Zander's Inside Voice

The best compliment I ever received was from a person who didn’t like me very much. We had a couple run-ins at a previous base and then he became the squadron commander at a deployed unit I left just as he was arriving. The combat flying crew I had been leading was doing really well and swept all the award categories for the month that I had started leading them in. And then several people from my crew won awards for the entire deployment. This person specifically forwarded me the email after he sent it to the entire squadron and said he was proud of the hard work I did in getting the crew prepared for the deployment. He was proud of the way I led them and the way they were continuing to perform after I left. I was blown away. He didn’t think I was capable of much prior to this point.