Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
24 Dan Lowes: "The team would improve 33% every single year and become world class".
Dan Lowes, our guest who takes us from the cockpit of an RAF fighter jet to the frontlines of leadership consultancy.
From member of the elite Red Arrows, and now, a mentor guiding sports teams and leaders in the relentless pursuit of excellence.
Peer into the intricate dance of debriefing, not just routine but an art form that can mean the difference between success and failure. Daniel's vivid narratives take us through the psychological undercurrents of high-performance teams, where trust is the currency and clear communication the lifeline.
The tales of his tenure with the Red Arrows, combined with the wisdom he imparts to leaders under pressure, underscore the profound impact of leadership styles that foster growth, adaptability, and a culture where learning from errors is not feared but embraced.
As we chart the course of Daniel's storied career, we're reminded that true excellence is a pursuit rather than a destination. He shares the strategies for building cohesive relationships within a team, and the importance of humility and self-awareness in the face of ego.
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Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership.
Speaker 2:Today we're joined by Daniel Lowes, who's a former RAF pilot, including doing some times with the Red Arrows. He's now a consultant to high-performing teams and happens to fly with the North Atlantic AIs. Morning, Daniel, Welcome to Forging Resilience buddy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good morning. Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2:No worries, mate. You just got back in yesterday, didn't you, from a trip I have mate, I'm having a great time.
Speaker 3:yeah, it's a busy few months, which is great, kind of dies off with air travel for some of the stuff we do. So it starts to get busy around now, you know, building up to easter in the summer, so the trips are coming thick and fast. But you know I'm talking caribbean, miami, all those kind of places, so I'm a very happy man right now someone's got to do it, though done for, for to go a bit more into your background.
Speaker 2:Give us a snapshot of your career.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure I I'm very privileged and proud of what I got up to. But uh, it starts off really with a bit of an ambition that was to join, join the air force. So I I joined a few days after my 19th birthday, so you know, late teens. A bit went by in the years. But after officer training in the royal air force, uh, that takes a couple months and I was very lucky then to go into Royal Air Force flying training, which takes about five years for me it was, which sounds like a really long time but can be longer at the moment, especially with some delays in the pipeline. So you know, relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things in modern times. But I was very lucky to then in my early 20s get myself onto the Eurofighter Typhoon which at the time I mean it's still an incredible aircraft. By the time it was brand new. So it was kind of leading edge of the capability of the fast jet world for the Royal Air Force. So I was again really proud and a real privilege and an honor to be there. I did that for about seven, eight years which took me all around the world but also got me onto a particular, particular course which is the weapons instructor course, which kind of pushed us in terms of our ability to lead, but also our ability to be tacticians and be the holders of standards, and which is what we went on to be for the rest of the force, for the you know the few years following that course and then, late 20s, early 30s, I was um successful eventually and we can talk about that. It's probably another moment of, you know, success through failure.
Speaker 3:On my third attempt, I was successful in my selection process to become a pilot with the Red Arrows, which was amazing, yeah, again took me all around the world and pushed, pushed me in areas that you know hadn't been pushed before but has has held me in high regard ever since, which is which is fantastic. And I flew for the Red Arrows for three and a half years you know, it's three full seasons, which took me through to the end of 2019, and even though at the time, I planned to stay in the air force, I found an opportunity to leave. I left, uh, just as the pandemic hit, which wasn't a great time to be leaving, especially as an aviator. That kind of industry was destroyed for a while, yeah, but I was lucky enough to. Um, I went and joined a family flying their private aircraft and they were involved in construction and other areas. So their business, if you like, kept moving. So I was very fortunate to have taken that opportunity.
Speaker 3:I flew for a couple of families actually one in the UK, one in Asia for a couple of years and then, about this time last year actually, I switched into the world of freelance and eventually found myself joining an airline in may 23 flying the 787. So it's pretty varied, um, a little bit of military time in there. Well, 17 years of military time, about three, four years of flying private aircraft, and now found myself in the commercial world. So that's what I do, kind of as a as a profession, if you like.
Speaker 3:I'm a professional aviator and then from what I've learned from those times you know, there's times flying airplanes and mainly in the military, really I've now found myself in this world of becoming a high performance consultant, which I didn't think I'd find myself in this world. But you know, I just have and I love it and it's mainly working with sports teams, which is fantastic, um, and it's awesome because what I've just told you it'd be great to just. You know, sorry, it's so easy to have just shut you know the chapter on that and said, hey look, that was that done, move on. But um, there's so much that I feel I can help others with through my lessons. You know, I've I've failed a lot in my life and I've had some real amazing successes in my life and there's a lot in between those that hopefully other people can learn from.
Speaker 2:And so now I spend uh, when I'm not, when I'm not flying, I spend a lot of time engaging with individuals and teams and leaders about how maybe they can get that extra you know, percent out of their overall performance yeah, there's so much you've mentioned there that we could go go into, but, um, I think, yeah, one of the things that's so interesting for the military perspective is we don't really recognize it for what it is until we've left and stepped away from that world. And it's and I think it's because there's so many like condensed moments of high pressure or excitement or adrenaline or learnings that sometimes people won't experience or it's very difficult to replicate, so that it makes the learning opportunity quite a big one, a very steep curve as well, as you probably know better than I in certain circumstances, which people find fascinating.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think the big thing is, as you know, when you're in these small, select teams, everyone's doing the same thing, so it just becomes the norm, the norm, yeah, yeah, you go to work in a high-pressure environment and it's almost like, well, that's the base level. So then, when it's really stressful, yeah, everyone, you that that level that you're working at super high, um, and because everyone's doing it and because it's just normal, you just think, oh, this is, this is life. And then when you leave, step away and you know you're not surrounded by those same high performing individuals all the time. You realize the level you're working at and actually that it's not to sit there and pat yourself on the back, which is it's lovely to do, but it's like, well, that's just where we were. Yeah, now we can help other people who aren't exposed to those environments every day. Or we can help people who are in teams or leading teams now in other areas of life where not everyone in the team has to experience the same level of stress or um responsibility all the time. So you know they, sometimes people can feel quite lonely or they think, oh, this is a bit weird and they, they suffer from that, whereas we, I feel like, with where we were. Everyone you know when you go to work every morning, you report onto the squadron at, you know half seven, eight in the morning. Yeah, everyone is operating to that standard.
Speaker 3:So I think the biggest thing when I left is that not everyone is operating to those standards all the time. And that's when you realize what we learned. That's when you realized why we pushed ourselves. That's why you realized actually, when you're in, you weren't talking to people on the outside or you weren't. Really I did very little. When I look back now, I did very little in what I would consider my spare time to push myself further in terms of what I read, what I learned, what I believed in. You know, I just went to work, operate at a high performing level, and went home and I didn't really have I felt the capacity to do anything else, but I also didn't feel I wanted to do anything else.
Speaker 2:I actually even questioned people who did you know, but that's probably what made you high performance, though, wasn't it the ability to stay so focused on something for a long period of time?
Speaker 3:yeah, I guess so, and I just say I think it's just because you're in that environment, everyone does it. So now that I've left it's you get. I get so much now from people who maybe aren't exposed to those environments all the time, and some stuff that you sit there and you think I feel not fraudulent that's not the word but sometimes you think surely, yeah, maybe they think this is quite basic stuff sometimes and actually it's not. That. The stuff we did was because it was our basic, you know, and I've grown on it and I've learned from it, and those lessons now open other people's eyes and ears and experiences to, to maybe how they can get more out of what they're doing, and I've found it's so rewarding, I love it.
Speaker 2:You mentioned when you became a weapons instructor that you get to hold those standards and became. That formed part of the leader that you were in the Air Force and still are to this day in a different way, shape and form. But what was it about that experience? What did they teach you that gave you to come to that conclusion?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's already quite a coveted position. It's something you know. I don't want to quote absolute figures, but there's going to be, you know, 100 plus pilots, let's say, on a force of this aircraft over a number of squadrons, and between it depends how many courses they run a year. It's either between two and four people on a course, so you're talking max eight pilots a year get this position. Sometimes you know they've only got the funding for one, because when I talk about funding I mean it is absolute.
Speaker 3:You get kind of broken down back to the basics. Really, you know you're already quite good to be selected for it and by the time you come out that you are a genuine specialist in everything that aircraft can do. And it's, you know, air to air, air to surface, but it's also the ability to lead, the ability to brief effectively, to break down a scenario and, you know, work out. Actually, how are we going to be able to deal with this problem today? And then, almost more importantly, is the debrief. You know, when we go and do it, it's being becoming a specialist and being able to break down the you know what, why, how, you know what happened, why did it happen, how are we going to fix it, and it's to be able to do that on the move and it's to be able to do that on large-scale exercises, to be able to do that with already highly skilled and highly trained people, how you can get more out of that. And this course takes about, you know, between six and seven months. It's heavy, You're at it all the time and so, yeah, you come out of that and I just think you learn so much more about yourself, about how you operate under stress, how you operate when the pressure's on, how you operate when you're tired, how you operate when you know you've got that kind of mental fog, but you're getting pushed further and further.
Speaker 3:But you're getting pushed further and further. You know, the fact is, the end of the day you then jump in a, in an aircraft, and you go into a highly dynamic environment with ambiguous information and do the best you can in a large-scale exercise with a lot going on. You know, that's the bit that sounds really difficult, but actually it's not. So it's the. It's what you learn about yourself and how you operate in those environments, I think are the biggest takeaways.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, maybe you don't realize that at the time, at the time you're on about. Well, I'm there on time and this is how. This is my style, this is how I like to do business, how I conduct myself. Sometimes you come out of it quite aggressive in terms of no, you know you, you have to almost be that bulldog in the room to keep the standards high continually, you know, but we had some things that, away from that we had, for example, when you finished the course and I talk about this, uh, quite a bit, sometimes you know it's the yeah, everyone in the military is still like, um, still like the air cadets or like the scouts.
Speaker 3:You know, we all love a badge and uh, as you know, and uh you know, when you walk on a station with a certain badge on, people stop and look and you're quite proud, or you know you, for example, you know when the SF boys walk on, you can just tell anyway. But the point is, when you finish this course, they don't put velcro on the badge. You know, because we only velcro it and it goes on a sticky patch on your shoulder, but they don't velcro it. And that's because you shouldn't need to wear that badge and even though you've been given it and it's the highest honor that you can get given for, especially for someone who's really wanted to be in that position for a long, long time you don't wear it because people shouldn't have to. When you walk in the room, people should know that you are that position. People should know you are that person, that leader, that holder of standards, that the fact you have to wear a badge to show it we think shouldn't, isn't necessary. So when you graduate, yeah, they don't, they don't give you the, the velcro. It's down to you if you velcro that badge and put it on, and I've not seen a man do that yet.
Speaker 3:So, uh, but yeah, and that's the thing. You know it's, it's, it's all encompassing, it's about being excellent in all things. You know we used to talk about being humble, approachable, credible. So you know, be humble in the fact that you're here, be approachable at all times so anyone you know, whether they are brand new or they've been on the squad in 20 years can come and ask you that, that question that they think might be the stupid question, but there's no such thing. And then be credible. Be the one who you know. When they want the first four guys to go over the well, over the border, as we would say, you know you're at the front, your nose cone touches that airspace first and that's where you need to be and that's what we held ourselves to yeah, that's brilliant that the fact that your, your your presence speaks instead of the badge I.
Speaker 2:I love that. That. Your standards that you set for yourself, I guess, inspires other people to to step into that position as well in time. Um, you touched on something that is really quite interesting for me. I read a book quite a long time ago, probably one of the first books that piqued my interest at self-development and black box thinking, by Matthew Syed, in terms of the way the aviation industry learns from their mistakes, compared, in this case, to the medical world. But what sort of things make a good debrief? How can you keep it constructive to keep learning?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. The start of a debrief, or how you form the framework of a good debrief, starts at the beginning of the actual brief, before you've even done the event, because you need to create a reasonable framework. If you go into an event without an objective or without a mission aim or an aim as such or an idea of what you're trying to achieve, then you'll never have a debrief, because you can never talk about what you were trying. You can sit there and go, oh, that was rubbish. Well, why was it rubbish? Or oh, we didn't do as well as we could have done that. What, why or why, what were you trying to achieve there? And if you haven't sat down and thought about that, then you're never going to get a an effective debrief. You can talk about things all day long, and it can be, you know, you can have opinions thrown in, great. But unless you're going to sit down with a name and then maybe come up with two or three objectives, then you're never going to be able then to hold yourself or construct a reasonable debrief. So that's the first thing right. Then you go out and do whatever it is you're going to try and achieve on that day or over the weeks, months, years, whatever it is. And then when you sit down to actually debrief, yeah, you have to bring those back in. It's like right, so what was our aim? Right, and then, what were our objectives? Now, you can be as hard and as soft as you want on those.
Speaker 3:I, I'm a one or a zero, you know it's. Did we achieve it? Yes or no is how I do it. You can kind of go, well, yeah, kind of. I I've always fallen into the yes or no category. If it's a kind of, then it's a no, because that's the only way you can really really push yourself. You can then go into subcategories, of course you can, and start ticking those off, but I'm a yes or no. So when you begin with it, try and be relatively harsh. Did we achieve something, yes or no? Did we make that objective, yes or no? And away you go. Now that forms a framework and then you can then start to decide on what went wrong. That's the main thing, right? So what did we do? Why did it go wrong and how are we going to fix it? So what happened? Right? Let's?
Speaker 3:Let's be honest here now again, it's the time frame you have now to put into uh context. You know, for something in the red arrows we got very good at debriefing, um, albeit we'd fly for, you know, 30 to 45 minutes. That would be at the beginning of our training. That would probably be maybe a 60 to 90 minute debrief. So you're talking about maybe doubling the actual execution time to debrief time.
Speaker 3:Then, as we got a bit finer in what we were trying to achieve, our yes and no started become more defined, our objectives became more defined, and I'll talk about that in a moment. We could get a debrief down, an effective debriefief, to a world-class standard, down to 20, 25 minutes, which you could easily lose 25 minutes a day just making a cup of tea and looking out the window, you know, and you're talking about becoming world-class in that time and that kind of just develops. And so what happened? Let's really discuss what happened and then we'll talk about why we think that happened and then we'll talk about how we're going to fix it. So X happened. Well, why was that? Well, so many good things can happen. Now, if I can just maybe talk about how the Reds debriefed I don't know if you want to go- dive into that yeah definitely.
Speaker 3:Hopefully frame how we used to do it. So we used to always have a dedicated space, always have a dedicated space. So, you know, we wouldn't just sit around and say, oh, should we debrief now? No, as soon as we finished an event, we would then go to a dedicated space. Now, if we were at our home base, we actually had a debriefing room.
Speaker 3:But if we were away from home which you know people do they're not always in their own office space, they're not always at home, they're not always, you know, at their home ground or their training pitch. So you need to be able to transport this around the world. So we would always have a dedicated space and that would be probably on the end of a wing of one of the airplanes and just even at that level, taxiing in to park, the boss or Red One would have said we'll meet on number four's wing or number five's wing or whatever. So we already knew where we were going to go. So as soon as those airplanes are parked, we were all. We weren't walking around where we go now. We had a leader who said we're meeting here at this time, right now, and so that's really important if you, you are trying to create this debriefing culture because people, when they finish, know they need to be somewhere. They don't wander off. You know they're not at the coffee machine, you're not on on teams or trying to say, hey, can you come back? We need to discuss stuff. Everyone knows as soon as the event's over, we're going to go to this place at this time and away we go.
Speaker 3:So we found ourselves in a debriefing space already. We then created a system whereby we made it as impersonal as possible. So it wasn't about Dan Loza's performance today, it was about my position's performance today. Now that's, you might need to get a bit creative if you're in teams where they don't really have positions as such. It's easier sometimes in a sports team when you have the left wing, right wing, goalkeeper or you know, fullback, scrum, half or whatever. But we had numbers in our team one to nine, numbers in our team one to nine, and once we stepped into the debriefing space, the debriefing space was sacred and the debriefing space, you lost your name. So it didn't, as I say, it took the personal element out of it. So when we went into that personal level, a personal level.
Speaker 2:Sorry, mate, were you able to do that or was that a challenge at the beginning?
Speaker 3:well, it's always a challenge to begin with, because when you're there in a space, especially somewhere like the reggie, that's my childhood dream. That was me wanting to be. You know, I'd already shown myself to be of a high standard professionally elsewhere. Now, when you work, when you arrive in a new environment that is world class and you're not there yet, it is intimidating. Uh, you are constantly going I need to step up here. And so, yeah, no one likes being wrong, but it is this again.
Speaker 3:It's about being in a team where everyone's trying to get better and if that's the case, everyone's happy to learn. And after the first week or two, you realize that, look, this is difficult for everyone. You know, and I'm going to, I struggle at skill A chap over there and I'm okay at B. Guy over there is awesome at A, which I can't understand because I'm struggling with that. But then he's struggling with B and I can't understand that because I find that bit easy. So, but then you start to realize that actually we're all here to elevate each other's position and so, yeah, you buy into it. And that's the other big thing you have to buy into this, and I'll talk about why trust is a huge pillar in buying into a learning culture. But yeah, you did, and all of a sudden you were talking numbers, not names, or positions, not names. That took the personal element out of it and I found over the next few weeks you just buy into it and before you know it, you're debriefing a position, not a name, and your ability to take on these debrief points became a lot easier. Now there's certain things we can dive into. So, as I say, trust is a huge thing, because there's nothing worse when you especially when you break down into smaller elements within your team, to then find out from people who weren't in that debrief meeting that they have heard about your error or your mistake or things. There is nothing worse than going to the coffee machine or being out in the pub on the friday going oh, mate, I heard you had a bit of a shocker on tuesday and you think you weren't even there on tuesday which means someone in your space has leaked information about your performance or what's going on. And the second you do that you've destroyed your debriefing system because you will never get a buy-in. People never put their hands up and tell you they're wrong or be you know, be exposed to the um, the system of being told that they need to get better in certain areas to then find out that their errors or their, their inability is being expressed elsewhere, outside that space. So the second you do that, you learn your, you lose your learning culture. It's gone. It's gone People. You just will never get them to open up. So that's what I mean about having to get people to buy into the trust and build that trust in the team.
Speaker 3:Other things we do go back to what I talk about with the aims and the objectives. Well, we constantly link back to what we were trying to achieve there. But I'd go out maybe. Let's say there was 10 errors, 10 things I did wrong trying to get that aim done today. But the point is, if I was to step out the door in the next half an hour and do it again, I'm not going to fix 10 errors, so I've got to pick three. So I'll take three. Just what are the big things? What's the first three things I'm going to fix immediately the next time I do it? And then, if I step out and I fix them, great. Now I'll go back and pick another three. Hopefully there's only seven now, but the likelihood is there's another 10 errors and they go on. But the point is, we're never going to be perfect, so you just need to pick three.
Speaker 3:Then, within that three, we employed a thing called a half hour technique. Now that was actually moving an aircraft around so you didn't want to try and move it. If you tried to move it two meters, because you, let's say you, were two meters in the wrong place. If you went for two, I promise you you're going to over swing by a meter, two meters. So we only went to fix one meter at a time. We might even go and fix half a foot at a time, or we might go and fix, you know, half a mile an hour at a time, whatever it might have been.
Speaker 3:We never went to fix the full error straight away, because the likelihood is and you don't just see this in in the skill we did, you see this in policy when the things go wrong. You see this in how people say oh, we're going to fix this next time. They go well off the mark. There's that knee jerk reaction. No, just half the error. And you'll probably find actually, you're closer than half by the time you did it. You might be further away, who knows. But the point is you pick three and you fix half the error, and only then, once you've broken it down half error, technique, half error, half error and you fix this three completely right, put them to bed, let's go back out, execute. Hey look, we're doing much better. Now let's pick the next three. We'll fix half the error and away we go. And that's how we did it and that's how, in my opinion, we took you know we changed 33 percent of a performing team every season.
Speaker 3:You know that's like a midfielder, a whole defense of a football team. You know we would take a team that would change 33 percent of its of its um executing team, if you like and become world class in seven months, every single year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredible, mate. From what I'm hearing, there's some really interesting things there. It's obviously fascinating. But the ability to remove ego from the act, or that, your sense of worth, or you as the person, the environment that's created to be able to learn, give that feedback and the trust that that builds. And my last note I can't read, but yeah, yeah, they all come back to me.
Speaker 3:It's funny when you talk about ego, because there has to be a level of ego, and I'm sure you found this in what you did, because if there was no ego, you just simply wouldn't do it. It's too dangerous, yeah no, I get that.
Speaker 2:But it's not personal though. No, it's not, it's just self-belief, yes, but the interesting thing is that it'll probably be able to do it in when we're talking about certain situations where we're used to that. If we step away from that, or especially outside of the military, and maybe there's not that environment or trust or buy-in, then it still feels really quite personal, isn't it?
Speaker 3:and it's a constant skill, yeah, that to be able to practice, and we talked about this, uh, previously.
Speaker 3:You know, in some of our chats it's, you know, one of the things that I've always loved and been so um in awe of, especially with chaps like yourself in the special forces.
Speaker 3:You push yourself to levels that you know I I genuinely don't think I could have done, or that you know, because I've never been there. You can only imagine how physically demanding and how tough it might be, especially some of the scenarios you find yourself in. And yet the coolest thing I think about, especially that, where you came from, you know you could be in tesco no one would have a clue. You know you could be in a pub no one, in fact, you'd be devastated if anyone did know. You know, and and yet you have to have some type of ego, if I may use that word, because you know, unless did you ain't jumping into a dark sky in someone else's back garden to go and look after? You know, try and find someone who's trying to kill you and sort that situation out. So you're going to have to back yourself and that has to be a level of ego, but you'd be devastated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, you're right, it's to know when to turn it on. To turn it off and it's something that I've talked about with another guest and a mate of mine is that, yeah, definitely, to do certain jobs, do certain things, you need to have that self-belief which is what it really is that I'm good enough, I can do this. There's people behind me, but when you walk into work or back into your family home, you don't need to be that person. It's the ability to regulate, which Gaz talks about a lot, isn't it the ability to down-reg, regulate or know when to, to lean into that and and switch it off.
Speaker 2:And again, because I don't understand, it's not my world. So I'm imagining aircraft flying in incredibly close formation but there's no fixed points. How do you even know that you're going? Well, I mean too fast. Obviously you're gonna be slightly further ahead, but it is a lot of those positions and maneuvers given within a small bracket so that you know where you need to be when you turn at this point. Or is it a quite um, organic, but you know the moves are coming? Yeah, if that makes. I'm not explaining that very well no, no, you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I get what you mean. And just for for any of, uh, my old mates watching you were using your hands there. So hands in the bar, that's a fine, so that's a beer not in the bath.
Speaker 2:Don't drink. I've got a pint of water here which I'm happy to neck anyway, the um, yeah, the um, yeah, it's different.
Speaker 3:So actually you spend a lot of your time, uh. So, just just to get to this team, you've probably been flying fighters in the royal air force, for you know fighter aircraft. You have to have been a fighter pilot to be eligible to join this team and a lot of that you would have either done on you know we will be here at this time uh, you would have been on some type of link so you can see each other. A lot of it is, uh, non-verbal, if you can. There is a lot of it is nonverbal if you can. There is a lot of communication going on, but a lot of it can also be nonverbal communication, so wing flashes or hand signals or the rest of it, or actually on secure comms when you need to.
Speaker 3:But if you don't need to speak, you don't. In fact, one of the lines in the book is just because you have a voice in a radio doesn't mean you should use it, and that means that you know you, you sit there, you stick to the plan, you communicate when you need to. But it's been such an effective brief. We're so highly trained, we've got our standards and operating procedures. We know what we're doing, let's go out and make this happen, all right, and that's. That's a lot of stuff that happens on the front line. That's tactical, that's fighting, that's landscape exactly uh.
Speaker 3:And then when you come to uh, reds, it's more verbal. It's listening to the boss, who's Red, bon, and he's saying when he's pulling up, he's saying when he's coming left, he says when the smoke comes on, and so the rest of it. But all of that is commuting aid to someone and he might say it in a very structured tone. For example, coming left now, that will mean something to us and that's very controlled. But if the weather's a bit bad or there's there's some terrain or you know there's some airspace, it might be coming left now and you can hear that. And and the, the leaders that I've flown for, they I flew for two different ones and their voices were different. And one of the biggest things on their switchover is, for the first few trips it's so alien to you that there's another voice with another cadence, but you learn it and so, straight away, yes, it's done a lot of the boss's voice with what he's saying. And when you listen to a Red Arrows display that we used to get bantered quite a lot, it's like why do you shout so much and why have you got these weird voices? And it is when you sit back and listen, sometimes it does. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but that means something to other people. That's helping our performance, that that that's given us that level of success. Now, putting the airplanes in the right place we do. We take fixed, um, what we call references off the aircraft next to us or even two, three aircraft away from us, um, and that is so. I don't know if you've done sailing, for example, it's the best way I can explain it, but you know, if you're sailing at night, they use lights, especially if you're coming to a harbour. If the lights you line them up, they stay in the same place, you're in the right place. If they move, you need to do something. Well, same kind of thing with formation flying. You pick rivets sometimes or just lines on the aeroplane. You hold them in the right place and if you can keep them in the right place, you've got two references, sometimes three, but four in an aft. So you know that you're left or right in terms of the right place, and another one that means that you're forward or back in the right place. Now, it gets a bit more advanced than that, clearly, especially with different maneuvers and where you are within that formation. But that's the basics of it. So you learn those positions and you learn to maintain those positions and you learn to move around those positions.
Speaker 3:Now, what we do, we have a thing called a box of airspace, and this comes back to trust. Trust binds the team. It doesn't just bind us in that debriefing space, but it binds us in everything we do. And that's why these high performing teams come so close, because ultimately it's trust and with that becomes those relationships that you can not just be there in close formation at high speeds and aeroplanes, but you can talk to people on the ground about stuff at home and then next minute you can be somewhere doing something you know pretty ridiculous with them in terms of, uh, you know a dangerous environment, but once you've learned, um, those formation references and you've learned the cadence of the boss's voice, um, what we do is we give each other a box of airspace is what we call it. So you know start of the training period, that each other a box of airspace is what we call it. So you know start of the training period. That'll be a couple feet, you know front, behind, left, right, above and below the airplane, and you and you give yeah, the the new pilots a bit of space within that and then as they get better and as the confidence and the trust grows, that box of airspace is tightened up to eventually it is quite a tight box of airspace around the airplane.
Speaker 3:Now that is a fictitious yeah, that is a made-up box, like you know. You now can shut your eyes. You can imagine two or three feet left or right. I can do the same thing. Now, if that pilot doesn't believe that they're able to maintain their airplane within that box of airspace, they will execute a trained escape maneuver. So that might be to pull up or it might be to increase their roll rate and they will break away very quickly from the formation. Very much like you know when you're going around a roundabout and you've got someone on the inside of you and you pull off the roundabout, how quickly you separate from that car. Same kind of thing, but obviously just a bit faster. But that's, that's all that's happening. And so what we do is we tighten up that box of airspace, which means eventually I could be maybe three aircraft away from the boss.
Speaker 3:I'm not looking at the two airplanes inside of me, I've got kind of a peripheral vision on them, but that means that if we're running down the mall for Her Majesty when I was in.
Speaker 3:But His Majesty now, and it's a busy, blustery day, as you're flying down the mall over the King, flying down the mall over over the king, you know the reason you don't see if someone inside you hits a bit of a thermal or has a bit of a wobble and bounces the airplanes, either side of them will not bounce because they know that that aircraft they don't need to react to that aircraft because if that airplane is still there, it means that that pilot believes he's still in his box of airspace and our boxes will never overlap.
Speaker 3:So if he believes he's in his box, I believe I'm in my box, doesn't matter how much he's thrashing around. I can hold my aircraft steady and level and do my job, look through and look at the boss, because I trust him entirely that he won't come out of his box. And that's how you build up this formation. So once you've got the references, you've got the cadence of the boss's voice, you then build this boxes of airspace individually and you put these nine boxes essentially around each other. And that's why on a busy, blustery day, you know, at 300 feet off the south coast of the UK, in poor weather, we were able to put a display on, you know, 700, 800 feet cloud-based, because you just absolutely trust that the people outside of you are remaining in their box and if they don't, they'll escape and no one's going to hurt each other yeah, another day in the office and I guess it brings because you've done so much practice and built such a level of trust and it brings a whole new meaning to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's it, and you know there's a few things we've discussed there people listening who might be in other teams or other spaces. You know you have to be able to trust each other to do their job. So that's the number one thing. You know there's no micromanaging, there's not on the radio going hey, can you just tighten that up a little bit? No silence, just let him. Let them do. You've given them the tools to do their job. You've literally given them the space to do their job. Now let them get on with it.
Speaker 2:We'll talk about it in the debrief exactly I'm just going to say and there's a time and a place to bring constructive feedback, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Now you can have uh points along the way of doing something. So, again, going back, if you'd like to relate it, you know, to this red house display, talk about, you know, every now and then, if you ever listen to one on on uh youtube or you know, I'd go out and watch them this season. It's actually the 60th anniversary of the team this summer. So if you can get out and watch them and yeah, I've already seen some of the pictures coming out from their training camp they look awesome. They're bringing back some moves that haven't been seen for I think maybe even 20 years. So you know it's it's, it's going to be a good season. So if you're listening to it and you can go watch them.
Speaker 3:But just kind of listen to the communication that's happening and every now and then you'll hear someone just shout something which will. It might be, it might sound quite random to someone on the ground, but you know what that is actually. Halfway through, or maybe two-thirds of the way through, someone might say a particular word in a certain voice. It might be high-pitched, it might sound super aggressive, it also might be quite monotone and flat and they're saying the same words, but what it means to the team is halfway through. It was something I remember I used to say. If I said it in a monotone voice, the boys were like, oh yeah, we need to up our game here. We haven't had a good start to this. So if I shout and I'm high pitched, I'm excited the team are going all right, we're smashing this. He's excited, this is good. I'm down the back, I can see stuff that's going on. So he's like right, we're on it, keep going, on it, keep going. So you know you, that wasn't me saying, oh, actually he's not doing great, it's just a collective at this point and guys, it's not going great, let's pick it up. Or this is awesome, keep going.
Speaker 3:You know, kind of a little bit like what I'd imagine. You know, when you see um, I always think when rugby teams are scored against, they all kind of congregate under the, under the um sticks, you know, under their own posts. Now they might be winning and he's like no, come on, let's keep going. Or they might be getting hammered and they have a quick chat, that kind of quick moment to just say one or two words and then go back out. Kickoff happens away, we go. That's the kind of thing. So we're not micromanaging. It might be just an appropriate time to say something in a certain tone to tell the team that they're doing well that kind of level of encouragement or that kind of little friendly, you know pat on the back to keep, keep going, cause we're not quite there yet, and that that's really good. And then we'll get down into the nuts and bolts of it once we're over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. You're giving me memories of when I was in Fairford airfield with my old van and my granddad and watching the air display, and I'm pretty sure I've seen the red arrows fly there, if not at another location but yeah, you would have done fair for the big one yep, as you know, I'm desperate to take my my boy to see them.
Speaker 2:He's got a massive interest in and all that sort of stuff. I don't know where he gets it from. Um mate, in terms of, in terms of leadership, then that both the what made you a leader and the people that led you. What were some of the qualities that you recognized within yourself and within other leaders that made them good leaders?
Speaker 3:by the way, yeah, I think there's two or three, I think, spring to mind. One of them was just because I'll never forget it was probably one of my first kind of bosses on the front line, if you like. He was charismatic, he had time for everyone. He was probably one of my first bosses on the front line, if you like. He was charismatic, he had time for everyone. He was the kind of gentleman who could somehow manage to fit 30 hours into a 12-hour day. Just his time management and his priorities were right. It was about the people that worked for him making sure that they became the best. It wasn't a these are the standards. Why aren't you there?
Speaker 3:He invested so much time and interest to making sure that there was 20 pilots, but he had some 150 engineers working for him and he would spend just as much time making sure that the guys who are in the jets out there off to do whatever he wanted them to do were as happy as all the 130 working day and night to make sure all those airplanes were right, and he found the perfect mix between the two. Now, add to that is this credibility side of stuff. Now, he was excellent and so he was inspirational. He didn't abuse his position of not having to do as much as everyone else because he had earned the right not to, and he had earned the right not to. He wasn't given that position. He had joined in his late to and he had earned the right not to. You know, he he wasn't given that position. He had joined in his late teens and worked his way all the way up to commanding that squadron. You know, I think that's the big thing and I think again, maybe you know you've seen this with your background is that that kind of he wasn't rankless, but he had. He had worked his way up from being a junior rank. He was never given a, a position of privilege and he never let it down. And he was not only was he just awesome. You know, he would be the first out the front. If it was a difficult task, he put his hand up first. He also knew when to kind of let the, the junior pilots or the other pilots who, who were also good, step out the front. He didn't just take the limelight all the time, but he was happy when it was really difficult to also step up and say watch this, so everyone. And then he'd go back down, maybe be a wingman again, but the point was everyone knew he could do it, which I thought was amazing. If you know that your boss can do your job as well, if not better, than you, that's incredibly inspiring, I think. Yeah, uh. So credibility was huge, uh.
Speaker 3:And then there was another boss I had, so there was one that wasn't, uh, so good in a certain area. But there was another boss I had who wasn't as good and and knew it, because they had gone off and done other things. They'd been in an office for three, four years. They'd been away from the scene. They come from another airplane, so they were they. They were learning the craft, just about that. You know, they've been posted.
Speaker 3:Essentially, I guess the best way to think about this is that they'd come from a different department, even though they were a fighter pilot and they'd been excellent at what they'd done previously. They'd been away from the scene for a long time. They'd been posted back to lead our department. Now I'd seen one who then forgot that maybe he had put himself back to where he was when he was really really good. Um, and that didn't go so well. And so this other boss. The reason this leader was so good is because they understood their limitations and they didn't think because I'm the boss, watch this, this is how we do it away, we go they. They were excellent in a certain way because, although they were different to that previous leader I talked about, who could get the job done, they understood their vulnerabilities or their failings, if you like, that's the harsh word to use. I don't mean it in that way.
Speaker 2:I know what you mean.
Speaker 3:But they knew where they weren't a high performer, let's say, and that's when they were really good at turning around and working out in their team who was and giving them the time to say, right, you know what? I need you to step up for me here. I need you to go away and look at this here, you're going to lead this area here. And they, I guess delegate is the best way they knew. They knew how to delegate well in areas that they weren't good at, rather than that kind of arrogance, ego of I'm the boss, here we go, and I've always, I always thought that was fantastic and when I kind of look at my leadership styles in certain areas, it's, it's a classic thing.
Speaker 3:I did this and I think it's held me in high regard, even when I was forming, you know, forming my own habit patterns and forming the way in which I wanted to conduct myself and who I wanted to be.
Speaker 3:Within that. You know, that space is that I kind of just align myself with those who I most wanted to be like. You know, when they walk in, when you're, when you walk into work, who do you think, oh, they make me feel good. Or when you think, oh, this is going to be good. In a meeting and someone steps up and starts talking, you think, wow, the way they put that together so good, the way they have seen that problem or broken that problem down, dealt with, it is amazing. Yeah, I picked two or three people that I put on a pedestal and thought, right, when I'm of that age or of that experience or being given that opportunity, that's how I want to be, and so I formed a lot of my habit patterns. Um, initially, uh, by picking the leaders that I most respected or wanted to be like, and just started almost copying that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they talk about r&d, research and development, or it's rip off and duplicate, you know and and rip off and duplicate um attributes of people that that you are most impressed with and can start to form them. You know you don't have to copycat them, that's not what I'm saying but you know, once you realize how they do, you can form your own habits. Then you can put your own spin on things. Then, as you grow and as you develop and as you mature in that role, you know if they are have, if they've been your foundations, and then you put your personal spin on it.
Speaker 2:I think that's an incredible way in order to become the leader, but also the follower that you want to be yeah, yes, I think it's really interesting, because what I'm hearing is that, whilst technical ability and skill will get you so far, if you're a throbber, you're a throbber, and that the ability to manage yourself, and especially, again comes back to ego, being humble, um, the ability to self-reflect is is massive, and so my question to you really is how can we encourage that within ourselves or with our teams, to look at ourselves, to work on ourselves?
Speaker 3:well, straight away. There has to be a level of professional pride or personal pride. You've got to want it first. You can't force any of this. Yeah, you know you can easily turn up and you can say you know you can coast. I'm sure there's many people in lots of jobs who can coast all day long. That's great. But if you genuinely want to be excellent, you've got to want it. You can't accident. Well, you know people will argue against me. Can you be accidentally excellent? Yeah, probably. There is raw talent.
Speaker 1:Of course but it'll only get you so far, and that's the thing.
Speaker 3:And eventually get found out you know, if you don't want it, if you don't put the effort in, you will get found out. And it's the main thing about, as I say, about being credible. I think credible is also being able to do the job, but, as I mentioned before, it's credible about understanding your weaknesses, being able to delegate well, but they're not just sitting there and going oh, I've abdicated that, you know, done it's, I'm gonna, at this moment in time, I'm going to delegate that role to you, but you know it's then walking away, going wow, wouldn't it have been awesome if I could have just done that off the bat? You know and and go away. And that's where stuff. You know, when I was in squadrons, you, it was always task focused. So, or it wasn't always about me as such, in terms of you know, you've talked about black box thinking and all these. I wasn't reading these books, but what I was doing was reading. You know the manuals on. You know future adversaries, what equipment do they have? You know what what's, what's their strengths, what those weaknesses. Next time I get told to go up against this, how are we going to deal with it? So, so you, you, you start building that library of ability in your, in your space and it's it's finding those moments and knowing that it's not. It's not an easy ride. It's a it's, it's a plan, it's a dedicated effort in order to understand your craft, to understand your team, to understand yourself and then start working out how you can start putting all these things together in order to become that effective leader and I keep, I keep going back to this but also being an effective team player. You know it's a lot of this.
Speaker 3:We talk about leadership. Leadership, you know we always have a leader. That's just how our society is set up, but it's incredibly important to be. You know, if you want a sub leader but a team, a team member, you know you've got to be able to fit into that team, be an effective team player. Not always take the glory, and there will be times where people will turn to you and say I need you to do this for me now. That's when you step up and that's when you're a leader. But I think it's incredibly important. We talk about this. A lot of these things are about being a high performer and and being out the front, leading, but I think it's also incredibly important to work out how you can bring all these attributes and these kind of this mindset and this wanting to be excellent and and understand that you still have a place in that team, to, to lift the overall performance of the team yeah, and I'm curious to know what.
Speaker 2:What does resilience mean to you and how does that, how did it affect you when especially yeah, it's difficult.
Speaker 3:I mean yeah, the buzzword is, it's your ability to, you know, to to keep forging on in in tough times. It is the, and I look at it and think, yeah, it's, it's easy. I sometimes go to business oh, tell us about resilience, you know. Oh, you know, I could just get that out of a of a dictionary. So you kind of sit down and think, right, resilience, well, resilience is, it's multifaceted, and for me it's it's if you are, if you have a dream or if you have an ambition. It's understanding that it's not a straight line with. Some people are very lucky and they do have these moments that they just go A to B in a straight work. It is having to understand that you will go to work some days and fail, and it's not that you have been, that you're rubbish or that you're not, you're capable of doing it, it's just you're on your journey of doing it. And so for me, you know, my resilience came from the fact that, albeit, it was a very competitive and sometimes quite an aggressive environment to be in, to get through that training system and then to survive on the front line, be credible and, you know, be constantly in that high bracket, because that's what I wanted to be, you know.
Speaker 3:So my resilience came from the fact that I failed a lot along the way. I failed some very basic stuff, lying there in bed at night, going why am I even here? And I failed some pretty heavy stuff as well. When you get towards the more dynamic ends of our working environment and it doesn't go well for you some days and it could be going well for you for two, three years every day, and then bang, something big happens, happens and it's the ability to not let that shock you.
Speaker 3:So for my resilience, it's understanding that you need to build in that space to fail. You need to build in that space to learn and you need to build in that ability to to fight back from that. Because I've seen, unfortunately I've seen people who have probably not failed for two, three, three, four years have been put on a pedestal. They're the best in the business and then something catches them out, and we've seen this in so many different walks of life. There are people who are excellent. Something will catch them out at some point, because that's just human nature, that's just the environments that if you're working in a high-performing environment, that will happen.
Speaker 2:But it's. That is also I don't think we should uh glaze over that how we manage ourselves and how we come back from certain situations at home, as it's a massive effect on how we come back from certain situations at home, is a massive effect on how we apply that outside and vice versa. But you mentioned something briefly at the beginning and again just there now, um, in terms of failure. So, yeah, you mentioned you. You failed the, the selection post process three times for the, for the reds. Give us a little insight what the what led to or what that course is like and where you failed and how you came back learning.
Speaker 3:So there's always these um, uh, predisposed minimums if you like to be eligible to, to apply for that environment. So you have to say have been a fighter by the air force, you have to have flown I think it's 15, yeah, 15 hours. You have to be assessed above average. Uh, you know, against your peers you have to frontline talk all these things your peers. You have to earn a front line, all these things. And once you tick those boxes you're eligible to apply.
Speaker 3:They don't come looking for you, they don't come knocking on your door saying, please apply for us. And that's the first thing. They want people who want to be there. That might mean they miss some excellent talent, but they're not going to come knocking on your door because they don't want anyone forced. They want someone who, whose dream and desire is to be there, because they know that's the person who's going to up their game to to want to be and stay in that environment. So that's the first thing. Now, when you then get to the point where you're eligible to go to there, they take you on the training camp. So you apply, they whittle it down, you go into a short list and that short list is taken away to a training camp and you live and work with the team. Now both sides trying to get in, but also having been in the team. That's a. That's a big. That's a big week, because not only if you're an applicant you're there, you know as for me, it was a childhood dream you're living amongst the red arrows, you know you're, you're having breakfast with them, you're in their team bus, you fly with them three times a day, five days a week, you're having dinner with them, you're going to social events with them. You know you're, you live and breathe their life for a week. And that's important actually, because some people they come out the back of that and think, actually I thought I wanted to do it, but I don't. If that's what you want me to do every day for the next three and a half years like this, you know it's, it's a lot, you know. And it's also a good environment for the team, for these candidates, not just to see a name on a bit of paper, not just to see a CV of high achievement. It's to live and breathe and work with these people in a stressful environment where you're tired, where it's not cold, wet and hungry like you boys would do, but it's an environment where they are flying more than they've flown on a regular basis. They're under stress because everyone's watching them all the time and you get to see the real side of a lot of people Within that as well.
Speaker 3:You do an official flying test. I'll talk about that in a sec. You kind of do an interview, but it's mainly social. Once you've passed the flying test and once you've shown that you can answer questions in a formal interview in a dedicated manner, like any formal process. The hardest thing outside of that is that it is a 24-hour-a-day, five-day or I think it might even be seven-day sometimes, depending on how the week falls social interview and there's nothing harder because you can't hard from that. There's no official question that you can answer. There's no. You know you're overthinking what you're dressing, what you're wearing to dinner, all this kind of stuff, you know.
Speaker 3:So why did I fail the first time? I genuinely feel the first time is just I was in awe of my environment. Awe of of my environment. You know. I got there. I was a bit stiff, you know. It wasn't natural in conversation, you know. So I was finding myself just asking people questions to get a conversation going. Yeah, I wasn't, because I won't. Yeah, I was kind of just overwhelmed by the whole event. Really, this had been something I wanted to do since I was five years old. And now I'm sat there and you think, oh my god, now you do a flying test and yeah, again, that was well. I don't think I've failed it, because you don't get called back if you fail it, but you know, it probably was on the limit. You know, just overthinking and this is the big thing, it was just overthinking. I was thinking about what they wanted to see rather than just being myself yeah, and I fortunately, yeah, and there will be.
Speaker 3:There will be technical points as to why I didn't make it that year, but if I was to, when I sit down and debrief myself and I look back on it, I was not natural enough in that environment because I was so stiff, I was so um, robotic, if you like. I wasn't, I wasn't who I who I am, and that was the big thing that year. And then the year the next year, there was a technicality which meant that unfortunately, didn't make it onto the camp because it was needed elsewhere with. And then finally, my third year, when I went, it was like right, well, do you know what if this doesn't work out? And this is a big thing? Right, because every time you apply you have to wait a whole year.
Speaker 3:So from my first application to getting in was three full years and that's a long time. You know, you think about it and I'm not like, oh, it's that time of year again to apply genuinely. You're going for run every day, you're in the gym every day, you're doing something every day. It enters your mindset at some point in your life, every day, if you really want it, and it did for me. And so for three years. You're living and breathing this. I need to do this. I need to do this. I've already failed once, but I still need to do it. To boy, to don't give up on it. However, that does become fatiguing. So, uh, I was like right, is this, is this time or never? And I'd made an arrangement to if it didn't go well, I was going to accept, um, a military posting somewhere else, which would have been a fantastic career move. But I was like right, you have to give yourself one more go. And I think maybe that played the part of well, it's now or never. You know, if it doesn't work out, don't worry about it, because you got something else on the cards. It will be a shame they never have done it.
Speaker 3:But and I think that just meant when I turned up, you know I prepared I mean I and I'm not saying I just kind of nonchalantly turned up you know I read all the notes for weeks before. You know, for the flying test I managed to go on to, I get some friends to help me, you know with with what happened and where, and talk to them about it. What experience did you have when you'd seen it? You know I worked my ass off for it. But when I turned up I was like, right, I can't do anything more. Now Control the controllables. You've done all you can. If you don't just commit yourself to enjoying this week, it's never going to happen for you. And you know that's what I did.
Speaker 3:And I just found conversation flowed more naturally with those around me. It meant that I could just open up a bit more to, not just the team but, you know, the people around them that support them. You know I found space to talk to engineers, I found space to talk to, just, you know, the receptionist, whatever you know, and I think maybe that kind of got noticed because all of a sudden you're someone who has time for everyone, you have capacity in your day, you're relaxed, know, you can maybe crack the odd joke, but not too many, because you're an interview, but you know they're kind of you can just be yourself again and I think that that goes a lot further. And then, getting into the team, I would eventually go on to be the executive officer, which was the pilot who who assessed the flying tests for the pilot, the candidates. You know it's uh poached, turn gamekeeper and uh, you, you know, you see it. You see the guys freeze and you kind of sit there you can't say anything, because that's one of the things we do. We don't. We look for people who want to push themselves. So, for example, our flying test would be just one part of it would be a loop, followed by another loop, with the candidate flying the airplane, and between the two loops we'll give them about 10 seconds of time, uh, and then we'll do a second loop.
Speaker 3:Now I'm as the assessor. I'm not going to give them any debrief points, um, and they're told all this, the brief of this before. But I do want to see them. If they haven't flown a good, if they're, we're not there to see them fly to our standards, because we will train to our standards. But what I'm looking for is a candidate who shows some resilience, as you mentioned there before, because it might not gone well, but they're going to go and have another crack straight away. But, more importantly, I want them to try and effect a change.
Speaker 3:Now, if we do a loop and it's an awful loop, let's just say the second one I want them to see them to try and do something. Maybe it was they hadn't put enough power on, or they hadn't pulled back hard enough, or they pulled back too hard on the stick or whatever it might be. I want to see them, in the next 10 seconds, understand that and make an attempt to fix it. Even if they fly a really good loop but it wasn't quite what they wanted to do and they then put an input in or they're making a change and the result is worse. That candidate to me would finish higher up the list than someone who not flew two perfect loops. You know, of course, because that person's a sky god, as we'd say we'd have them in harpy, but uh, as long as they passed all the other stuff.
Speaker 3:But the point is if, if someone is just going to fly, do do an event and it wasn't perfect, and then 10 seconds later they're just going to do the event again, that's not the person we want. We want someone who, in that 10 seconds, can understand their own performance, make an assessment of it, then make a judgment of what they think they might want to do to change it and then affect that change. And I'm talking 10 seconds and you're talking loops in Red Arrows airplanes. It's a stressful environment that there's a lot going on, but I want to see someone who's attempting to get better. Now, the reason I want that candidate is because when I then sit you down and teach you and give you the tools of what we do, I know that, even without having to be on your back the whole time, even outside of the debriefing culture that we, that you're already pushing yourself.
Speaker 3:I'm going to debrief you for half an hour in the room, but you're going to drive home that night and you're going to think about it. You're going to have a shower. You're going to think about it. You're going to have your dinner. Think about it. You're going to be lying in your bed at night. You do, rather than okay, fine, whatever, I'll just have another crack. You know, that person who's going to make that immediate change is the person I want in my team, because I know that they're going to consistently push themselves to higher standards. And so you do that. And then and yeah, so I think you know, on the fact that I was able to be myself, I kind of prepared as well as I could, but then relinquished to the you know, or, uh, surrendered to the control, the controllables, um chat that a lot of people talk about, but actually do that. I think once you then can become yourself, release yourself for that stress, then performance goes through the roof and, and lucky for me, I was selected and the rest is history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great man, so it's a. It's a really interesting insight that, and yet the ability to, to, to hold vision, still work very hard and, like you said, just relaxing, to be in yourself, letting go of the outcome. It will be what it will be, brilliant you must have seen that right.
Speaker 3:I guess in some of the stuff you've done, if you sit there and overthought about it I mean especially some of the harder physical exercises I'd imagine you've been on you can't be operating that level and just stressing out about it the whole time. You just got to surrender to it, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely it's hard to pick specific examples. As you know, with me it's quite a long time ago that I was in and I don't reflect back on that that much. I recognize it's something that I can do to help draw some quite interesting lessons from that I can do to help draw some quite interesting lessons from. But, yeah, no, definitely I recognize it more with business for myself and trying to push that forward now, yeah, if I'm constantly doing the same things but making them say, oh sorry, it's not getting the results, then yeah, I need to do something different. Yeah, there's no one going to give me a debrief, but yeah, which comes to building community and that support network to help drive us along, even though a lot of the times it comes from within, it's, it's invaluable. Yeah, what, what can we expect from you in the future?
Speaker 3:I know great things like, uh hey, I, I'm, um, I'm really enjoying, so, yeah, what I would say my my professional career of of being a pilot. I'm loving that at the moment, you know the challenges are different, you know, from single seat fighter aircraft to. You know, multi-crew environments means that you're now working rather than by yourself being able to affect a change or make a decision straight away. You know it's now two, three pilots plus eight cabin crew, so you know that you're talking. You know an airplane that's 200 foot long with, you know, 340 passengers on it. A lot can go wrong and a lot can go wrong outside. So a lot of it's down to effective communication, this thing we call crm, which is crew resource management, so it's being able to get the most out of the team.
Speaker 3:Um, in an environment. You know day I only landed yesterday and even coming back then you know a medical emergency on board. You know it's not like we're getting out the cockpit and going down and assess it. It's all done by interphone with. You know someone who's 150 feet behind you you can't see them and it's getting the right information about it so you can make informed decisions about how you're going to help someone in need all the way down to, you know, in the simulator, losing an engine and then, rather than just instinctively reacting and dealing with it yourself, it's like right, it's now. How do we keep each other's situational awareness high? What's each other's mental model? How do we communicate both verbally and non-verbally and grow that? So it's a really interesting environment to work in, one I'm loving, by the way, because also you can stand up and have a coffee, which you could never do in a previous life.
Speaker 3:So never underestimate that um, and just find some really interesting people. You know, people have done so many different things, um, and that's what's great about commercial aviation. People have worked for different airlines, people have worked in different disciplines of flying. They seem to kind of all come together in this environment so it's been amazing. I love it genuinely.
Speaker 3:Go to work and I think it's going to be fantastic because you don't fly with the same pilot all the time. You know it's hundreds of pilots, so you might not fly with the same person for six months. So every time you go to work that's sometimes people don't always realize this, but every time you go to work and you fly that airline or that in that airplane, something drastic could go wrong. That's just you know. And you know I don't want to scare people of flying. It's the safest thing to do, but you know, clearly things can go wrong. But you need to deal with that with someone that you've probably never flown with before, you know.
Speaker 3:But that's all down to set standards, procedures, training, trust, you know, and the fact that we've got a framework that we can do that and you can put us into any airplane together, having never flown together, and we'll still get the safe, effective outcome. So that's really interesting, that's really cool, cool asset and obviously I'm loving flying around the world, seeing the world, which is amazing. You're in the uh, in the military you, a lot of time. You take off and land at the same airfield, um, so it's quite nice to take off and land somewhere else, which is lovely especially if it's sunny for a few days and a different type of warm and entertaining exactly, exactly, and at the moment you're on first officer.
Speaker 3:I've got the challenges hopefully in the next coming in in the next few years to build up to becoming a captain. So you know, you're in charge of that whole, that whole event. So that's a really interesting dynamic. So I'm really looking forward to that challenge. That's that side of it. And then, uh, in the uh, performance management side, uh, there's a few things. I've been growing, working with teams, which is fantastic. I've gone in, I do talking with businesses, which is amazing. Um, and long may that continue.
Speaker 3:But I'm really enjoying getting involved with some high performing sports teams and getting involved with what I've just talked about there, really about team selection, about what you're looking for in the characters of people joining your team, but also the main thing is that is that learning through failure.
Speaker 3:How do we create these environments, safe spaces, because big thing about sports teams, especially when there's a lot of money involved people are replaceable and when people are replaceable, they don't like to open up, uh, and so you know the whole learning through failure. It's quite hard to discuss failure when that person thinks, well, they might not be stepping out on the pitch next week because of the performance issues? How do we create those environments of trust and openness to get it so? Um, that's been a really interesting space to work in, uh, and and besides that, you know I'm trying to get more going in the podcast world, like you are doing here to to a great effect, and also get some written work out. So that's what's coming over the next couple years, and so I'm just really enjoying that journey and, and anyone along the way who is getting any benefit from it, then that's just awesome. I'm loving it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, brilliant, mate, brilliant. Where can people get in touch with you, mate, or where can they find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, LinkedIn's a big one, so Dan Lowe's on LinkedIn is is the big one for me. I am on Instagram and Dan Lowe's, but I'm I'm trying to have a bit of an Instagram purge at the moment, although I know it's it's effective worth in terms of working, it's fantastic, um, but I I'm just trying to be less distracted by it.
Speaker 3:I would say it's one of the things.
Speaker 3:One of the downsides of the flying world is that, although it's fantastic to have loads of time off, there is a lot of dead time sometimes and it's easy to find yourself scrolling because you know you're at an airport or you're in transit, so you can't really get any effective work done.
Speaker 3:But it's so easy just to pick the phone up and scroll. So I'm trying to just stick to the LinkedIn stuff. So if you can find me on there, fantastic. If they want to reach out to you you got my email then we'll do that, that'd be fantastic. But yeah, if any of this stuff, I guess, as you say, resonates with you, you've got a team or you want some advice, not just come speak to the whole team, but if you want me to, that's fantastic. But if individuals just want some advice or they're looking at stuff, then please reach out, because you know, the more, as you say is, community is important and the more people that you surround yourself with, that that push you on, the better. And if I can be of any assistance, that be great definitely, mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's brilliant. Thanks very much, mate. Thanks for your time, thanks for those insights and a snapshot into that fascinating world of of flying with your hands like that. Thanks very much, dan. Appreciate your time, mate of course, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.