Relieve of Command

How has the relief of a commander affected you or your unit?
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This is a good example of to understanding the finer points and subtlety that is required to be a tactful leader. It requires a keen understanding of people and the structure of their relationships and how you need to be able to cultivate them to become effective.
If you lead, you lead from the front. You take responsibility for your actions both good and bad, you must own them. Mistakes will happen, it's an inevitability. Pride is not the opposite of shame, it is the source. And the only cure to that is humility.
Another key point is you never give someone a task that you're not willing to do personally. For example, there is a story about the Crew Chief of a B-52 that had major concerns regarding the negligence of one of his pilots. The pilot had a history of making dangerous and risky maneuvers in an aircraft that was not designed to handle the maneuvers he was attempting to put them through. The crew chief wanted to get a pilot grounded but the pilot had friends in higher places than his crew chief. The crew chief's concerns were repeatedly turned down or ignored by his superiors.
I believe the incidental about the reference happened at Fairchild Air base. There was supposed to be a flight demonstration or air show in which members of the crew's families were allowed to attend.
The crew chief desperately wanted to ground that pilot but was unable to do so. He had the option to not board the flight. But of course this meant somebody would have to take his place. He was so concerned about the pilot's discrepancies and negligence, he chose to board the flight because he did not want to subject someone else to be on that flight. Unfortunately what ended up happening was upon taking off, due to a irregularity the base's lay out a nuclear facility was stationed on the Air base. Pilots cannot fly over nuclear sites such as those so the pilot had to perform a very sharp maneuver that the plane was not designed to handle. In the video you can see the plane banking too hard to it's Port side that it begins to lose lift. They were not at proper altitude to even be able to attempt to recover the dive. Unfortunately the plane had crashed and there were no survivors. What kills me about the story is that the crew chief's family was there that day in the stands and they had just watched him die. I respect that man's decision to confront the problem and not pass the responsibility off to someone else. I applaud this man's commitment to his morals and ethics, his conviction is inspiring.
The man I'm referring to is Lt. Col. McGeehan. And I think, he may have been a co-pilot, not a crew chief.