During the second week of the Easter school holidays, Corporal Asbery attended the Senior Leaders course at Ohakea, he reports:-
“The senior leaders course is a leadership course and for the central region is held at RNZAF base Ohakea. The course runs for 1 week and we stay in individual barrack rooms for the duration of the course. We had a 6am wake up time and a 10pm “lights out” time, with the major theme of the course being self-management, so there was no wake up calls!
We were split into three syndicates in which we conducted our training, I was in Bravo syndicate, that the course staff promptly named us the ‘Bravo Smellies’ – nice! The course was made up of 3 training areas, each with their own terminal to test the course students. The first was IT (instructional technique) which was based entirely on classroom lessons, but it wasn’t too bad. We started with lessons by the staff, then we took our turns at instructing, starting with a practical lesson teaching our syndicate how to construct something in Origami before we moved on to harder subjects before the final assessment.
The next section of the course was Leadership, which started with some classroom lessons to teach us the basics of the planning acronym GSMEAC (Ground, Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin & Logistics and Commands & Signals) which we put into practice by conducting a leadership activity each within our syndicates, this was a lot of fun and after each exercise we had a group constructive criticism session so we could improve next time.
Then the next day we had our leadership terminals to test what we had learnt, I’m pleased to say we all passed this terminal and later in the day we got to visit the hangers with the new NH90’s and A109 helicopters, these were very cool to see close up!
Our final section of the course was NZCF Corps Senior NCO Parade Appointments, which effectively was carry out the role of a Flight SNCO on Parade. After this final terminal was finished, we learnt how to perform the new .22 Calibre Norinco rifle drill, before we prepared for the course final parade. At the final parade each attendee is called forward and congratulated on successfully passing the course by one of the Ohakea regular force officers – in our case it was WGCDR Neilsen RNZAF. This is followed by each attendee receiving their course certificate before drinks and snacks are served.
Unfortunately, I had to leave on the Friday evening, rather than Saturday morning like everyone else, so I said my goodbyes and hopped on the bus to come home. The experience was great, I made loads of new friends, and I had a very good time and some experiences I will never forget.”