Fellow Mustangs, what did you find was the hardest part about making the jump from enlisted to officer?

The thing I had to remind myself the most often was to not do NCO stuff anymore. Over time, I got to watch how other NCOs both good and not deal with things. The "nots" I had a better insight as to what their problem was. Even then I forced myself not to jump in but rather have a sidebar with the SEL and let that lawn mower fire up. Make sure you take advantage of your experience to communicate correctly at the varied ENL levels. Being good at that will garner you the most respect and effectiveness. You have to set aside your NCO tools and work on your OFF tools. You should have an advantage. As you go along, help your peers understand as well. Spent a career doing that. So when I needed to have a dirtbag gone in a day, I knew exactly how to do that correctly. And when I needed to instantly help a wronged SM, knew how to do that too. The senior NCOs will be your biggest cheerleaders if you do that. Besides that, never be too senior to pick up a piece of trash and keep yourself squared away. Every promotion is evermore humbling. Everything you do, do for the right reason. That way, if you do 32 like me, you should be able to count the people who think you're an Alpha Hotel on one, maybe two hands. Everyone else will have become better because your were in their lives. And more of them will be alive.

As a successful NCO you probably had a bias for action. Make sure your bias now is for listening. You will hear greatness all around you. Your job is now to remove obstacles and let your NCO talent do their thing. One caveat is to remember that besides being a servant leader, you must also use situational leadership. There may be a time to take direct action, just be judicious.

27 years of enlisted experience is hard to change styles. I look more at the big picture as the job requires. Still weird for me. Remember your core values and you will be fine. One hard thing is being full time in the Guard you don't move much and you are now in charge over some you've worked with for a lot of years side by side. You got this CPT (Join to see) always available if you got question or need to bounce ideas.