557th Weather Wing holds annual commanders’ summit

  • Published
  • By Paul Shirk
  • 55th Wing Public Affairs

The 557th Weather Wing held its fourth annual commanders’ summit at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, Feb. 27 – March 1, 2018.

Squadron leaders from across the 557th WW gathered to discuss leadership priorities, including weather operations, readiness, cyber operations and professional development.

“It’s important to be able to sit down and talk about what's going on in the world – how it impacts every squadron in the wing, and have that cross conversation and sharing of ideas about how we're going to react to world events,” said Col. Steven Dickerson, 557th WW commander.

Professional development was a major topic during the summit. Airmen from the wing’s 19 geographically-separated units around the world were able to call into a mentorship town hall hosted by a panel of the wing’s chief master sergeants. The group answered questions on resiliency, maintaining a work-life balance, training, standards and readiness.

When the question of how to cope with difficult days at work was presented, Chief Master Sgt. James Slisik, 2nd Weather Group superintendent, provided advice.

“Know that you’re not alone,” Slisik said. “Whatever you’re facing today, odds are that someone to the left, right, front or behind you has been through something similar. There’s people out there you can turn to who can help you through those times.”

Defining the wing’s path forward was also a point of discussion.

“I got a lot of great input from our commanders,” Dickerson said. “One of the great things about bringing our commanders in is that I was trying to put together our vectors for 2018 and better align them with the Air Force chief of staff’s and Air Combat Command's priorities,” Dickerson said. “We had some really great discussions on what I had put together in terms of draft vectors, and we refined those so that we're all on the same page and we're getting the right guidance to our squadrons.”

The 557th WW is the DOD’s only weather wing. The wing conducts centralized reachback weather operations, global modeling, climatological analysis and projection and solar threat warning to optimize total force mission execution for the Air Force, Army, all geographic and functional combatant commands, the national intelligence community and other interagency activities.