News United States Air Force
 Marvel’s Black Panther sets the tone for leaders everywherePublished April 4, 2018
                        
                        By  Col. Cherie Roff
                        
                        
                        315th Mission Support Group Commander
                **JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. (AFNS)  --**
                My family and I had movie night a couple of weeks ago and as I was watching, I was immediately struck by the leadership modeling prevalent in the movie.
For years, Air Force Professional Military Education has had leaders watch the movie “Twelve O’Clock High” as a portrayal of leadership examples, as part of the curriculum.  
“Twelve O’Clock High,” a World War II depiction of leadership challenges, is now dated, and in my opinion, boring and not relevant to our up and coming leaders.  I feel, we now have a new, much more exciting movie that should be on the PME listing for leadership movies, Marvel’s “Black Panther.”  
The movie represented a very good depiction of status-quo leader example in the main character T’Challa/Black Panther, in his focus to protect his people, he would not change the paradigms of the past to meet the demands of the future. 
The change agent or courageous leader example is the love interest Nakia, who wanted to help the world by sharing of the technology and improvements, by seeing a vision of the future and what it could be.  
The integrity dilemma leader is the commanding General Okoye, who struggled with a responsibility to uphold her position and not challenge the leader, even knowing that it was wrong for her people.  
And finally, the toxic leader is the villain Erik Killmonger, who by winning the contest of strength became the leader yet he did not care about the people unless it benefited him.
I found it very fascinating that this story contained such great examples of what we are trying to teach our young leaders.  I was also amazed at how quickly the leadership models could be identified and as the movie played out. I am reminded of the discussions we often have on leadership and the examples we desire in our leaders.  
We all desire our leaders to be inspirational and set a vision of an achievable goal greater than themselves.  Unfortunately, leaders often fall short only continuing with the status-quo, because they are distracted by the day to day tasks and fires that need to be managed.
The courageous leader is the one we admire, the one who faces bad news without giving up and takes on difficult situations with confidence in their people and can reach their goal.  
The integrity dilemma is something all leaders face in day to day scenarios and represents the leader who has to maintain their integrity, even when it would be easy or convenient not to.  
Lastly, no leader wants to be defined as a toxic leader, but some leaders can get caught up in the drive towards the mission objective and they forget about the people behind the mission.  
So, I would challenge you as you watch “Black Panther” to look at the leadership displayed by the characters and determine your path to that inspirational and courageous leader.  If you do, we will all cheer as the good guys win.Air Force 



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JB Charleston