Cultivating the can-do attitude Published June 5, 2007 By Lt. Col. Thomas Greetan 56th Rescue Squadron ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England -- After 21 years in the Air Force, nothing impresses me more than an Airman with a can-do attitude. The success or failure of every venture and mission you undertake is impacted by those you work with and depend on to get the job done. How and if the job gets done is all a matter of attitude. To cultivate the can-do attitude, I find three factors key -- respect, knowledge and patience. Respect -- An individual's attitude is a result of how they're treated. Life's a two way-street. If you treat everyone with respect and dignity, more often than not, you'll get the same respect in return. You'll also have someone willing to help you meet your needs. Let's say that you've had a bad day, you are late for work due to traffic, you have been chosen for a random urinalysis test and the boss added a few short notice taskers to your already long to-do list. You go to a work center on base and ask for assistance. When you get to the desk the individual waiting on you informs you they aren't allowed to provide what you asked for or you need additional data or paperwork. How you react at this time determines how difficult continuing this venture will become. If you start biting the head off the individual assisting you, you will negatively affect their attitude, possibly changing it from a can-do to a can't-do. That person may forget to tell you the paper you need is two feet away and takes less than a minute to accomplish. Treat them with respect and they may even fill it out for you. Knowledge - The Air Force is an organization with lots of rules and procedures. The more information you have on the rules and procedures, which may throw up barriers to your success, the better off you are. Where can you go to gain knowledge? Two places, the first being the Air Force Instructions. Take the time to learn what they say. They may prevent you from going down the wrong path to start. They may educate you on new paths you've never considered. Also, people find it easier to deal with someone who has tried to educate themselves on the topic at hand before coming to them. Second, go to the experts. Ultimately the individuals who you will be asking to help you accomplish the task are the experts. Treat them as such. Explain your vision for the task at hand and ask for help in refining it to stay within the rules. If you try to break the rules you'll find the level of help you will receive significantly decreases. You will also need a good dose of reality when it comes to finances and manpower. In this day of ever increasing budget cuts and dwindling manpower, getting tasks done has become a little more difficult, which leads us to the third category. Patience - A lot of great ventures fail simply because someone got tired of fighting the system. Work with the agencies, which support you and develop a realistic timeline for your venture. Some ventures can be done in days, some take weeks or even years. If you have established milestones and can see that you are actually getting progress you're more likely to stay engaged and ultimately accomplish what you've set out to do. Patience also means putting yourself in the supporting agencies shoes and understanding their limitations and priorities. No one likes to be last in line, but with enough patience everyone gets served.