JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – What do you get when the Department of the Air Force works on rolling out updated performance report guidance? More than 150 senior noncommissioned officers and technical sergeants hungry to learn more.

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson’s Air Force Sergeants Association Chapter 1473 hosted its initial narrative bullet writing professional development seminar Oct. 25.

Though official guidance is still on its way, AFSA teamed up with guest speaker Chief Master Sgt. Wendy Thi, the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Manpower & Reserve Affairs, who helped develop of one of the Airman Leadership Qualities writing guides.

“I had offered to help AFSA members practice narrative writing in my efforts to contribute to AFSA, since I am an advocate for helping chapters with their professional development and membership sessions,” Thi explained. “AFSA has done so much for my career, so I give back where I can.”

As part of her seminar, Thi briefed senior NCOs from not only the 673d Air Base Wing and 3rd Wing, but Air Force tenant units as well, like the 373d Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, on emerging guidance so they can be prepared for 2023 requirements.

“We knew this was a hot topic, and we had this opportunity, so we jumped right on it,” said Master Sgt. Jonnie Powell, 673d Force Support Squadron Operations flight chief and AFSA Chapter 1473 president. “This was a focus for senior NCOs, because we’re the ones pushing down and enforcing policy, and what that standard is going to look like. We want to make sure that we can explain this, so when our Airmen and junior NCOs have questions, we’re all collectively on the same page delivering the same message.”

Guidance changes quickly. Even during the seminar, Thi explained how her briefing had been tailored even more just since her last seminar with SNCOs a month prior at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

“Official guidance can shape the specifics, but in the meantime, we can practice how to strengthen our writing muscle,” Thi said. “In the military, we are constantly evolving, so I think it is important to help people strengthen the muscles of practicing techniques in a safe space. It is important to me to convey that we are partners in this together, and the more we practice at this, the better we get at it.”

So, what exactly is narrative bullet writing? Technically, the Air Force has been engaging in narrative writing for decades.

“We’ve always written in narrative style,” said Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass at the 2021 Air Force Association Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “We have different documents that we write throughout the Air Force, our emails are narrative-style, and if you go look back at where we came from on our evaluations, we used to write in narrative style.”

Guidance has already been released for award packages, according to a SecAF Public Affairs article. However, this guidance will not be used for Department of the Air Force-level awards already announced as bullet-style inside the award criteria.

This means that, except for certain DAF-level awards, we will write quarterly and annual awards with narrative form, and annual performance reports in 2023. Once official guidance has been released, JBER leadership will publish local guidance.

This makes it easier to see what Air Force personnel have actually done.

“It gets back to a clear writing style, especially when you’re talking about a simple sentence structure that really paints a picture,” Powell said. “Can you really describe to me who you are as an NCO and how strong your accomplishments are? The [previous] bullet writing style had gotten packed with numbers, but it really doesn’t speak to who you are.”

Both Powell and Chief Master Sgt. Blake Edwards, the 381st Intelligence Squadron senior enlisted leader, have been through two prior EPR format changes, making narratives their third change.

“When I was a brand-new Airman, I couldn’t understand why we were writing the way we were writing,” Edwards said. “Switching to a narrative is a step in the right direction because the standard answer of ‘because that’s the way we’ve always been doing it’ is not the right way to continue doing things that don’t make sense.”

Edwards went on to explain that narrative form gives leaders a chance to get creative and the freedom they need to explain, in plain English, what their Airmen do on a daily basis.

“I’ve been in the Air Force for 21 years, and we’re doing our Airmen a disservice, especially the ones who you know want to get out after a few years and go into the civilian world,” Edwards said. “They can’t just print out their evaluations from the time they’ve been in the military and hand it to their boss and say, ‘here’s all the stuff I did.’”

Edwards hopes with the narrative format, employers on the outside can understand what prior-military personnel have done throughout their careers.

Just in the last 10 years, abbreviations, short-form, and slang have become the norm. Unlearning those habits is critical not only for assisting Airmen, but for NCOs as well – but it will require effort and time, leaders say.

“It’s going to take practice,” Powell said. “You have to get to a place where you’re comfortable doing something that’s uncomfortable. Have someone mentor and help guide you, and you have to be coachable when you’re doing it.”

Edwards added that transitioning to grammatically correct sentence structure may be difficult at first, “because it’s not something we have put a ton of focus on teaching our Airmen in the past.”

“That will require us to do some extra research, homework, and classes on how to write properly, but at the end of the day we’re still grading our Airmen based on the Airman Leadership Qualities, and how proficient they are in accomplishing the mission,” Edwards added. “We’re not changing a whole lot, we’re just changing the way we write from a cryptic style that only Airmen can read, to a structure and style that everyone can understand.”

As her parting advice, Thi added it’s important to always strive provide meaningful feedback to one another.

“Deliver it from a position that conveys how much we value each person as a member in our profession of arms,” Thi said. “We are developing Airmen who are charged to withstand the rigors of war, and their actions, decisions and behaviors will be driven by how we set expectations for them, how we measure their progress, and how we continue to develop one another through feedback.”

As the Air Force continues to solidify official guidance on narrative form, the new ALQ evaluations will roll out in February and May 2023 respectively for colonel and chief master sergeant evaluations.