Brandon Williams: From Fighter Pilot to Business Leader

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Now think about operating with a formation of two or three other jets that you'reresponsible for, you're leading, and you're going into environments, whether it's weather,
whether it's combat, now you're worried about the enemy, whether it's terrain if you'reflying down low, and you're trying to organize this mission and keep all these pieces
going.
Meanwhile, this airplane's throwing all this data at you.

(00:22):
I mean, it's just not an environment that the human brain was ever designed to operate.
Welcome to the Badass Leaders podcast.
And today we have a truly exceptional guest, Brandon Williams.
Brandon is a decorated U.S.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, former F-15E fighter pilot, and an expert in leadership andhuman performance.

(00:46):
With hundreds of combat hours over Iraq and Afghanistan, he knows what it takes to lead inhigh pressure, high stakes environments.
Now, as they sought after a keynote speaker,
business coach and leadership strategist, Brandon helps organizations navigate complexity,uncertainty and change using the same principles that fighter pilots rely on.

(01:09):
From building high-performing teams to fostering a just culture of accountability,Brandon's insights are invaluable for any business leader looking to elevate their game.
Now, if you're new to the podcast, welcome to our community.
We're thrilled you've taken time out of your day to learn and grow with us.
Before you forget, take a moment to click that subscribe button to ensure you stayconnected with the Badass Leaders community.

(01:37):
So join me, Angela Gilnalms, on today's episode of the Badass Leaders podcast.
where I'm joined each week by industry experts for intimate and eye-opening discussionsabout the challenges and joys facing the leaders of today.
Listen in and get ready to scale your company, grow your brand, and unlock your fullbadass potential.

(02:05):
keep her happy in studio as well.
So much better than we were talking about in virtual.
Absolutely.
Well, welcome to AGM Studios.
Thank you.
We have Brandon Williams here for the Badass Leaders podcast.
And as usual, I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell us why you're with ustoday.
Yes, well again, Angela, thank you so much for having us are having me here.

(02:26):
Brandon Williams, the fighter pilot speaker, so leadership speaker, as you know, and we mymission or my goal with my speaking through keynotes, workshops and leadership coaching is
developing leaders of high performing and high reliability organizations.
So building high performing leaders and that's through all aspects of leadership.

(02:50):
You know, from helping people drive their focus, their clear intent for their teams, as Icall it, decision making, situational awareness, driving accountability through mutual
support.
And then of all, part of the most important thing is how we improve or how our teamsimprove through the debrief, the fighter pilot debrief.

(03:12):
So obviously my speaking by everything I do is number one, based on my time as a fighterpilot.
how we operated, led, executed in very dynamic, uncertain and complex environments.
Cause that's the type of environments that most all leaders operate in some form today.
But also it's based on the science behind why that works.

(03:33):
So I'm also a professor in human factors, which human factors is really the study of why,how we, or why we as humans make certain decisions we do, how those environments affect us
and why we make decisions.
what affects us and what drives what we call human error.
So being a professor in that for almost 14 years now, and then my time as a fighter pilotin an aviation and everything else combining those two, you know, how we build our leaders

(03:59):
to lead high performing teams, but also, like I said, it's the science behind it.
So how leaders, because I always say that, and it's called human factors leadershipbecause leaders have to understand the human factors of leadership.
And that's how we really drive better performance within our teams because
I always say this, but no professional shows up to work saying, I'm going to make amistake or I'm going to make a, a bad day today.

(04:23):
Right.
There's always some human factor there, whether it's fatigue, mental, physical, know,complacency, lack of communication, something that's distracting us from making the right
decision there.
So that's what I do.
That's how I talk to, again, keynotes and workshops primarily, and also leadershipcoaching is, is what I do.

(04:44):
See, you've had a boring life most of your life, is basically what I'm here
I mean, it's all relative, right?
Yeah.
I think there's, could have done a lot more things too as well.
Yes.
Fighter pilot, well that's really boring.
Okay, first off, let's roll back a little bit.
Tell us who you are as a human being outside of fighter pilot, active pilot, instructor,all of that.

(05:09):
Who are you when you were, I don't know, a Saturday morning relaxing, who are you in thoseinstances?
So just going way back, first of all, I'm actually from here, from the Atlanta, Georgiaarea.
so you're an actual native.
I am.
So grew up here.
Obviously went through high school.

(05:30):
Southside.
I grew up in Fett County, Fettville, Georgia.
Yeah.
So that's where I grew up.
graduated high school.
won't say the year.
Probably close to where I graduated, so I think we're good.
Graduated high school went on to the United States Air Force Academy before I went tocollege.
Obviously served in the Air Force.
I was active duty for about 12 years.

(05:53):
Got married also in there.
In that early days of the Air Force, we had our first child, my daughter, when I was stillin the Air Force.
And then we got out, had my son soon after we got out.
After that, as we were talking about earlier, became a major airline pilot as well.
moved to the back to the Atlanta, Georgia area, started my business around that same timeor got into the speaking business, I should say around that same time.

(06:19):
So again, been doing that since gosh, 2013 in that business as well, about the same timeas airlines and everything else.
So that's who I am, where I come from, what I do.
But to answer your question, you know, I just said I have a, a daughter and a son.
So my daughter, she is a 15.
My son is 11.

(06:41):
And Saturdays and everything we do is really spent.
They're in that age now where they're full up into activities, whether it's dance for mydaughter, my son, and right now soccer and basketball.
And he's always into something, you know, a lot of times with him was coaching, helpingout with that, doing things with them.
So it really does a revolve around my family and being a dad and obviously a husband aswell.

(07:03):
So that's, that is, is, that is the priority.
Obviously that is, that is the most important.
And, I always say, cause everybody's always like, why do you have time for.
You do all this stuff and things like that.
And I do, and it does look busy on the outside, but I heard somebody talk about this theother day and I don't remember who it was, but they talked about instead of work life
balance, you know, kind of calling it work life integration.

(07:25):
And so it's like, you know, say you're, know, in this day and age, like you got forChristmas, for example, say we got two weeks off.
This is great.
I'm going to unplug for two weeks.
Well, are you really completely unplugging for two weeks?
know, yes, of course you're not, you don't want to be, you know,
Christmas day, you know, doing work, things like that.
it's really, you know, how are you doing little things to get yourself better at whateveryou do?

(07:46):
And honestly, your professional life, your wherever that be work or whatever, as we allknow, that should be something you really enjoy.
I do.
Right.
So work life balance kind of you kind of get this picture of I'm either working or I'mliving my personal life versus how do we integrate those a little bit?
You know, for example, I've taken my son.

(08:07):
just recently this is great my airline job took him on a trip with me that is
That is how we connected.
You posted a photo of that on LinkedIn.
I commented and said, I love this.
And he reached out to me.
And I actually I talked about, don't know if I mentioned that post, but I think I'd saidsomething about the work life integration.
And I just thought it was a great example.

(08:29):
And I've taken, you know, when I go and speaking events, I've taken my wife before, if itworked out, the kids are a little older now.
So sometimes it's harder with their school and schedule, but trying to work it in andtrying to show them what I do and, things like that.
So I, know, but you asked about the Saturdays and like you wake up, what do you do?
That's, what it revolves around is what is going on in my family now with.

(08:49):
sports, we're typically doing something on the weekends with their activity, which is justawesome.
and then other things I just try to find, you know, I I'm big into working out, stayinghealthy and always doing things like that.
I got into a jujitsu a couple of years ago, so I love that now I'm a blue belt, but stillvery, very, I consider myself a beginner.

(09:10):
you know, I, but always trying to stay active and things like that.
So I think that's outside of professional stuff.
What I
you know, strive to be and strive to do.
And my mom lives close to us now.
you know, helping her with things and being close to her and things like that.
yep.
Staying involved in the community and you know, as much as I can, my local outside the OTPoutside the perimeter town.

(09:34):
That's still local.
Right, right.
In Woodstock, Georgia.
But being there and being involved in the community, you know, how you can give back andthings like that.
So.
Okay, so we're gonna get back to leadership.
in to I love the reality that you know, they say if you want something done, give it tothe busiest person that you know.

(09:55):
Yes.
And I can appreciate everything you've said, because it looks a lot like my own life withmy, my job at by velocity, my consulting and keynote speaking and the work I do my podcast
and my community work with my church and in my local community.
And I heard something this weekend, I'm not going to get it accurate, but it was somethingabout when what is the difference between a job and joy, right?

(10:23):
Something and I think it is surrounding parts of your life with that joy, right?
Those joyful moments.
And so my question, is
going into daily habits.
So I've really been focusing on in 2025, trying to go back to my daily routines, right andstarting my mornings with mindful mornings and those healthy habits that I know

(10:48):
scientifically, right?
We're both engineers, right?
You're both really into science.
So tell us some of your healthy habits that you find give you the energy and themotivation to do all that you do.
Right.
Well, I think right now my focus and just like you said, I'm constantly, I guess, tryingto refine that and trying to find the perfect balance and what's going to work for me and

(11:14):
where I need to
comment.
That's one I don't want to say anything.
But I think, you know, right now that focus is with the change I'm trying to make is, andI do this a lot anyway, when I am home, obviously, with my both my main jobs, traveling,
obviously, is almost exclusively on the road.
Trying to when I am home is be up, you know, in the morning with the kids before they goto school and where there's drive my daughter to school.

(11:42):
Um, you know, she's in that age now where, where I'm not so cool anymore at the time or,know, all that, always the possible, but for whatever reason, those drives is when she
would, a lot of times kind of we get the conversation started.
So even if it's just 10, 15 minutes, I'm taking her to school and back or, know, orwhatever it is, go take her to Starbucks on the way there and doing that.

(12:03):
So that's, that's kind of the thing I'm trying to do.
And why I say trying to do it is because a lot of times my schedule, if I finish a tripand I get in late at night, right, get home late.
Well, I do again, health kind of a sidebar, but a health standpoint, uh, several yearsago, read a book and it changed my life on how I viewed sleep.
So making sleep a priority.

(12:23):
So I, I, I am very much big on striving to get that eight hours.
It doesn't always happen, but that's a big deal for me.
So if I get in late and the kids are out in school and I may sleep in a little later andnot see them.
but going back to that is when I can enable making that time happen outside of that.
I am a Christian and so I do like to start every morning and I'm fully honest, I don'talways get to do this and I don't always do it, but starting with a devotional and then

(12:53):
take some of time to reflect on that, you know, pray on that.
And I just, don't know what it is and I can't put my finger on it, but it seems like whenI do that most of the time, it's not that the amount of work changes, it just seems that
everything just kind of flows a little better.
If that makes sense or just...
There's science
Struggles kind of just yes, they're still there, but they kind of just I don't want to saymake it easier, but they just kind of flow you're kind of expecting it you just kind of

(13:19):
you're just moving you're just kind of clicking a little bit and things like that, soThat's also been the biggest, know thing I've tried to reinforce and focus on and then My
reading I I love reading but I'm one of these people It's a very slow reader and my wifecan sit down here like a whole book in a day And I've always since I was little just been
a slow reader

(13:39):
So also trying to carve out some time in the mornings and I don't do all these thingsevery morning, but trying to carve out some time, whether it's, you know, read a little
bit of a book I've been, I've been working on or, you know, go on to YouTube if there'ssomething I'm trying to learn.
Go even like talking about jujitsu earlier, go watch some jujitsu video.
Just it's, you know, take 15, 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes just to try to get myselfbetter at something else before I start digging into, you know, emails or calls or

(14:05):
whatever I am doing that day.
So, but that's kind of been.
what I try to do in the mornings is again, the main focus now is trying to be the one Ican for my kids, especially during the school year.
The devotions and keeping that up.
And then whether it's, you know, reading or something outside of professional life, youknow, getting yourself better at something.
And to me that just seems to, cause as you know, what do we typically do?

(14:29):
We start digging in right away.
I got to get this done.
I'm to do this.
And then what happens is you don't give time to yourself.
And then for you know, it's
430 everybody's home now you're gonna you know start doing everything else and and so Ithink that's it's critical to be very disciplined you know and what you do especially in
the mornings because that's typically for most people that's kind of your time noteverybody but that's kind of your time to do that stuff and start the day.

(14:54):
Well, it-
It absolutely isn't.
And there's so much research coming out on this.
It's the only time of day that you actually own to yourself.
And I think it's really important for us to talk about this in a leadership podcast,because as a leader, since it's the only time of the day that you actually own to
yourself, then it is the only time that you can make a conscious decision how you're goingto move forward in your day.

(15:22):
And so if we move into the Habs,
of snoozing until the very last second and then jumping out of bed and hurrying up andlike going through our emails and responding to things.
Then we're moving into this mindset of immediately going into problem solving mode andaction mode and stress mode.
And we start this day full of anxiety, stress, negativity, problems, all of this mindsetthat then creeps into our family.

(15:53):
creeps into our team members, creeps into our business, and it just has this whole cascadeeffect.
And it has a negative health effect, negative on our team, negative in every single way.
Alternatively, if we capture those moments and we've had a full eight hours of sleep, thescience shows that's what you need for restorative sleep.

(16:14):
and we're thoughtful about whatever, I am also a Christian, but even if you're not aChristian, whatever, if we do mindfulness, you do a meditation, you take moments and you
do, I do a gratitude list every morning, you mindfully practice and think towardssomething that centers you.

(16:36):
Then you start your day in a calmful manner.
100%.
You're looking for the positive.
You're looking towards the future.
You're looking towards an outlook that can bring positivity, hope, and joy.
And you bring that into your family.
Yes.
that into your team and your company.
It seems like I know people think about this and I mean you're like that surely that can'tlike, you know, you just because I think about three, but it really does.

(17:04):
Now, it's not going to be this are shattering like, you know, thing all of a sudden, butyou really will notice that it's like I said about the devotions earlier.
They're just something I can't put my finger on it, but it just now doesn't mean I don'thave bad days when I do that, but just something that seemed to just flow better and like
I think you said it best with a positive outlook.
And you talk about the things of, know, right now, and Grat, you know, Tony Robbins talksabout that a lot, you know, talking about he gets up and starts every day with three

(17:27):
things he's grateful for that day, you know, whether it's his kid smile, his, you know, hewoke up that day, you know, whatever it is, he starts his day with three things that he
writes down and thinks about that he's grateful for.
And so I think that is so powerful.
And the meditation thing you said is, is I think that's, that's taking off to like, youknow, it didn't have to be a prayer reflection.
You call it meditation, but either way, whatever you're looking at.

(17:49):
It's kind of that time to, know, whether it's clear in your mind, really digging deepdown.
And when we do things, you know, us as humans, like, and I talk about this in myleadership talking is what really motivates us, you know, what really gets us going is
when you dig down, it's that purpose, that why.
And when you do that meditation, when you do that prayer, when you do whatever it is,you're kind of doing that as a mini daily type.

(18:15):
What is my real why?
So every decision you make that every
Priority you do every task you think about you know in the back of that mind theresubconsciously There's that purpose that why that you've kind of meditated or thought
about or kind of centered for you start that day now So I think that's criticallyimportant
I love that.
have to tell you one thing really quick.

(18:36):
When I was in high school, I really wanted to go to the Air Force Academy.
Okay.
And a couple of things is that one, the only reason I ran cross country in high school isthat you really needed to letter and something back in that time.
And I went to Griffin High School.
Okay.
And the only thing this white girl that was not athletic could letter in was cross countrybecause if

(19:02):
If as long as you ran all the races, right?
And if you finished last, which was me, you got a letter.
Okay.
So I lettered in cross country.
Now fast forward.
What is hysterical is that I subsequently finished six iron mans.
cannot, I cannot, I can't run a mile right now.
I'm like so out of shape, but I've done six iron mans.
Okay.

(19:23):
But then, I get my letter, okay, but then part of, as you know, the requirements for thePEs, you had to be able to do a pull-up.
I could not do a pull-up.
So I was like, nevermind, I'm just gonna get an Air Force ROTC.
So I got an Air Force ROTC scholarship, which I did the first year.

(19:43):
And then when you have to sign the, I convinced them.
My other funny thing was that they gave me an Air Force ROTC scholarship.
and I completed my test and they said, you're getting it in electrical engineering.
And I said,
I don't want an engineer.
Engineers are nerds.
They wear pocket protectors.
They have tape on their glasses.
All that kind of stuff.

(20:03):
I'm not going be an engineer.
Right.
You know, I'm a biomedical engineer.
But that was many years later that occurred to me that I should be an engineer.
But anyway, so I convinced them to convert my scholarship so could go to med school.
But after the first year, I was like, I'm not sure I want to be a doctor.
I dropped my scholarship.
Many years later, I went back and got my engineering degree and all these things done.

(20:24):
But anyway, so I'm envious of you.
it out and I guess you could do a chin-up.
don't know.
I do remember the fitness test that you're talking about.
Yes.
And I remember working on, I I played football in high school.
That was kind of my sport.
And I remember, you know, I was kind of a bigger kid because I was playing football.
And I remember the pull ups thing I had to really because I would lift and stuff, but Iwasn't doing a lot of that.

(20:48):
And it certainly wasn't a runner.
And so I remember working on the run and the pull ups because that was all the fitnesstest.
Yeah.
So I remember doing that specifically.
Yes.
I could nail the run.
could nail the setups.
Yeah, I can still picture my 16 year old self.
Look, can't do it.
Okay, we should get back to leadership.

(21:08):
so high stakes fighter pilot business leaders.
Can you talk to us about because you do a lot of talks on this right and so
Talk about the high stakes game of connecting the skills you learned as a fighter pilotand how those align with being a business leader.

(21:28):
Oh man, there's some, that's, that's, quite a fact question there.
Um, I don't want time to give you my full keynote here, but no, um, I, know, I think, sothere's, just take four main parts, right?
If my, methodology again, I, as earlier I said, I call it human factors leadership becauseit's based on not only my time is, is being an officer, leader, fighter pilot in the air

(21:51):
force, but also that human factor science.
So as I said earlier,
You know, I've been a professor for about 14 years, adjunct teaching at severaluniversities teaching human factors.
the reason is cause that comes out.
When you say human factors, is there a whole list of what human factors entail?
I know you said a few examples earlier, but can you give a few examples again?

(22:15):
I mean, well, they're the only there's not I wouldn't say there's a list per se of humanfact, because human factors is really a science.
Actually, it's typically associated with human factors engineering, as you probably know,which human factors engineering for everybody else is is kind of the every piece of
technology that's designed today, whether it's the chairs we're sitting in, you the carswe drive, the airplanes I fly, the laptops, computers, the devices people have, they're

(22:42):
using, there is some sort of
human factors consideration there, how the human is going to interact with that piece oftechnology, right?
And so what is it typically designed to do is designed to mitigate human error or say,know, humans, this is where we're typically going to make them like when these human
factors engineers look at a car, for example, you know, why do we have the lights in ourcar that come on that tell you something's wrong?

(23:06):
Because they figured out that if we put a light, it's going to draw our attention to that.
and say, I need to get my oil changed or something's wrong with my tire.
And that's human factors.
More important light is going to flash at this rate or be this color.
What's going to get the human's attention the most?
Exactly.
Right.
Just like the modern cars now with the sensors and everything else.

(23:27):
So if a car stopped in front of you, like my truck does this, you know, it'll go startgoing.
If you're not slowing down, it starts, you know, beeping and flashing.
It may even start braking for you.
Right.
Again, human factors engineering.
What's what's going to help mitigate human error?
So that's where really human factors kind of started.
Right.
That's the idea of it.
And so it was big and it became big in aviation safety, probably in the seventies oreighties, which is where I first got exposed to it.

(23:51):
Cause one thing I did in the air force was, I went to the air force safety school, whichmeant that was qualified just to be in pilot.
was qualified to, if there was a accident or mishap, I was qualified to go in andinvestigate it.
And we pull out the root causes of what happened and why it happened and ultimately makerecommendations on how we change.

(24:13):
processes or training, what I learned from that, all that's based on human factors.
So what decisions were made in the chain, as we called it, to lead to this accident,right?
It may not even be the pilot, the operator.
may be a maintenance error, right?
You could even go all the way back to a poor design of something.
Cause at some point there are humans in that process that design this piece of equipment,this airplane, design the technology.

(24:38):
There's a maintainer that worked on it.
There's leadership that was responsible.
for training, there's a operator who is responsible for action.
So at some point in there, there was a human error, human decision.
One of the classic examples of this, and when we tie to like the 5Y methodology and all ofthat, is the example people might have heard of the challenger.

(25:02):
when they dig down to what really caused it was, know, fear of reporting this issuebecause of, know, and really digging into all of those things and not just taking the one
thing that seemed most obvious of it.
And that one, I mean, that's a phenomenal example to talk about is that, you know, wewon't go into it, but the challenger was that's a classical example of group think and

(25:26):
poor decision making with poor risk management based on being influenced by other factors.
You know, if for everybody doesn't know, you know, the space shuttle program wasn't in agreat spot.
Congress was pushing them to get something going or they're going to cut their funding.
You know, you had the vendors, the contractors that made the solid rocket boosters and allthe parts and their
all together saying we need a decision basically and basically pressuring them versus therisk management decision process.

(25:53):
That's a, you know, that you should be doing of what's the worst that could happen.
How are we going to mitigate that?
Is this worth it or not type thing?
So, but that's a great example of human factors as well of outside pressures, right?
In that, in that particular case, you know, you had all these outside pressures that arepushing you to make a decision.
Again, those leaders at NASA, those people involved in that never showed up saying,

(26:14):
We want to make a bad decision, obviously, right?
Right.
Tragedy happened.
But then you go back to your point and that's again, this ties right back into theoriginal question here is what does, how does this apply to business?
Well, again, as leaders, as business leaders, managers, whoever, you know, your people arenot showing up every day saying, I'm going to make a bad, you know, I'm going to make a
bad decision or a make a mistake or whatever.

(26:36):
You know, there are, there are human factors at play, whether it's there.
Uh, like I said earlier, fatigue, mental and physical fatigue.
That's a big one.
Complacency, lack of awareness, lack of knowledge of something, lack of communication.
All these things are kind of examples of what I call, you know, the human factors thataffects us as humans that ultimately drive human error.

(26:58):
Now, there is a list that is called the the dirty dozen and it's the 12 most common humanerrors in aviation safety.
And this is actually made by the Canadian.
Air Transport, think what's called, it's basically their version of the FAA.
They developed the list of the 12 months and I can't, I don't want to put me on the spot,but know complacency and fatigue, for example, are one of the most common human errors

(27:25):
because that's what human factors really drives.
And you're never going to mitigate all human error, right?
mean, we're humans.
Leaders job is to set up their organization and set up their teams.
for redundancy and checkpoints.
Exactly.
Again, go about it.
The aviation world, right?
You know, how many checks and balances do we have, you know, from when I show up to theairplane to do the pre-flight check until it takes off?

(27:48):
Check certain things several times, whether it's checklist, you just check less, twoperson concept.
You know, we talk about monotony, the things we actually have to say, how we doubled andtriple check stuff.
So it's all about taking that to business and saying, you know, how do you design yourteams and systems?
to set them up for success.
Exactly.
And that's what leaders have to do.

(28:09):
They got to take that mindset of looking at it, not as changing the person, but changingthe system.
And that's what aviation safety had learned the hard way in the 70s and 80s.
You know, up until about the 70s and 80s, aviation safety was just kind of like we'd havean airplane accident.
They'd say, well, that's bad, you know, but flying is inherently risky.
So we go look, investigate, OK, the pilot made an error, bad pilot.

(28:31):
Don't do that again.
You know, and that's kind of how.
But then we had some really major, major accidents.
It's large Boeing 747 jumbo jets that happened.
Sadly, a lot of people lost their lives and we figured out, hey, we got to change the waywe do things because we can't have these massive disasters.
And that's when we started looking at it of changing the system versus changing theperson.

(28:53):
if you try, like I said earlier, if you try to change the person, the person.
Right.
is.
Is everything because if you change the person that changes the system, what are you goingto get?
Same exact results exactly because you're trying to change it for everybody.
You're trying to set up a better system.
So I was going to give you my four points.
We kind of talked about that instead, but I think that's a good connection.
Let's see, hang on.
Let me see if I have in the cards if these are the four points.

(29:15):
Because then I was like, what is this acronym?
Maybe not.
So I have this and I was like, what is this acronym?
So this could not be your four points.
But I have this written down.
Key leadership traits required to thrive in a volatile, uncertain complex in the USenvironment.
I was like, how do you pronounce that?

(29:35):
I said, I'm not going to try and pronounce this because I'm going to get it wrong.
Tell us more about this.
Absolutely.
that's great because, you know, I said earlier that, you know, as a fighter pilot workingthese very dynamic complex environments, right?
And, you know, now we everybody, no matter what industry you're in, what role you're in,most everybody would agree we work in a very complex world.

(29:59):
It's only going to get more complex, right?
More uncertain.
Yes.
So no matter what you do.
So VUCA really defines that was a term we use.
So I'm gonna say it again.
It's volatile.
Yes, uncertain complex and ambiguous
And that describes the type of environment.
So when we trained as fighter pilots, also other special operators use this a lot.

(30:21):
So Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, but we use that to define the baseline of the kind ofenvironment we were going to have to operate in.
Right.
So we had to be able to perform at a very high level in a very volatile, uncertain,complex and ambiguous environment.
So I'm reading the book right now for a future that is a future guest has written and he'stalking in the book about baseball players that they're taught to expect that every pitch

(30:52):
is gonna be a curve ball.
Like if you're expecting it, if you're not expecting it, then when it comes, you're notgonna hit it.
But if you're expecting it constantly, then when it comes,
you're gonna be able to react to it.
And I think that's what you're using this example.
Say a little bit of I said this in my talk sometimes, but a little bit of healthyparanoia.

(31:14):
Yes is good.
Right.
Absolutely.
if we're not what was the opposite of that is complacency.
And that's when things happen.
That's an I if I had to pick one human factor, that's the most common I'd say complacency.
Because if you think about it, we as humans, what do we like?
Like habit.
We like doing the same thing.
So we kind of almost want to get into a state of complacency.

(31:36):
the problem is complacency is when we're going to miss things.
That's when areas going to happen.
That's when we're going to forget to do something or we're going to, you know, not thinkabout this.
You build up muscle memory on purpose, right?
Because we have so many inputs.
good at that.
We're good at habits and we build up that muscle memory.
But going back to your point about expecting the worst, that's why we always train at avery high level.

(31:57):
We used to say train like you fight because if you're training is way harder than theactual mischievous experience, you're already at that higher of a level.
Right.
And so that that's a hundred percent correct.
But that VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, that was the baseline.
And with that,
The key word in there is complexity, but really all those words.

(32:19):
But what does that really do to us as humans?
I just said we don't like complex, right?
We like simple.
a VUCA environment drives human error because it's not the type of environments, you know,that we were designed to operate.
I mean, even if you go, you know, this, I always say this machine up here in our headhasn't changed a whole lot since we were

(32:42):
living in caves and building fires and being chased by saber-tooth tigers, right?
It really hasn't.
But the problem is our world.
mean, the type of world we're drastically.
mean, flying that F-15E can fly two times faster than the speed of sound.
You can pull up to nine Gs or nine times your body weight when you're maneuvering.

(33:03):
There were 250 switches, dials, and displays in that cockpit, right?
You could imagine all the bells and whistles and
beeps and squeaks that are going, the roar of the engines, that's just the airplane.
Now think about operating with a formation of two or three other jets that you'reresponsible for, you're leading, and you're going into environments, whether it's weather,

(33:25):
whether it's combat, now you're worried about the enemy, whether it's terrain if you'reflying down low, and you're trying to organize this mission and keep all these pieces
going.
Meanwhile, this airplane's throwing all this data at you.
I mean, it's just not an environment that the human brain was ever designed to operate in.
And what's important versus what is noise.
what it goes down to, right?

(33:46):
That's what it goes down to, which that's the first part of my methodology is clearintent.
know, and I call it it's clear intent is really a very clear picture of a desired endstate, but also with a very narrow focus.
Okay, so you're not telling your people like,
what success looks like right with the narrative.
a narrow focus, right?

(34:06):
Because otherwise, I do this business leaders all the time.
I'll sit down with them, you know, before I'm doing a keynote, I want to get, and I'llsay, well, tell me your, you know, what is your focus for your people or what is your, uh,
what's, know, what does success look like the end of this quarter of this year?
And then ultimately they'll start listening to all these things.
Okay.
Okay.
Look like that's great.
And you want to do that stuff, right?

(34:26):
You definitely want to do it.
I said a lot of that strategic initiatives, but what are, and I just forced them.
I'm like, what are the top three or even top two top?
to no more than three.
But you want them to keep your people to keep in the back of their mind, right?
Right.
When they're making decisions, because I don't know if any leader that really doesn't wanttheir people to be autonomous, operate highly, you know, decentralized.

(34:50):
But in order to do that with autonomy, what do you have to have got to have alignmentback.
And so when you want your people making those decisions, they got to have a clear intent,a very narrow focus of what's so when they when they're making decisions and deciding
they're kind of
Everybody's going same way, same day versus what do we see a lot of an organizations?
Everybody's working hard, right?
But we're just kind of the ropes are just all being pulled in a lot of times.

(35:13):
That's we don't have a very clear intent, a narrow focus.
But that's where that comes down to is that when you're flying in that jet, that's where Igot the idea.
One of the ideas of how to explain that.
And I show them a picture of the cockpit and show them all these different settings andhow my.
instructors or my leadership, my flight leads and my experience over the years has taughtme when you're in certain realms, this is the most important instrument or these two or

(35:37):
three things are versus, you know, if you're flying at 30,000 feet, this is what you wantto focus on versus if you're just a few hundred feet off the ground, blitzing around at,
you know, 500 miles per hour, that's a different set of variables, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Exactly.
You know, I love going back to what you were saying earlier.
One of the things when I'm building and leading companies and teams, I am first offobsessed with checklists.

(36:02):
And when I was at one point working towards my private pilots and when I was proctoringsurgeries, and then I would convey to my teams and I was just like, look, in every
surgery, we went through the checklist, you know, in the plane every time walk around theplane.
every single freaking time.
You know, it did not matter.

(36:23):
Why did we do that?
Because you know how many times people would forget things like checking their fuel,right?
Super critical things, right?
And in those checklists or those safeguards are there for a reason.
There's a reason that surgeons still autograph the leg they're going to do surgery on.
Human factors, Once again, human factors at the AGN group.

(36:47):
One of our values is seeing humans as humans.
And the reason for that is the other piece of it.
When you're talking about people being tired, I think also it's remembering that thepeople you're working with are humans with families.
With perhaps parents who are ailing or a pet that just passed away.

(37:09):
or someone that is from a different culture that this word means something different tothem or something like that.
Those are also human factors in the way that they relate to situa-
Absolutely.
Because like you said, you know, that's part of my methodology too is, you know, as aleader, you've got to understand that people don't just show up to work and check out of
everything from exactly right.

(37:30):
Nobody does that.
And so, you know, one thing I took from that world I came from as well, you know, in aU.S.
Air Force flying squadron, right, is there was that deep level why we were so successful.
I there's a few things, but one of the main one of the biggest things we had this deeplevel rooted camaraderie, right?
And so, and it wasn't forced on us.

(37:52):
It was just kind of the way that the culture was.
But I think it bled over from, you know, cause we knew at the end of the day that one daywe're going to be flying, we're already flying together and we're going to count on each
other.
And so that culture, it starts from day one of Air Force pilot training as a youngLieutenant.
You're taught that, Hey, yes, you all are going to be rank ordered when you graduate.

(38:12):
But they used to always say, you don't graduate your class graduates.
Matter of fact.
I that they drove that it was when I when I went back to be an instructor experiences aswell.
You know, as a a flight commander, you were essentially responsible for given probablyabout 15 to 20 students in one time and all the instructors that were responsible.

(38:32):
So you're leading 30 to 40 people typically in that role as a young captain.
But your grade or your performance, let's say when you finish pilot training, I would sayit was probably majority of it was your daily flying.
So how you performed and
made decisions and cause every rubs graded.
Um, part of it was academics, how you did a little more smaller portion of that.

(38:53):
But also there was about a 20 % ranking that went into your overall, it was what's calleda flight commander ranking.
And that was purely a subjective ranking that me and the other instructors would gettogether.
And it had nothing to do your technical skillset.
How you did is this was purely how well of a team player leader, how well did you provide?

(39:15):
mutual support to your team because we knew how critical it was and that could drasticallychange your ranking on which is ultimately what you decided, you know how you got to
choose what you're going to go fly what you're going to do your career because we knew howimportant that was and that's why that grade was in there.
But that's what I talk about my keynotes is that mutual support and how do we embed thatin organizations because really mutual support, you know, we talk a lot about

(39:40):
accountability in organizations, which is absolutely critical.
But the most powerful form of accountability and Harvard Business Review, Business Reviewhas done studies on this is that pure level accountability.
When, when people, colleagues, teammates hold themselves accountable.
I don't even like to say hold themselves accountable.
like to say provided mutual support backing each other up.

(40:02):
Cause I remember, you know, in a fighter squadron flying in these flying squadron, youknow, I wasn't worried if we working at a task together, it be flying or non-flying.
Just our, we call it our ground jobs, you know, our admin jobs.
If I was working with you in a task, Angela, didn't want to, I didn't want to not do itbecause I was worried about getting fired or, exactly.

(40:22):
I didn't want to, I didn't want to look, be that person that was the weakest link on yourteam.
Cause I didn't want to let you know, cause I probably, we probably hang out, hung outtogether outside of work.
probably know your family.
We, we do all these events together.
So we, was a very work hard, play hard kind of mentality group.
Now I'm not saying you have to do that in a, in a business organization or, but.

(40:43):
How do you embed that mutual support?
How do leaders really drive that so that their people are holding each other accountableand providing mutual support?
And I love that just a couple of other examples that I've seen that.
So for example, I've listened to some of Simon Sinek talks about this on his podcast andhe talks, believe it's his work that he's done with the Navy SEALs.

(41:06):
And he's talked about when he goes and observes them and he's like, I'm confused.
I'm watching this exercise that you guys are doing.
You're grading them.
You're not watching to see if they complete the task.
And they're like, well, that's not what we care about.
We're watching to see their leadership because that
That's what matters.
Their teamwork.
That's what matters, right?
And then I think there was another example.

(41:26):
I believe that was the movie Maverick was that the follow up to Top Gun and they were outplaying volleyball on the right in the guy comes up and he's like, I thought you were
gonna make leader whatever I'm I'm horrible at quoting these things.
But the point was he was like, you wanted a team or you want your team?
exactly.
And I think of a personal example is when I was at school at Georgia Tech, I had aclassmate Chris Herman.

(41:53):
And he and I and another one, Mario Ball, the three of us, like whenever we could be on ateam together for a group project, we were like, we are stuck like glue.
Now fast forward years later, Chris was starting his startup at ATDC down the hall for mestarting my startup.

(42:14):
both of our startups were phenomenally successful.
Chris is now running Capstone at Georgia Tech.
I'm now running Byelocity at Georgia Tech and Emory.
He was the chair, like I got him on the chair.
We are lifelong friends.
We are both phenomenal leaders.
We identified that in each other back then.
And I think great leaders also identify that in each other and want to collaborate.

(42:39):
So I think when you start seeing that in people that attract
each other.
It's also something in your teams.
If you start seeing in a team, a dysfunctional team, then start asking questions like whatis happening here?
Because that is something to look at.
I want to know, I love the idea of debrief culture.

(43:02):
Because I think that too few teams and organizations do this.
I think especially in the startup world,
And I shouldn't even say that.
I think it's in all cultures.
We have this idea.
We should just hurry on to the next project.
And that's done.
We know what we've learned on it.
And we haven't.
So tell me your philosophy on the debrief culture.

(43:23):
Absolutely.
I knew this was going to come up and I'm so glad it did because I think if I can, peopleoften ask what's the biggest, cooler, best tool you think leaders can take away.
And I think if you're talking about a specific tool, I think this is it.
Now it's based on, you know, a little bit other than what we're talking about, know,accountability, transparency with an organization, which by the way, the reason you and

(43:45):
your teammates, you'll work together so well, I would bet is because there was a lot oftransparency when you all work together in your teams.
And you hold each other accountable or you hold each other accountable in every each ofyou saw that.
So I would venture to say that's probably what happened, but it's the debrief and a trueDB of culture is based on a lot of that.
But with the debrief, the fighter pilot diverse specifically, you know, there's a lot ofideas you talked about the five wise earlier.

(44:10):
You know, you talk about root cause analysis.
What after action reports post mortems, which I actually hate but because Why do we hatethat term because you're implying that it was a bad
dead.
Actually post-mortem, feel like you're like you're in the morgue and
connotation right?
It's just not like it was a bad event or bad project.

(44:34):
You know, debrief should really be done, you know, after every event.
I think I would argue sometimes even more importantly for successes because you want toknow why it was a success, right?
So you can repeat that.
So but the debrief, I think even there's even organizations that say, yeah, we debrief.
You know, I think a lot of times

(44:55):
would say tell me more.
do you do that?
they're probably sitting down.
They're probably talking about, let's talk about what would happen.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
We're do this better.
Okay.
Great.
But a true debrief, you know, if you, there's a few parts of it, but the first part is ifyou don't get the first part, right.
You can forget about it being a valid debrief from that setting that tone, setting thattone of accountability, right?

(45:17):
A tone of accountability.
And so you can find this by saying you want respectful truth versus that artificialharmony.
Respectful truth versus artificial harmony, because where do we typically live in ashumans?
We try to get along, right?
We avoid conflict for the most part.
Artific, great for social settings, know, cocktail parties, things like that.

(45:39):
Just gibber jabber, but not good if you're trying to really improve the team, right?
So the first part of that, what sets, I think the fighter pilot debrief, the biggest pieceof it is setting that level of account, that tone of accountability.
And there's ways to do that and ways that leaders do that, but you've got to get thatright first.
But the other part of the debrief is, is realizing that it's not about, you know,individual execution necessarily.

(46:04):
It's not about saying, Hey, Angela, let's, talk about your performance here.
That's not what it's about.
It's about team performance, right?
Because at the end of the day, sole purpose of that debrief, all it's there for is to whatdrive better performance.
That's it period.
More specifically to develop lessons, learn to drive.
better performance.
But let's go back.
How can you tell the difference between the genuine versus the disingenuine harmony?

(46:31):
You said it better.
You're two different phrases.
How can you really tell the difference?
about it when you if if you said you probably experienced this right in your professionallife you sat down with a small team you said okay let's talk about this you just sat here
like hey what how can i do better for y'all and what typically happens you're great youknow no come on guys really you know and or it's like what do y'all think what can we do
in better here maybe a couple of people say something but yeah you know but it was reallyhard task so and so we don't really we're not really going anywhere not really because we

(46:58):
You guys are all foolish.
So, Yeah.
Cause you got to, you got to bring those barriers down.
Right.
And so one of the, think easy, one of the easiest, but one of the most logical ways that Ifound that I pass on to business leaders, I talk about some of my keynotes, I do it in my
debrief workshops that I do with teams is the leader of that particular project, which bythe way, in this debrief, who should be in this debrief?

(47:23):
Only the people that were executing on this task.
It doesn't have to be the leader of the organization.
Cause if say you own a small
tech company or whatever it is you own.
If you weren't really involved, yeah, you knew about it, but if you weren't really on theteam executing, you really shouldn't be in there.
You should let them debrief.
Now they should bring back to you, Hey, here's the things we right?
But we're not, you're not, it's not.

(47:45):
there, you actually take away from them being able to actually...
Right.
Because now here you are sitting in the corner room listening as they, you want them toreally improve.
Yeah.
So it only should be now, if you were part of that task, absolutely should be in there,but who should be running that debrief is whoever that team leader was or whoever was
responsible for that project, that task.

(48:05):
That's a really important piece of it.
So that's part of the accountability getting that out.
But also I always say leaders before you start this debrief, always open it up with here'ssome things I could have done better for you as a team.
And that's the first thing you do and really lay out something.
And it does have to be earth shattering stuff.
Even if you think it went great, pull something out.
You got to open up something.

(48:26):
Then you have to go around the room and you've got to make everybody give you one thingthat you could have done better.
Not the team, but you as a leader.
How could you have set them up better or something they saw that you did?
And all you're doing, the whole purpose of that is just to bring down those barriers ofcommunication.
Now we can kind of start talking because think about it.
If you have a very junior team member in there and they see a person with more experiencein that opening up and then they're like, well, hey, you know, Angela can, she's been here

(48:52):
this long.
She's this expert and this and that, if she can open up things, she could surely I canadmit where I had some shortcomings maybe as we talk about.
It is safe.
It's a safe environment.
safe environment.
used to call it in the fighter part was a sacred environment.
When that door shut and remember the military, we were still in it.
We had, you know, we carry rank on our shoulders.
We it's a very hierarchical, you know, rank structure, but we shut that door to thedebrief.

(49:15):
It was almost symbolic that all the rank comes off.
We're all there purely even not been in debriefs with, you know, colonels or generals.
So people that are ranked me by years and they essentially someone, you know, could own mycareer.
Right.
But we were in that room, but not only did they expect or not only did they welcome, butthey expected me and the others to point talk about execution and some of their missteps

(49:39):
because they knew that was the only way that team was going to get better.
That was the only way that people's lives may be safe one day.
And so, but again, it does go back also though.
You got to have a culture of that mutual support, which I talked about earlier, which isbecause you can't just have a, you know, it's a leader that's not transparent, a leader
that's not accountable and so then you go in a room and expect them to open up, right?
It's just not going to happen.

(50:00):
That's really a manager.
What's that?
That's really a manager.
You're managing resources, right?
But I think that's the biggest.
People don't listen to this podcast.
It's not the shitty manager podcast.
well, and here's another good point is, you know, people listening, they're like, well,I'm not really in a leadership, which, by the way, I hate the term leadership role because

(50:21):
leadership is not a role.
It's not a title.
It's It's a mindset, right?
It's a it's something you do and you grow in.
And so I always say everyone is a leader in some aspect.
Typically, if you really think that in, I think actually those informal leaders, peoplethat aren't in a specific title or position, I think informal leaders in organization many
times are even more powerful.

(50:42):
than the actual, you know, leader on title or on paper because they typically have thesway of the, why is that?
Because they drive that mutual support.
That's the one that people would go to for mentoring, for advice, things like that.
So everybody's a leader in some sense.
If nothing else, then the fact that we're all leaders of ourselves and we only have onelife to live, we only have one legacy.

(51:04):
And so I think that's a really important leadership.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So, so debrief culture, you know, one of the things that, that I was thinking about as thedebrief culture that, that to me, I think it's really sad when we skip that step is that
there are so many times that it's also the opportunity to document some of those things tothen put it into play and put it into this repeatable scalable format that can create

(51:33):
something that's
plug and play for the next team to create new checklists or new formulas or new thingslike that that just make it so much easier for the next obstacle challenge.
That's at end of the day.
That's that's what it's all about.
Because I talked about this to one thing that makes the debrief different from what I talkabout than anything else is if you don't have a specific way to capture those lessons

(51:57):
learned, I should say, or those organizational practices, behaviors, processes, we'regoing to change.
If you don't assign accountability to that at the end of the OK, how are we going toimplement this or take this to the boss or this or that then kind of what's the purpose of
doing it sometimes?
You know, now I will say there's there's something to be said for.
And by the way, the reason I say debrief culture, because it's just that it's a way ofdoing business.

(52:21):
It's not just a, we're going to debrief after every quarter or every year.
It's I, and I would do this with sales teams all the time.
said, Hey, look, you can, you don't have to go in a room, shut the door and go in therefor an hour with a large team and debrief.
You can debrief a sales call, you know, just for 15, 20 minutes with maybe a teammate thatwas on a call.
Hey, let's, let's talk about this real quick.
Kind of go through the, you know, you, how you set the tone of accountability.

(52:43):
You can go through it that way and pull out some lessons or so.
You don't have to necessarily document, write everything down.
But to your point, when you are debriefing a large task, you've got to have a way totransfer those lessons, learn embed them in the organization.
Otherwise, what's the point, you know, of driving all these, you know, you talk about allthis stuff, what can be better?
But if you don't have anything to take back to the organization, because really the goalof is what?

(53:07):
That everybody else in that team does better.
Everybody else benefits growth.
versus blame growth culture versus blame culture, right?
That's what you're trying to do.
Cause typically we we've been in a, you know, in some organizations still like this, thatblame and train approach kind of like I was talking about aviation safety up until the
seventies, eighties was always like bad pilot doing that again.

(53:28):
Well, know, Angela, messed up.
Hey, don't do that again.
Did we need to train you up again?
Again, Angela didn't show up saying, Hey, I'm going to make a mistake today.
Right.
Something in the system, right?
There's something.
There is, I'm not here to sabotage this, right?
There's something in the system, whether it's maybe you do have something, maybe you gotstuff going on at home.
Maybe, you weren't given a piece of information that you were supposed to be given.

(53:52):
Maybe you were thrown as the last second that your awareness of the client wasn't thatgreat.
You know, you, just don't know.
So until you really dig down and debrief this and find those holes in the system, that'show you have to really approach that.
Yeah.
And if your team members hear the word debrief and they get a knot in their stomach, thatis a very big red flag.

(54:13):
It is.
culture is not a healthy culture for that sacred, environment.
love just that image of closing the door and the stripes coming off.
That was such a powerful image for me.
I think that's such a healthy environment of thinking of something that's...
It's a no name, no rank environment.

(54:34):
Exactly.
And that's why people say I use that example because they're like, well, you know, theteam I work in, we don't really have a lot of no name, no rank.
You know, I don't see, really see this working here.
And I say, Hey, look, if you can work in the military where, you know, we clearly have avery rigid rank structure.
It work anywhere.
Okay.
My last question before we try and wrap this up because we could talk forever is tell meabout your philosophy of adjust culture.

(55:01):
So a just culture, very similar to that debrief culture, right?
The term just culture, it actually comes from the aviation safety world.
And it's kind of similar to that tone of accountability, but it's that non-retributional,non-punitive kind of mentality, right?
And so it really, when I said earlier, a growth culture versus a blame and train culture,that's really what it's all about.

(55:27):
And this came about, again,
aviation safety and we said, hey, we got to start changing things in the 70s and 80s andcommercial aviation, you know, up until, you know, I'd say probably 20, 30 years ago and
not my industry that I'm in now.
You know, if you made a mistake, you know, flying, whether it's nothing happened, but youmade a mistake and somebody knew about it.

(55:48):
You were seriously, seriously worried about job action or something happened.
So you were very likely to try and cover anything up.
Well, yeah, I don't see people try to cover things up, but you were definitely it wasdefinitely more, I'd say, fearful environment of making a mistake.
Right.
Yeah.
Because and definitely not an environment of where you want to pass it on and tellsomebody, hey, I made this.
Maybe we should look at a better way doing this.

(56:09):
Definitely not.
But the aviation safety world figured out, hey, look, if we don't have this just culture,this idea that as long as it's not, you know, willfully violating rules and things like
that, that good safety programs have this idea that you should
You can fess up and say, look, we made the mistake today.
Here's the reasons why, highly recommend it.

(56:31):
And so now in the aviation safety world, commercial aviation, we have this program calledthe ASAP program, Aviation Safety Action Program.
And professional pilots or even non-professional pilots can submit forms.
we do it all the time of little errors we see and things we see.
And that's one of the reasons, I mean, sadly, we had an accident, you know, just about alittle over a week ago.

(56:53):
But prior to that in the US,
The last major acts in the US with fatalities was 2009.
I mean, that's a phenomenal when you think about the thousands.
podcast is gonna be really successful and people 10 years from now are gonna be like, werecorded this in 2025.
So, you know, can we do the math?
What was that?
Like 14 years.

(57:13):
Am I gonna get the math wrong?
That was a long time ago.
What do you think about the thousands and thousands of flights per day?
I mean, that's a phenomenal safety record.
But of course, there's a lot that goes into that better technology, this kind of stuff andbetter training.
But really, a lot of it, too, is because of this just culture we had where professionalscan admit where they saw things happen.

(57:35):
But they were open to admit it.
Why?
Because we knew that if I admit this, I'm not going to get any action taken on me.
But that's the kind of cult that just culture.
It's really.
Psychological safety that it's same thing as that but it's always say just culture wasaround before psychological safety was cool, right?
Before psychological safety was really a buzz term, I think.
We had this just culture mindset in aviation safety because the idea of aviation safety isjust that, right?

(57:59):
We wanna make everything safe.
We wanna make it better.
And so just culture is the idea that anyone can speak up, anyone can say going back tohealthcare, right?
You brought, talked about that earlier.
A lot of my clients, one of the reasons I do a lot of healthcare groups,
hospitals, things like that, is because guess where they've gotten a lot all those checksand balances talk about came from the aviation world, specifically aviation safety world.

(58:21):
And so very similar to, you know, the commercial airline industry in the 70s and 80s, youknow, the captain of that airliner, they were keen, you you didn't correct them, you
didn't you didn't stop in and say something versus when we we learned all these accentswere happening because other crew members weren't speaking up, we had to make a change, a
mindset shift.
And that's again, by dress culture that anyone can speak up same way.

(58:43):
with doctors, the OR, you don't correct the doctor.
And then we figured out, hey, wait, they are human.
Things happen.
So anyone should be able to speak up.
Anyone should be able to call a timeout or as they call it, or anyone needs to say whenthey see something going wrong or a better way to do something.
But that's also by the just culture.
People can speak up in a very non-retributional, non-punitive environment.
But that's also the kind of environment you have to have to even have that debriefculture, that debrief where people, and that's, again, you talked about earlier,

(59:10):
people get that knot in their stomach when they hear the word debrief in a team.
Well, I'd venture to say they're probably not doing debrief very much, which is anotherway to really make those debriefs go better is consistency, doing it more and more.
It's like anything else, right?
If you just debrief twice a year, it's probably not going to go well when you do that,right?
But if you debrief after every task, a way you do business and have that just culture,then those debriefs are probably going to go better because it's something you practice,

(59:36):
something you do and see it.
Well, and I'm thinking a couple of things.
One, 16 years.
I didn't have a calculator.
I was like, my gosh, can I say an engineer and I can't do minimal math?
Anyways, the other thing I was going to say is, so I have this life experience that Ishare with a lot of people that I had.

(59:58):
And so this was circa 2008.
And I was a proctor, I worked for Medtronic and I was a proctor for a surgery at ahospital in Atlanta.
And I observed an instance where a particular lead, I didn't feel like it wasappropriately placed by the fellow.

(01:00:28):
And I was too shy to speak up.
And I had this like,
hit in my stomach, you know, I'm a young graduate engineer.
And I was just like, I'm not gonna say anything.
I'm too shy.
Here's this like, you know, doctor and all that.
I and so I was like, maybe it'll be okay, right in my head, and I'm not gonna speak up.

(01:00:50):
And so I test the patient afterwards, I was like, maybe it's okay.
And I I'm driving home, and I'm paranoid about this.
And so I'm so paranoid, I turn around and I come back to the hospital.
Sure enough, the lot the lead is dislodged.
And so I call the head of this trial at the hospital and I tell him, which was first offthe best move I made in my career.

(01:01:13):
Cause I owned up and said, I should have spoken up.
I didn't say anything.
I told him, had this whole cascade effect because...
the head doctor should have been in the room and he wasn't.
So then he got in trouble.
So then he yelled at me because I, know, it was this whole cascade effect.
And it took years for me to get my credibility back to this doctor who should have been inthe the time.

(01:01:35):
Right.
Right.
The lessons that I eventually got my credibility and got my thing back and I have all mycredibility in space.
But the lesson that I tell people about is a couple of things.
One is trust your gut and speak up.
You can do it in a very professional.
So I learned after that instance and how I got my credibility back is I learned how tospeak up with confidence and respect and how to

(01:02:04):
and guide these electrophysiologists in front of their staff without making it seem like Ithought they were stupid or something like that.
Like I saw other people do.
I learned this skill that was so valuable for all of my career.
So I learned how to do that.
I learned how to, once again, trust my gut.

(01:02:27):
I learned that when I called and admitted this huge mistake, I didn't die.
Right.
I also learned that what type of environment I wanted to work in.
And so a lesson I would want the listeners to learn from this is that if you're in aculture and you try several times to speak up, you try and do debriefs, you try and do

(01:02:52):
this, and you repeatedly get shut down, then maybe that's not the environment you need tobe in.
100 and and the other part of that because I kind of going back to when I said people saywe don't have a very debrief culture just culture where I work out and I said I get that
and you're you're probably right.
I said but in example you said I said influence where you can though, you know, even it'sonly just one co-worker and you can do many deepers or you could do, know, show

(01:03:18):
accountability with them, you know influence where you can and then but going back to yourpoint.
It's coming down to whether it's toxic leadership or leadership.
That's just not transparent or
In your case, not accountable than they because nothing's more demoralizing.
Right.
Again, this sample using that doctor as a leader.
Right.
Nothing's more demoralizing than a leader that blames their people for something they did.

(01:03:39):
Right.
Right.
Right.
So, you know, second to that is a leader that can admit their own shortcomings or theirown missteps and things like that.
And so but yeah, if you're in that type of environment, it might be how you're this is nota fit for you or type thing.
Because you're right.
If you know, you're never going to change people like us earlier.
You're only gonna change a system.
And so you gotta have influence to change that system.
But if you can't and you wanna be there, then I always say influence where you can.

(01:04:02):
Influence with who you can, whether it's just a coworker peer or somebody else.
and start with yourself, which I think was my biggest key because what I did was I waslike, you know what?
I'm going to learn how I can better influence those around me in a healthy way.
And that was the greatest thing that I did.

(01:04:24):
I debrief myself.
is actually a valuable, very valuable tool to do not erase that there is power inself-debors.
call it for sure.
It was the greatest mistake I made in my professional career and it helped me skyrocketthrough my career.
Brandon, is there anything you really hope to recover that we haven't covered?

(01:04:44):
You know, this just came to me as you were talking about that.
And I don't know why, but a question I get sometimes people say, do you think leaders areborn or are they made or, know, what the age old debate?
And I always say, I fully do not believe leaders are born.
I think we're born with God given strengths, talents, skill sets, some of those skill setsthat do translate well to being a good leader.

(01:05:07):
But none of us are born with every single trait, characteristic ability to be a goodleader.
I
And I bring that up because it's so important.
I think especially what we'll see in highly technical roles or, you know, I see this insales again, bringing up sales.
Cause I see this all the time is you'll have a sales person come in.
They do really well.

(01:05:28):
They hit their quotas or blow them out of the water and they, Hey, you you did a good job,Angela.
We're going to give you a small team to lead.
You know, they say, right.
And you've had, keep in mind, you probably had almost zero leadership training or zeroleadership experience, right?
And if they give you two or three people, you may do pretty well because they're justtrying to keep up with you.
But then when we typically see people stumble, it's when they take on that largerleadership role, whether it's a bigger team now or like a regional sales manager or

(01:05:55):
whatever.
And they stumble there at why?
Because yes, they're a good, if they're very good at their technical job, but they've beentaught and experienced and are given no leadership training, no leadership mentoring or
anything like that.
Now, some people may be able to do okay, because they're a really good communicator.
But, you know, they don't really empower people where they don't really know how to driveaccountability or they don't how to inspire.

(01:06:18):
They don't know how to, you know, what motivates my people.
There's just so many things that, goes into that.
And so I love to say that because I think leadership is something that has to be, it'slike anything else.
It's got to be developed.
It's got to be practiced.
mean, I, I'm still looking at, do you do this better?
You know, and I, I think about, you know, I think I took for granted in the air force as avery young officer.

(01:06:42):
how much responsibility and leadership authority and training we were given and expectedto pass on.
And I think I just took it for granted because when I got out, still growing thesebusinesses, I'm like, man, like there is just, you can do a lot of good things here.
You got a lot of smart people, but some of these leaders in very, very high roles in theirorganizations, I could tell, didn't really know the first thing about true leadership.

(01:07:07):
I think a lot of it.
And so I just think that's so important for people to understand that.
know, leaders are not born, they're developed, they're made.
So just because you're good at a certain skill set or your job, you know, doesn't meanyou're going to be a great leader per se.
No, I love that.
And much to what you were saying, like every day.
I am obsessed with certain podcasts.
I'm obsessed with books.

(01:07:28):
I'm obsessed with learning.
Another one of the AGM group values is we're lifelong learners.
And I'm constantly picking up little tidbits.
I picked up things from you today that I cannot wait to test out.
And I think that's also the sign of a good leader is they constantly want to grow andbecome better at that.

(01:07:49):
Okay, so a requirement the podcast is your favorite motivation.
Yes.
Favorite.
Yeah, there's a few that have come to mind.
You know, I think I'll pass this one on because it's, it's not just leadership thing, it'smotivational.
And when you first hear it, you're probably gonna think, really?
But it's, actually, it's from Nick Saban is the one who's I've heard say this.

(01:08:12):
And I'm not necessarily, I'm not Alabama fan, but I thought it was a phenomenal, you know,idea.
And he said, you know, don't be average.
Very simple.
Bear to the point, right?
And you first hear like, well, don't be average.
Well, you know, people say, well, you can't be perfect.
And I'm like, yeah, that's not what it's saying.
And if you listen to him talking about more, you really think about it.
And I've got it to where I tell my kids this now when they're working on something andthey're like, you know, it's just simple stuff around the house.

(01:08:37):
Like, so they, you know, finish a snack and they just leave their track.
I was like, hey, don't be average.
Don't leave this year.
Like go.
That's the easy thing to do.
You get up and walk away.
Just it's very simple to not be average and just throw your stuff away.
Right.
But it goes back to
when they're doing schoolwork or when they're doing any task or whether in theiractivities and things like that.
I never expect them to be the best, you know, kid in that on the field, the best student,you know, the anything like that.

(01:09:03):
I'd love for that, but I don't expect that.
But what I do expect is not to be average.
Like, you know, you're putting in that extra effort.
You're when you're doing your math homework, you know, you're not just sloppily writing itdown.
Let's let's be neat about it, right?
But I think that's important because, you know, Nick said he talked about this and I thinkhe was talking to a group of coaches or something.
This, this event he was doing.

(01:09:24):
And he said, look, he said, when you get a kid that comes out for football and you know,he's, he's okay.
He's good, but he's just not going to that next level.
He's not given the extra effort.
He's like, look, don't, don't think there's something wrong with him.
That's ab that's normal.
It's normal for us as humans to be average, just to get by.
Like I said earlier, we just want have it.
What's simple, right?
And so as a leader, when you say don't be average, you're really trying to that's that'sthe beauty of leadership is right.

(01:09:47):
How do you motivate, inspire, drive people to be better than average, you know, to reallywant them to be better and to not be average.
And so I think that it's just so simple.
I think don't be average is it's not about being perfect, but it's you know, average iseasy, right?
Average is just getting by.
So how do we drive our people?
How do we set up organizations?

(01:10:08):
How do we consider human factors as we've talked about to not be average to?
to drive those better results.
Cause at the end of the day, you know, what is a leader's ultimate job when it comes downto it?
A leader's job is to drive better performance period.
For that team, for the organization, for the people.
Now we can talk all day about how you do that, but that's the ultimate job of that leader.

(01:10:30):
And so that's why I liked that quote.
think it's just so, I was thinking of a few, I think that one kind of is just very simpleand an easy takeaway.
Perfect.
Katie's gonna love that little snippet.
I'll tell you so many reasons I love this.
One is that when my daughter was young, I thought of several quotes I wanted her tomemorize so that like when I'm dead one day, she'll say, as my mom used to always say, and

(01:10:53):
one of them is anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Yep.
And then the other thing, my official hashtag for 14 years now is be brave, be badass.
And the reason for that is I strongly believe every individual team, company, organizationhas their own badass.
And that is the absolute best they can be on that day or in their lives.

(01:11:16):
Right.
And I believe that a lot of people just aren't brave enough to reach that badass.
And if we're brave enough to reach that badass, then we're going to leave our personallegacy.
we're gonna leave a statement where absolutely not gonna be average.
after known we're sending me right we stop ourselves typically so that's 100 % love that.

(01:11:37):
So thanks for bringing the badass to this podcast today.
Thank you so much for having me.
loved it.
It's awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining me for today's episode of the Badass Leaders podcast.
To hear more interviews with industry experts and learn how to grow your career andleadership potential, be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications to ensure you

(01:11:59):
do not miss future episodes.
This podcast is a production of the AGN Group in collaboration with Bed Head Media.
To learn more about the AGN Group, visit our website at theagngroup.com.
There you can discover more about our services which include hosting workshops, managementconsulting, brand strategy, keynote speaking and more.

(01:12:24):
Follow us on all social media channels shown on the screen and displayed in the shownotes.
until next week, be brave and be badass.

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