins of the future force. The biggest challenge we face is where and how this mentorship will take place. Our most junior officers have been raised in an environment where social media and electronic messaging are the predominant methods of communication. While it will be imperative for senior leaders to gain confidence and competence in the digital realm, the possibility of mentorship ever becoming a solely electronic endeavor is something that should be discussed.

Colonel Raymond Kimball, author of, “The Army Officer’s Guide To Mentoring,” claims the transition to e-mentoring is logical due to the convenience of social media, the amount of time younger officers spend on these mediums, and the diminishing use of the O-club and squadron bars as centers of mentorship. To continue October’s theme of Digital Leadership, I reflected upon my e-mentorship experiences in the form of MyVector and Facebook and the effectiveness of each.

MyVector: Band-Aid Or Panacea?

In an attempt to “modernize” the mentorship process and connect more Airmen to potential mentors, the Air Force launched the MyVector tool, which allows the user (or protégé) to search for a mentor using 12 filters that include education, family status, duty location, and functional areas of expertise. The mentor, who has filled out a profile and volunteered to put themselves into the potential pool of candidates, will receive a notification with protégé contact information once they have been selected.

In 2016, a year after MyVector was released, I found myself in an all too familiar predicament. Most of the people I considered true mentors had either PCSd, retired, or had been put in positions that had severely cut into their free time. I wanted to use MyVector to build my connections outside of my present organization, so I signed up for an account. Once I was paired up with a mentor, we began where I was in my career and where I eventually wanted the Air Force to take me. I received some broad guidance about officership, staff duty, and my mentor’s current career track. He eventually concluded our back-and-forth discussion with an invitation to fire away if I had any further questions. Weeks between correspondences turned into months, which eventually turned into a year after I had PCSd to my new duty station and sent an email to check in. At a certain point, I felt that I was being more of a burden to my mentor than an engaged protégé, and haven’t sent an email back since.

Much of the struggle I experienced back then was due to unclear expectations. MyVector as a program works as advertised; I just didn’t know how to be a protégé or what to expect out of a mentor. This leads to a bigger issue that has been addressed by the Air Force Chief of Staff’s Team in their “Improving Air Force Squadrons/Recommendations for Vitality publication”: How and why to seek mentorship and how and why to mentor. I’m sure I would have been more motivated to interact with my mentor if we were at the same duty station and had a chance of meeting in person, but the distance, coupled with the unlikelihood of ever meeting in person, led me to temporarily abandon e-mentorship as a viable means of professional development.

I had the opportunity to discuss MyVector with several officers since I made my profile and the general consensus was that it was a great idea when it started. Forums were active with a few guest posts from O-6s in the community, but interest eventually waned and discussions eventually stopped. It’s difficult to determine if the release of MyVector was just a stopgap to a long-standing problem with mentorship in the Air Force or if the bureaucratic inertia of the Force is preventing us from fully embracing the technology as a means to professionally develop.

Mentoring A Friend: Facebook as a Method of Mentorship

The social nuances that must be navigated in order to connect with a superior or a subordinate are almost enough to dissuade people from going through the process of making initial contact. However, if we as a profession are going to take social media seriously, we should make our views on the use of social media clear to those we lead in order to have a common mindset and avoid misunderstandings. I’ve taken the approach of friending people I’ve had the opportunity to build a little bit of rapport with, but I know other officers that will wait until someone else sends them a request in order to avoid the awkwardness of a supervisor asking a subordinate to be a “friend.” Either way, Facebook can be an excellent way for mentors and protégés to keep in touch with one another. Presently, many senior leaders are hesitant to engage professionally on Facebook or use it solely for interactions with family members. With the addition of restricted lists and the ability to modify who sees posts, the fear of Facebook revealing unsavory content can be allayed.

I have used Facebook as a mentor and a protégé. It helps determine what a person values and gives insight into their character. Facebook feels more natural than the ham-handedness of MyVector or any other tool to be used solely for mentoring. If we start embracing Social Media as a method to communicate and mentor our troops instead demonizing it as a threat to OPSEC or a step away from fraternization, we can start restoring that family-like atmosphere that was present in squadrons past.

Committing To A Path

Whichever way the Air Force chooses, MyVector or a serious commitment to a different social media platform, our ultimate focus needs to be on developing joint leaders and emphasizing purposeful leadership. The best way to do that is to bring those lessons to our where our target audience currently spends a significant amount of their time and turn the group page into the new O-Club.

James McCarthy is a Senior Director and Flight Commander for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System’s 12thAir Command and Control Squadron. He has previously served as Executive Officer and Fighter Allocator for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s only multinational flying squadron. When he’s not trying to figure out how to be a mentor and a protégé, James is with his wife Christina, at their home in Warner Robins, Georgia.