Navigating a Career Pivot, Pilot Edition: Part 3
In this week’s article on aviation and leadership, I will continue to support the idea that aviators make successful leaders by highlighting another valuable skill reinforced in aviation culture. In this article, I highlight a personal experience and close call that I don’t want to experience again. The admission of mistakes leads to increased vulnerability in certain situations or environments, but I don’t know any reputable, professional aviators who are too proud to admit to their own wrongdoing. Aviators will embrace their slips and ensure to use them as their own lesson or a teaching moment for those around them. Leaders must also have this same awareness, preventing themselves and their organization from losing further time or efficiency if they err in the same way again.
Experiential Learning
Pilots and leaders must learn from their mistakes (or those of people around them); owning their errors and keeping their confidence in check—bucking the cocky stereotype. I’m certainly not the first aviator to experience a close call or “mid-air” incident, and I am sure I wasn’t the last. Through immense reflection and debriefing with the other crew, we absorbed everything we could from this opportunity; it definitely changed how I briefed, communicated, and maneuvered—whether it was with a flight of two reconnaissance helicopters or 12 black (“special”) helicopters. That event also gave me a great perspective on situational awareness and respect for the principle that all crew members have a collective interest in safety. Even though I was the most junior pilot in the flight, I still had a duty to maintain awareness and aid my pilot in keeping visual contact with other aircraft in our flight. As quickly as the person on the controls can become disoriented or lose visual with obstacles in the air, the co-pilot has to maintain and act with solid awareness of the environment around. Limiting their focus elsewhere, no matter how simple a flight may be. Two sets of eyes are always better than one, and as a coordinated crew, it’s the duty of both pilots to check on each other, react to emergencies, or make inputs to avoid accidents.
As a newly minted Army Aviator, I was serving as a co-pilot in a Scout Weapons Team (SWT – 2 Kiowa Warriors) executing a training mission during an exercise at night, under night vision goggles (NVGs). My primary job while sitting in the left seat was working the mast mounted sight (MMS – ball on top of the rotor with cameras) and maintaining communication with the reconnaissance troops on the ground. I got sucked into the cockpit looking at the infrared image from the MMS on the display in front of me, watching the compound on the ground (our reconnaissance objective) and I lost awareness of other helicopter’s position. I was focused on giving threat updates to the guys on the ground, from our removed aerial perspective through the FLIR (forward-looking infrared) sensor in the MMS. The pilot on the controls (flying) was looking outside and momentarily lost sight of our sister ship; he was the one responsible for communication with that aircraft, following them and maintaining sight. The other helicopter was blacked out (without any overt lighting); under this condition it can be difficult to reacquire lost visual contact, especially after flying for several hours seeing our surroundings (with fatigued eyes) only through the green tubes of our NVGs. My pilot announced to me that he lost visual, and I immediately transitioned my focus outside—focusing on an area where I thought the other helicopter should be. All of a sudden, I was plastered against the seat back and thrown up in my shoulder harness as my pilot made an evasive maneuver to avoid hitting the other aircraft—that we had both just seen as it grew exponentially in our upper left windscreen. In a matter of less than five seconds, we experienced a situation that has accounted for an extremely high number of fatal aviation incidents.
We were fortunate to emerge unscathed, humbled by the close call. We all came closer to our personal Gods, and there may have been a pair or two of soiled drawers. This ultimately highlights the importance of thorough internal communication between pilot and co-pilot and external communication with the other aircraft in the flight in addition to with situational awareness. Of course, we had operating procedures and unit standards that identify code words communicated between aircraft to signal overt lights meant to aid with re-acquisition, and it’s definitely something we practice; however, this particular situation illustrates how quickly things can decline in the air if you aren’t on top of your game. We definitely did things wrong; he should have come over the radio and asked the other aircraft to flash a light, I should have come on the radio after a few seconds of silence and made the same request, or we should’ve been swapping controls/duties at regular intervals to prevent the fatigue and monotony that led to the situation. I assure you that I never made these mistakes again. We spent no less than two hours debriefing that flight after we were relieved by another team of helicopters and able to land just after 5 that morning.
Every aviator must learn from their mistakes, no matter the magnitude. Unchecked arrogance can lead to fatal mid-air incidents, low-fuel diversions, engine failures, or weather scares to name just a few grim possibilities. Each incident will affect individuals differently; some may not be able to handle climbing back in a cockpit after seeing their lives flash before their eyes. Others may continue to fly unaffected by an experience just to face a different fate the next time they falter in their actions and judgment. Neither of these alternatives represent the most resilient and equipped aviators. True professionals will re-adjust their mindset, learning from these occurrences, and respect the immense responsibility that comes with an aeronautical rating. Every aviator takes these opportunities to learn and reflect on what went wrong and how to fix issues like this in the future. Every pilot makes mistakes, but aviators don’t make the same mistakes twice; leaders are expected to hold themselves to the same standard.
Over the course of hundreds of missions (training, operational, and combat), I’ve never walked away from an aircraft after a post-flight inspection without taking several minutes with my co-pilot and crew to debrief the good, the bad, and the ugly. Though we have ranks in the military that clearly delineate seniority, we must all be thick-skinned in the way we provide and receive feedback on our performance from each member of the crew. Part of leadership is the ability to receive feedback from peers, superiors, and subordinates alike. Every aviator does this with people that fly with them, especially during formal evaluations. Pilots should walk away from each flight with a clear understanding of how to improve performance and prevent similar mistakes. We use specific flight debriefs and larger unit/company level pilot classes to highlight scenarios or first-hand experiences that further our knowledge and learn from past miscalculations or events. Pilots know that issues manifesting in the air such as emergencies, mechanical malfunctions, dangerous maneuvers, or external factors like hazardous weather CAN have fatal consequences, and they need to take them seriously. Successful leaders will internalize errors and take the appropriate action to mitigate the potential for mistakes in the future. Mistakes are inevitable, and made by everyone; leaders will learn and grow from all mistakes made in their environment (either their own or those around them).
Though I may be biased, I feel like aviators are always striving to improve and be better in every aspect of their job, both in and out of the cockpit. Even when aviators make mistakes, they will learn and push themselves to be better. Not just better in the areas where they are weak or where they made their mistake, but every learning opportunity or experience affords the ability to evaluate every aspect of performance and clean up performance or attention to detail during a pre-flight inspection or performance validation maneuver. Depending on the severity or potential consequences of some mistakes, aviators take these events more seriously. Their future and survival is contingent on their own emphasis on safety or the reminders from more senior instructors that are responsible for passing along or imparting critical knowledge on younger aviators. While I would like to think that leaders place the same emphasis on cleaning up their weaknesses, I know that’s not reality. Leadership in organizations, especially in industries that don’t deal with the same risks as the aviation industry, can continue to operate without significant detriment to normal operations if they are allowed to make the same mistakes over and over. Sure, they may not be as efficient or retain the highest quality talent, but it’s a routine element of their business.
I can sense a lot of disagreement with the last two statements above; however, I stand firm in those claims. I certainly welcome the discussion and would like to hear your theories. I’m not discounting all operations external to aviation, but the vast majority of corporate america doesn’t deal with the same life/death risk on a regular basis. It’s not just life/death, or that every member of the crew MUST be at the top of their game to perform their requisite functions, but there is another element with complex, technical machinery that requires very meticulous maintenance and costs tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars.
What’s Next?
Having only touched on some critical foundational values, communication, and now experiential learning, I’m only scratching the surface. I’ll continue to highlight key attributes that make successful aviators great leaders by touching on the art of remaining calm, self-discipline, situational awareness, mitigation/management of risks, critical thinking, effective teamwork, decisiveness, technical awareness, and expert judgment. This list is not all-inclusive and I’m sure that there will be additional valid points brought to my attention through discussions and feedback. Tune in for future articles as I address these additional attributes, and don’t hesitate to suggest new topics.
If you’re thinking about your own transition or are struggling to translate the skills that you already have, I hope this series of articles will help shape your mindset as you accelerate down the runway, giving you confidence as you take off into a new career beyond the cockpit.
Note: For additional visuals to help shape your mental image of anything (planes/helicopters/tasks) I touched on, YouTube and Google are great resources. This article was originally published by Josh Martin on LinkedIn.
