JBLM Leader Development Course inspires base supervisors

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – About 26 Joint Base Lewis-McChord supervisors completed the base’s Leader Development Course on May 16 at Crittenberger Career Center on Lewis Main.

The course, first held in April 2023 and run by Deborah Starr-Calhoun, JBLM’s Workforce Development Program specialist, included presentations by garrison and directorate leaders and a communications professional development training service to further equip installation supervisors.

Tom Tolman, Master Planning Division chief for JBLM’s Directorate of Public Works, was part of the May cohort. He took about 50 pages of notes, “which for me, is a mark of how great the course is,” he said.

“There was just so much great information that was shared,” Tolman said. “We get all kinds of training on the technical stuff, but it’s really not very often that we get the training on how to lead and how to manage teams effectively, so this was just awesome.”

Starr-Calhoun had been running the base’s FORGE training program, for new civilian hires, for about a year when she started to see some patterns in feedback regarding inconsistencies in the way Department of the Army civilian standards and best practices were carried out.

“A consistent theme was, ‘Things aren’t happening in my work site the way I learned in FORGE,’” she said.

So, Starr-Calhoun kept track of the inconsistencies and was asked by a former chief of staff to start formulating ideas to help solve the problem. She brought together a team of directorate leaders and eventually, a five-day version of FORGE for supervisors was decided upon.

Then, it was Starr-Calhoun’s turn to develop the course for all supervisors in the garrison, regardless of tenure or grade, to encourage peer mentorship. The only exceptions were the major directorates’ heads.

“So, everyone else would have to participate at some point,” Starr-Calhoun said. “Now that we have all of the supervisors done, we’re just taking on the handful of people we missed, and new supervisors should go to the next LDC that they can take.”

The course is being opened to installation partners, including the JBLM Network Enterprise Center, 404th Army Field Support Brigade and I Corps, which helps build relationships, she said.

“There’s a lot of relationship building happening in the cohorts where supervisors and leaders from one directorate will meet people from other directorates and, in many cases, those folks are staying in touch and expanding their base of peers, and there is a lot of peer mentorship that happens,” Starr-Calhoun said.

Darren Powell, director of Prevention and Resiliency Office, was the first Air Force civilian employee to attend the course in May. He described it as “absolutely phenomenal.”

Powell said he left the course “feeling like I was a better leader, a better supervisor and just in general, more connected.”

The connections Powell made with leadership as a director on a joint base was “super helpful as far as networking and bridging the gap between the two sides,” he said.

“Hopefully we can make it a mandatory thing for our new supervisors,” Powell said. “I just came out of a meeting where I talked it up.”

Cass Castellion, deputy director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation’s Sports, Fitness and Aquatics, said networking – “Building those relationships with other individuals outside of my direct position, as well as the direct MWR staffing” – was one of her key takeaways from the May course.

“A lot of the course was very, very focused on communication and just ensuring that you’re effectively communicating what you need with all the information or resources that you have available to you,” she said.

Castellion, Powell and Tolman said they would recommend the LDC to others.

Tolman was excited to attend the course as others who had attended told him it was a good program.

“Beyond that, I know Deborah and I know the work that they do over there, and they just always do everything phenomenally at Work Force Development,” he said. “It still exceeded my expectations.”

The best part of the LDC for Tolman was communications and briefing training.

“I’m constantly sharing presentations and briefing others, so it was just great to have more concrete tools,” he said. “As a civilian, I’ve not been in the military on active duty and we don’t get a lot of the training that the military members get on briefings and conciseness and how all that works, so it was really, really helpful to be able to understand how to communicate better.”

The course brings value to Army civilians outside of JBLM, too.

“It has been briefed to U.S. Army Installation Management Command Directorate-Readiness and briefed to a Workforce Development collaborative team from multiple installations,” Starr-Calhoun said.

The next LDC is scheduled for Aug. 18-22. Questions about the course can be sent to usarmy.jblm.id-readiness.mbx.wfd@army.mil.