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
35 Nic (Rosie) Steevenson: "The opportunity to fire missiles as a new navigator, empowered me".
Join us on Forging Resilience as we sit down with Rosie Steevenson, a former RAF navigator Rosie's journey into aviation began at age 12, driven by an inspiring newspaper advert, and has taken her from navigating the Tornado F3 during the post-9/11 era to co-running a business focused on human performance and organizational efficiency.
In this episode, Rosie shares her unique experience from being a front-line squadron member to becoming an instructor specializing in developmental missile firings.
Discover the essential role of briefing and debriefing in team performance, and how fostering an environment of psychological safety can make all the difference. By drawing comparisons with industries like healthcare, Rosie illustrates how the lessons learned in the military can be applied to improve continuous improvement and team cohesion in various high-pressure environments.
Rosie also delves into the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership, normalizing failure, and the power of constructive feedback. Her personal anecdotes, such as her early resilience-building experiences in a challenging swim team, offer a compelling look at how these lessons have shaped her ability to overcome obstacles. Tune in for a rich tapestry of stories and lessons that will inspire you to embrace resilience and elevate your leadership game.
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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. Today, on Forging Resilience, we're joined by Rosie Stevenson, a former RAF navigator and highly qualified instructor. After leaving the military, she went on to further her leadership experience working with major European airlines as a chief ground instructor and now, with her business partner, helen Seymour, runs the business. We are on a mission to support individuals and organizations reach optimum performance through keynote speaking. Rosie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hi, aaron, absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:No worries, the pleasure is all mine. For the listeners that don't know you, my gran and my mum give us a little bit of an oversight of your career, what you're up to now, and we'll delve into the things that come up for us and the topics we discussed before we came on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So I first got interested in flying probably quite a young age, around the age of 12, and it all kind of started with my dad, who was a great kind of aviation enthusiast, and it was something really simple. We were sitting at the kitchen table, he was reading the paper and he looks at me and he says you need to see this. And he shows me an advert. Um, it's in a broadsheet paper, so it's massive, like centerfold advert and it's. What I can see is a sunrise, and around the outside of the sunrise I can see cockpit controls. And there's just five words on this advert that say this could be your office.
Speaker 2:And I literally looked at that and thought, oh my God, that is what I want to do. I want to go flying, I want to be there, sat in that cockpit. And from that moment on it sounds really strange, because it was literally just from looking at a picture. I just thought this is what I want to do. And so I sort of chatted him about what I could do to make it happen and he sort of steered me towards the air cadets. I joined the air cadets, I flew with them and I was like, wow, this is. You know, people get paid to do this, and it's just from that moment, as I say, I was just really sold on a career in aviation, and so I carried on with the air cadets.
Speaker 1:What age were you when you saw the advert?
Speaker 2:by the way, Rosie, I was 12. But I'd been dragged around a few air shows by my dad, but it was just, it was just one of those things, right? Yeah, I just, uh, I just saw that photograph and just thought that's what I want to do. I don't want to be sat on the ground, so, um, I want to be up in the sky with the sun and the stars, and um, and yeah, and I joined the air cadets, then went on and studied aerospace engineering at university because to me I was like I just want to do what I can to, I guess, increase my chances as much as possible of getting in a cockpit. So I joined the university air squadron and I guess I started to sort of come across stumbling blocks a bit more at this point, because I was essentially too small to be a pilot. I couldn't pass the medical, so I got streamed into navigation as opposed to, uh, pilot. And that was kind of, I suppose, the first, the first point where it's like the plan might not go entirely as I, as I would like it to, but I, yeah, went on, graduated from university, joined the Air Force and had an exciting career really.
Speaker 2:I was on a frontline squadron for my first tour and we were mostly dealing with quick reaction alerts so sort of in the aftermath of 9-11, it was quite a twitchy time, so lots of calls to cockpit ready to intercept whatever airborne threat the UK might be faced with, intercept whatever airborne threat the UK might be faced with. And after that tour I then went on to instruct and was instructing trainee navigators as they were progressing through their sort of fast jet phase of training on the Hawk. So mostly ground instruction for that. And then my final sort of job role was doing developmental missile firings. So that was quite exciting. It was working on an experimental flight alongside test pilots so we were um firing a missile called bv ram which is now in service and uh, but at the time it was obviously sort of still in its test phase. So it was a yeah, at the forefront, I guess, of of the test sort of world and it was um, it was really exciting because that for job role I got to fly in quite a variety of aircraft and I didn't, you know, I could sort of choose on a particular day what I might go flying in.
Speaker 2:So it was a really exciting job role and it got me really interested and fascinated in human factors and human performance in terms of you know you can be in a really high flying team and yet you can still make some quite basic errors, of you know you can be in a really high flying team and yet you can still make some quite basic errors.
Speaker 2:And it sort of set me on a journey, after I left the Air Force, into sort of studying human performance a bit more. I went on, as you say, to join a big airline and was working as their chief ground instructor and just sort of I guess that interest was peaked a bit more throughout the sort of variety of that role. And then, when I left that airline, I've sort of subsequently worked, went on to study a master's in human factors, and I've worked quite broadly across the industry so healthcare, mining, um, I worked with my local air ambulance trust as a non-executive director, so looking at aviation safety for them and, um, and yeah, and with my speaking partner Helenen, doing doing talks to organizations, trying to help them with their human performance, organizational performance and how they can, how we can take lessons learned from the military and apply it to them.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, a broad range I'd say I've got so many questions, but one that I think I'm gonna go to straight away is you smiled for people won't see this because we don't use the video but you smiled massively when you started talking about the missile test pilot. What, what was coming to you then when you broke, that smile out across your face uh, I guess it was just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the memories of so the flying was was great because we were obviously it was. It was quite exciting test firing these missiles. They cost a lot of money, so there's quite a lot of pressure on to to get the, the trial, you know, to follow, follow procedures and get things absolutely spot on for it. So so that that was quite exciting. But I guess it was just, it was being part of a small team and just having an opportunity to fly different aircraft and just and just we were kind of in control of our own destiny on a, on a larger squadron.
Speaker 2:It's quite, you, you follow a program and you're, um, you kind of know a bit more about what you're doing, whereas within this particular job role, I suppose outside of the trial program, I was kind of in control of what I was doing, so I could go flying. If there was a tornado GF4, then I could, you know, potentially get flying in that of what I was doing, so I could go flying. If there was a tornado g4, then I could, you know, potentially get flying in. That if there was a harvard, I could go flying in it. I was flying in the hawk, the alpha jet, so it was just so varied and also we could control a bit more about where we went flying and what we did.
Speaker 2:So it was just yeah, it was just great I guess a sense of freedom and and choice yeah and yeah, and variety in terms of different types of flying and just having to sort of get your head into whichever aircraft you were in and react and respond to whatever you saw. So, yeah, it was a really exciting time.
Speaker 1:Going back to when you were the 12-year-old girl that saw that advert in the newspaper. What do you think the emotion you old girl, girl that saw that advert in the newspaper, what, what do you think you're the emotion you were trying to ping down or what did that provoke within you to to go and start the joining the air cadets and then go on to study and then join the area I guess it was just this real sort of desire and motivation to to get in that cockpit.
Speaker 2:and I hadn't I hadn't ever flown in a civilian airliner at that time, so I didn't really know what it was just this real sort of desire and motivation to to get in that cockpit. And I hadn't I hadn't ever flown in a civilian airliner at that time, so I didn't really know what it was like In fact I don't think I'd ever flown, so. But it was just one of those things where I guess, just from I guess I'm quite a visual person and it just the the, the picture it was sort of painting in my mind was it was just what I wanted to do. And then when I subsequently went on to fly, I was it just cemented that feeling, I guess, of yeah, this is really what I, what I want to do, where I want to be, and sort of, you know, trying aerobatics and things like that was just so much fun, so just really made me want to pursue that career, I guess yeah, and then did you find that?
Speaker 1:did that little 12 year old girl find the adventure that she was looking for?
Speaker 2:yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean I consider myself extremely lucky and fortunate to have in in many ways, to have been in the right place at the right time, because, you know, the Tornado F3 the fighter variant of the Tornado, which is the jet that I was on is no longer in service. In fact, it went out of service. I flew on its last flight, landing at Boscombe Down back in 2012. So it went out of service quite a while ago. So you just think to yourself you know how lucky was I to be alive at that moment in time, because fast jet navigators don't exist anymore. There's no jets there, it's all single seat now, it's all sort of typhoon and it's all advanced, so there's there's no seat anymore. So it was just very fortunate that I passed at that moment in time and in fact I was talking to my colleague, helen about it and saying that I wouldn't. I wouldn't qualify to even go on fast jets now because of the restrictions around size. So I wouldn't pass a medical. So just on weight alone, I would be underweight for the ejected parameters. And it was the same when I joined the Air Force. I wasn't underweight, but I wasn't within their parameters for um for fast jet flying so I had to put on a stone. I had to which, to be fair, I was at university at the time, so you know the beer was straightforward, but there were.
Speaker 2:There were other bits like um, I was told I had to grow my arm by my arms, the length of my arms by is something like two centimeters, which that, to be fair, was a bit more of a challenge. And um, I was told in the rf's wisdom, I was told to, um, carry bags of shopping home from the supermarket in the hope that you know, they were like, carry lots of points of milk. Probably, think of other things, I'd rather carry on the supermarket. Um, but, funny old thing, that didn't really work. So I had to be remeasured about four times and I think on one attempt at passing the medical I I did pass, but then I was recalled back and they said um, yeah, we don't believe your arms have actually grown. So what we've done is we've introduced pressure pads. So they had, I had to sit and you have to extend your arm and then behind your shoulder blade there was a pressure pad and essentially the alarm went off if you overextended your arm. So I got caught out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were pretty, I think, because I was so determined to pass the medical, they were pretty determined to show that I couldn't pass the medical. So, you know, that sort of set me on my journey to become a navigator. But again, it's one of those things where when I was going through pilot training, I was more naturally good at the navigation element of the syllabus. So I think it's it was just meant to be and I, you know, I never looked back. I ended up on fast jets and had an amazing time. So I am, yeah, cannot complain.
Speaker 1:I get the impression that the the setbacks that you were facing here didn't really mean that it was the end of the road for you. It was to keep on trying, or slightly pivot, but keep going towards that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know you said a key word there the pivot, because sometimes you just need that pivotal person as well in your life. And for me, that was my university escort of boss, because at the moment I failed the medical, he should have grounded me from pilot training and put me into ground branch because I was studying engineering. So essentially I should have, you know, stayed on the ground as an engineering officer with the university air squadron, but he just recognised that to motivate me and to hook me into the air force. Because that's what it is, university air squadron is a recruiting tool, um, that he he was like I think I need to keep flying, so to motivate you to stay. So, so, yeah, and it worked. Ultimately it set me on that path to becoming a navigator and and, uh, yeah, having that pivotal person who just hooked me in was key in that process. So so, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you do just need to, you can have your goals, but sometimes there will be obstacles to them that you just can't overcome, and then it's, it's adapt, it's adapting your mindset to. You know, this was my dream, um, incidentally, the year that I left university was 2001. So it was 9-11. So at the time I also thought about applying to become an airline pilot, because I was like, if I really want to become a pilot, then I could, I could pursue this road, but it was 9-11. So all of the sponsorship schemes were sort of shut down that were in existence at the time.
Speaker 2:And also at the same time, I was thinking this is probably a really good time to join the military, um, as opposed to the, you know, civilian job markets, so, um. So that's that sort of helped steer me in that direction as well. And and yeah, as you say, sometimes you just need something, you just need to readjust your goals and it's. It's not that you're not going to achieve your overall goal, you just need to. You just need to move those, as you say, sort of pivot points and and adjust what you're aiming for yeah otherwise you'll just you'll never accept it and you'll never be happy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think it's a really important point, is that so often for me and the people that I work with is they know roughly where they want to get to. But I really try and encourage to just hold that loosely and know what they're trying to seek internally on the way to get there. Because you might want to be a fighter pilot, but if you need to be a certain height, you're going to struggle to grow. If you're 25, because most of us don't, if you know. What I mean so is what's the emotion behind that you're seeking? Is it adventure? Is it freedom? Is it teamwork?
Speaker 2:You know, and to really to tap into that and maybe there's a different way of getting to that. Yeah, absolutely, and it happened to one of the guys on my course as well, for the opposite reason. So he was too tall, so he, he was about six foot four I think, and he just had his buttock knee length was too long, so, effectively, if he'd ejected he'd have lost his legs. Buttock knee length was too long, so, effectively, if he'd ejected, he'd have lost his legs. And they actually pulled him out of an aircraft in a crane to prove to him to, or to prove to them. You know themselves that he would. And it's the anthropometric, so it's the length of your limbs. Essentially they're quite strict with it for obvious reasons. And he, um, so he was deselected from fast jet training and again he was. He was, uh, absolutely gutted, but I suppose at the same time, you don't want to risk dying or losing a little if you in in worst case. So you just have to accept it and adjust your goals.
Speaker 1:And he went on to, I think, navigate nimrodson ended up doing extremely well so although the raf in in terms of the services is probably I'm not going to say more lenient, but it's definitely my impression anyway, coming from the units that I have is slightly quicker to adapt certain roles, ideas and and change the the system in lots of different ways. Um, I guess, though, female navigators and even fast jet pilots haven't been around since day one, and just I'm interested in some of the challenges that you faced as a woman coming into what I would probably guess and I'm just uncorrected a fairly male dominated environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great question, because the first sort of female fast jet pilot first sort of flew in the Air Force in the early 90s I think it was 92 or something, so around the age actually that I was thinking about joining myself as a 12 year old child. And absolutely because at the time when women were sort of starting to fly fast jets and even now when you think about the design phase of a fast jet we're sort of for the Tornado you might be thinking of the 60s and 70s you know, women weren't even flying in the Air Force, let alone flying fast jets. The, the cockpit design is designed around the average male, I think the anthropometric data, so the data that they have is based around a thousand men from the 1970s. So they took the average of that because that's what it was all based on at the time and obviously things have moved on, but the design hasn't necessarily so.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there were certainly a few things that were, I guess, more of a challenge, especially as a sort of petite female um and, as I say, sort of weight. It's not just the cockpit design, it's the escape system, so the ejector seat, so they've got minimum weights and maximum weights, and certainly from a minimum weight perspective, it's. It probably rules out quite a few women just because of our size, um. So so yeah, there's a few considerations there, and I think probably one of the main ones that we, that we dealt with and it's something helen and I've sort of reflected upon is is the ability to go to the toilet, because there there just isn't really any. Any or that there were. There were moves afoot now and there were trials going on now, um, but you know, if you go back sort of 20 to 30 years or even five years, there was there's nothing.
Speaker 2:So what you find instead is that on longer missions, it's quite common for women to or it was quite common for women to, dehydrate themselves, and clearly that's not you're not going to be performing at your best when you're in that situation, and I'm sure many guys have probably flown dehydrated as well, because it's when you're busy. Going to the loo is not a straightforward process, even for a guy. So it's, you know, there's anything that involves an element of effort. When you're busy is you sort of deprioritize it. So, but yeah, certainly for women it was a challenge, because there wasn't really a solution apart from being told to wait yourself, which is not ideal when you're sat in an aircraft for hours on end. So yeah, dehydration was a bit of an issue.
Speaker 1:What is it now, moving forward slightly into your keynote speaking, what is it you teach people? What's the message you try and deliver? How do you help teams perform optimally? I'd love to gather a few concepts there and look and talk about those.
Speaker 2:So I guess we sort of focus a bit more on high performance and working within that team and that area of high performance. So we look at some of that. We sort of unpick some of the tools that we were given by the Air Force to help us do that, a big part of which is the training system and learning to deal with failure and overcoming, I guess, scrutiny. So talking about the powers of briefing and debriefing and using them as tools to help us be better at what we do. So we unpick that a bit. We talk about the briefing process, we talk about being reactive once we've done the briefing and how we can respond to threats and how we can perform at our best, I guess, working under that pressure. And then we talk about the power of debriefing afterwards as well and how we use that as a tool to and welcome it as a tool to gather information on our own performance and the performance of our team and what we've done well but what we could also do better.
Speaker 1:So, in terms of failure and scrutiny, what is it that the RAF did well or they didn't do that well? To help people learn from their mistakes so they can move on or have less chance of that happening in the future.
Speaker 2:So, I guess because we were being assessed on every single flight. So when we went through the training system, every single flight was assessed and it was essentially pass or fail. And if you failed a couple of trips then you could essentially be chopped. And if you were chopped you were removed from the training system, which would mean that you would no longer have a flying job in the Air Force. If you were lucky, you might be offered an alternative job role, but at the same time you could also be removed from the Air Force and find yourself back on Civvy Street. So the pressure was there, the pressure was constant. But I guess what that did was it enabled us to deal with that pressure and it normalized that pressure so that we, you know, we kind of recognized it and it meant that we could train really hard and then the idea was that we would fight easy. So you always had this, this level of pressure that you're just used to dealing with all the time. Um, and it, just as I say, it, helped us normalize it because we would come down from every single flight and we would debrief.
Speaker 2:We would have this watch the tapes mentality whereby you effectively certainly on a tornado, you'd literally get out this sort of a videotape and pop it in a machine and you could watch your performance.
Speaker 2:And you could do that for anyone in your team. So if you were flying in a formation, a four-ship formation, there would be eight of you as pilots and navs in pairs that you would be able to watch the debrief of, so you could watch anyone's tapes. If there was any element of the trip that you were unsure about what happened or you thought there was a learning point, then you could bring that out and you could literally watch the tapes and share the learning. And it wasn't about sort of scrutinizing individual performance and looking to be critical individually. It was all about learning as teams. So it was all about what we could take away and obviously if there were points of improvement for people, then they would be drawn out for everyone to everyone to see and everyone to share and learn. Because that is where the opportunity is in the debrief. If you don't, if you don't debrief on it and you don't take that away as learning, then it's a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1:So how can, how can people encourage them for people that are in small groups or teams, encourage that environment to yeah, to courage, that sort of encourage that. Set up that environment for people to learn from mistakes, rather than to take it personally, because I know from a personal experience uh yeah, I've made some quite big mistakes and I've been singled out for them, as I'm sure lots of people have in the military. Um, so what? What is it that happens differently and what can we do to create that sort of environment?
Speaker 2:well, I guess within the military it's, it's the standard is set in the, in the briefing, but also in the debriefing. So it's about we will have sort of we'll always have safety points first of all, where you know if there's anything that's endangered an aircraft, then that would be brought up. But there's's a I guess there's an element of psychological safety in terms of it's leading by example. So no matter who is in your debrief, whether it's your squadron boss and you've got a wing commander in your debrief whether it's the most junior flying officer on the squadron, everyone has a right to speak and everyone has an equal right to speak. We have no rank in cockpit. So so that's all removed. So within a debrief situation, it's all about learning and anyone can make a challenge. Anyone can say oh, I've spotted something on a tape, can we just explore that in more detail? So everyone has the right to speak up and certainly when I was a junior person, I was encouraged to speak up. I was encouraged I don't want to use the word aggressive, um, but certainly working in that sort of predominantly male environment, I was told you know, be aggressive, speak up, fight for yourself, fight for your team. And that was the mindset that we were sort of encouraged to have is that you need to reinforce what's being done well but you also need to challenge what's not being done well in the debrief. So we were really sort of encouraged to speak up and I think that comes from the top down.
Speaker 2:So I think, if you take that outside of the Air Force, I've seen this in healthcare, working with surgical teams, for example, where a consultant anaesthetist has said that in order to create what we would call psychological safety so that environment where people feel safe speaking up, she will say to her team when she's briefing, when things get really busy, I might miss what's going on, I might miss an audio alarm. So I need you to pick that up for me and to highlight to me when something's going off that I might have missed, because I'm really task focused. And to me that was a really good example of encouraging her team to speak up and to challenge her when they think that she's missing things that potentially are important. And obviously it's setting those boundaries you don't want people interrupting you all the time but it's, I guess, training your team to recognize when they need to escalate something and bring it to your attention.
Speaker 2:But I thought she did that when she was describing it during a training system training session. She did it really beautifully in terms of she was in. She was talking about encouraging people to speak up, set in that environment, because so often we will say, but why didn't you speak up, why didn't you say something, what? And it's because of that environment that we set up, that we create and we have a responsibility, I think and this is across business to to set that tone where people feel safe speaking up and they will highlight concerns and they will challenge things when they think they're not right and they will because it will just increase that information flow which increases learning yeah, so what I'm hearing is that you were empowered.
Speaker 1:It's to empower people to feel valued enough to speak up, which probably probably builds a sense of trust, which again then sets it off onto a loop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And another really good example is when I first joined my tornado squadron. I'd only been on the squadron for a couple of weeks and we were doing missile firings. So this is when I was a real baby kind of navigator. I was the most junior person on the squadron and the squadron boss actually sent me up.
Speaker 2:I wasn't expecting to go and do a firing at all, but the squadron boss sent me up with someone else who was quite junior and he just put his sort of trust in me straight away and he was ultimately accountable for me and I hadn't. I wasn't expecting to go and do it, as I say, because I was so junior, I wasn't, I wasn't combat ready, but straight away he just put his trust in me and said, yeah, go out there, do it, I want you to prove yourself. And gave me that opportunity. And I was saying to Helen, I was like I felt really empowered by that. I messaged him, not that long ago actually, and told him and said to him I remember you doing this and I'm really grateful to you for doing that for me because it did give me confidence when I was really junior on the squadron.
Speaker 2:And he said he actually replied and said um, yeah, I guess I did empower you. And he was like empowerment wasn't even a word. Then I didn't even know I was doing it because it wasn't a thing. But obviously it's much more, it's much more of a buzzword now. So he, he was a great leader who naturally did it but didn't know he was doing it. If you know what I mean so I guess, unfortunately, doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's that's an incredible one. It's a brilliantly brilliant example of of of how the small things can really be big. I don't know how many years ago that was and it'd be easy to forget or dismiss, but the impact that no doubt it was nearly nearly 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah so yeah, isn't that incredible. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah good leader and probably just a good person. I recognise something in this person. I'd like them to try. They'll either learn or they'll do it, and off you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I said to him as well it really made me feel part of the team, because I thought I was going to be sort of left on the sidelines and the junior people would be sort of left out because they haven't proved themselves yet, they haven't shown their value, they haven't shown that they're trustworthy and reliable. But he just gave us that opportunity really early on and did that and I was saying, yeah, it empowers you, but it also makes you feel like part of that team and that you've got a seat at the table. So so, yeah, it was, as you say, a great example of leadership.
Speaker 1:I guess it sets the tone and then you can do that for other people, because you've had it done for you absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I've seen other other squadron bosses who've arrived on on the squadron and themselves have been. Although they're experienced and they've come from somewhere else, they might be when they come back to the squadron and themselves have been. Although they're experienced and they've come from somewhere else, they might be when they come back to the squadron. They've not flown on the jet for a few years, so they're refreshing on the aircraft and they have to follow a refresher programming exactly the same way as any other pilot who would be coming back to the squadron. So they don't get special treatment because they're a more senior rank. They have to do the exact same syllabus. And I've seen a squadron boss walk in and, on his second week on the squadron, stand up in front of the squadron and say I'm going to put my hand up and say I messed up yesterday. I missed something. I missed a pin when I was walking around the aircraft. It got picked up afterwards. But I just want to put it out there that these things happen to us. It I just want to put it out there that these things happen to us.
Speaker 2:It's easy to get distracted and someone was talking to me and he explained the situation and explained the whole process, but again, it was really from the perspective of leadership. Observing him standing up and say this. It really opened those floodgates of communication in terms of other people to then, rather than trying to hide their mistakes and sort of bury them under the carpet, it just opened this flow of and there's channels of communication where people would be open and honest and transparent when things hadn't gone to plan. And I think that does come from the top down, that comes from leading by example, and I saw some. I did see some great examples of that in the Air Force. So so, yeah, some some things that really kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's so, so, so important as well and not just in in work, but at home as well is to so many times is with certain people, certain ranks or certain careers. We pedestal them and assume that it's impossible when they hold their hands up and say they're human. It's not that it makes everything possible, but it's definitely, yeah, like you say. You say puts us shoulder to shoulder, helps build trust, and I think it's such a vital part of it.
Speaker 2:If they can show that vulnerability and they can show that side of the character. And, as you say, they're not perfect, they're human. We all have human performance limitations. We will all mess up at some point. And we all have human performance limitations. We will all mess up at some point. So it's recognising that and it's almost embracing it and saying look, let's just be open and honest about it, because the only way we can move on is to learn and understand how we can try and reduce the likelihood of these things.
Speaker 2:And so often, when you break them down because one area that I've worked in since I've left is sort of incident and accident investigation when you break these things down and you look at incidents in hindsight, it's very easy to have cognitive bias and think, well, how did they do that? Why? You know I wouldn't have done it like that. But actually, when you look at it and you start to understand that from a systemic level, there's lots of things going on around people which are not necessarily helping them get their job done, there'll be distractions, there'll be noise, there'll be potentially interruptions, things that we can mitigate and try and reduce as much as possible to allow people to get the task done, which I think again is another area that is a really good one to explore when we're trying to think about human performance and how we can improve it.
Speaker 1:Talking about human performance and going back to something you said a little while ago about the. Yeah, in terms of the things that you teach, we are on a mission around failure, scrutiny and debrief and how we learn from that. You mentioned that you normalise that, but does that come at a price, though, of constantly being scrutinized, of constantly looking for failures? Can that be unhealthy as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it can be unhealthy, but I suppose the way that it's framed is that it's the tone is set for learning as opposed to blaming. So it's not about individualizing and saying to someone you know, you're rubbish, you you're, and really sort of, I suppose sort of you know you're not trying to push them into the, into the floor, into the carpet and say you're not up to standard, but you're. You're trying to build people up. But I suppose the only way you can build people up is is to observe what they're doing and to feedback on what they're doing. So it's much more, the vast majority of the time when you're being assessed and you're in a debrief situation, it's a bit more of a conversation around okay, so this was really great, keep it, do, keep doing this. And yet you know there are some areas here where you you could have, you could improve this. You can tweak this part of your performance. You could have made that radio call a bit earlier. You could have thought ahead and got the, got the weather information a bit earlier and made a decision differently based upon the information that you would have had if you'd if you'd done that. So there are, there are areas definitely where you can, you can. It's, it's normalized, but it's not. It's not sort of constant high stress and high pressure, because a lot of the time people are performing at the standard and everything is. You know, people know that they're doing well and it's it's only when you become, if you become behind and you are struggling a bit more, that then I guess the pressure and the stress is really on and people start to worry, which I think has happened to most people, um, at some point in their career. So it's something that most people can relate to. But I think it's really important because actually, for people who have struggled and people who have, you know, thought that their jobs at stake, it means so much more to them.
Speaker 2:And and I remember one guy again on my course and he was a QI who'd had a pilot crossover, so he was a navigator and then he went on to become a weapons instructor, a qualified weapons instructor, and then went back to retrain as a pilot. So he was at the top of his game and I was on a course with him and was paired with him for some of the training and he was just finding it really easy and I remember him saying to me gosh, if I had to work as hard as you, I wouldn't bother. And I just remember thinking I actually feel a bit sorry for you because you're finding it so easy. It's almost like it's boring to you and it's, and yet for me I'm finding it a challenge. And because I find it a challenge, there's reward with that challenge, and that reward comes from having worked hard and it comes from having invested in it.
Speaker 1:Whereas for him, I actually felt like he was a bit bored, so I was like well, I actually feel more sorry for you but I think what jumps out at me there is that, yeah, I don't know the guy and I'm going to judge him on the spot slightly, so I apologize, but it's almost like the identity is wrapped around a certain thing which makes transitioning away quite a challenge. But also I've seen that in myself and other people high performers they get so attached to their title, position, rank, whatever it is. When they haven't got that, yeah, watch out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Ego is a big thing, right and it, if it takes a hit, then it's.
Speaker 1:it can really sort of manifest itself in some strange ways what does resilience mean to you, rosie, and how do you work that into your talks and teach people about that?
Speaker 2:well, I think resilience is a skill that can be learned for sure, and I think, again, I was quite lucky in that from when I was a teenager I was in a situation that taught me to be resilient and I kind of carried that through for my career. So I was lucky enough to be selected for a swim team that swam in a cross channel relay, so from England to France when I was 15. So although I was only swimming for a couple of hours, the rest of the time we were sat on the boat, essentially being seasick, and the time on the boat was we were cold, we were sick, you know you can name it was. It was actually not a very pleasant experience, but the swimming part I really enjoyed and I suppose from that experience it taught me the importance of of teamwork, of endurance because it was a 10 and a half hour swim and then but resilience as well, in terms of you've got to if you're even, if you're physically sick and you're feeling at your worst, you've got to keep going for the sake of the team and for the sake of achieving this goal. And so when I went on into the military afterwards, I think it gave me that real confidence that I've done, you know something. Physically that was pretty, it wasn't at my limit, but it was. It was pushing me to, pushing me to my limits, I suppose. So, um, because I had that experience behind me, I always had that confidence moving forwards that I knew that I could really push those limits and I could perform at my best with as part of a team that was, you know, pushing boundaries. So I suppose I always had that experience to fall back on.
Speaker 2:And I think that's how we build resilience is, we're building those experiences and we're sort of putting them as bricks in a wall, if you like, and we we're just building that wall of experience and that wall of resilience. And that's what we're doing when we're sort of thinking about that skill. So I think when we talk about it, we talk about exposure is really important. It's really important to give people an opportunity to build resilience. And we can only do that if we're putting people in situations which are going to test their limits, test their boundaries and allow them to grow. So actually allowing people to fail safely so they're not putting an organization at risk, but at that level where they can rebound from it and learn from it and grow, I think is really important.
Speaker 2:And so for people that are listening, then, in terms of they want to create that sort of mindset for their teams, apart from exposing them to failure, and building those exposures safety piece. So it's allowing people to speak up, it's listening to them, it's not dismissing them, it's listening to their concerns, it's acting upon their concerns, whether that's to say yes, we can do something differently, or no, we can't. And these are the reasons why. So I think it's it's giving people the opportunity. But then I think listening is so important as well. When we're building that, that skill of resilience and having that level of empathy where we can, we can sort of listen to people, hear their concerns and build all of those things together so that we can help people build, build that skill set, because I think it's one that people can really challenge themselves to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because for me, I used to look through as resilience as just purely physical so what, how, how hard can I push, how long can I go? Um, but something that I've learned recently is as my grandma, my mom and on the rest of my listener will know, is the emotional side of that. So be willing to step up to something, to try something, something new. Public speaking, giving a presentation, making an offer, feeling the whole range of the emotions, with that learning from it, getting back up and going again, irregardless of the emotions, with that learning from it getting back up and going again, irregardless of the outcome absolutely, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's not just about surviving, it's about thriving, and I think that's always really key is that you know we can get through an experience, we can kind of scrape through it, but that's what we want to do.
Speaker 1:Is we want to, we want to grow from it, we want to be able to thrive, and so it's creating that environment for people that enables them to definitely and, yeah, going back to my own personal experience as well, as if I didn't, then I would stay stuck in the past, tied to a certain few failures which, as you probably know, most of them come from childhood. They help us form how we see the world, and then that's all I do is live into those, but being able to actually accept and allow has helped me move on. Yeah, and, like you, I completely agree. It's a skill, something we have to practice, though. Um, it doesn't just come on the day that we need it and we get a kick in the teeth from the setback yeah, like anything, it's like a muscle, isn't it?
Speaker 2:that needs exercising. It's like the mind, the body. It's all interlinked. So it's definitely having experience and giving people, trusting people to fail, I think is so important as well and, as I said, failing safely, clearly in a business context, within boundaries, but it's giving people that opportunity to to learn it yeah, but again from the traditional educational system and in most families we're not, we're not at least in mine, although I was very supportive wasn't given that sort of.
Speaker 1:There was lots of freedom, lots of love, lots of care, but it wasn't the sort of thing go and see what you can fail, see what you can then not at all. You know, I was told to try my hardest but it's the way I interpreted it as well.
Speaker 2:Actually, I must say there is a real fear of failure and and it's funny. So my eight-year-old has got her, so she's had sports. They've got sports day tomorrow and previously they've had that kind of special sports day where everyone gets a medal and no one wins and no one loses and it's not really competitive. And tomorrow's her first competitive sports day and she, they had a practice run yesterday and apparently she won her race and she was saying to me but what if I don't win on Friday? On the real thing?
Speaker 2:She's like she's got this real kind of fear of failing in front of people and I think that's part of it as well. I suppose it's that fear of failure is one thing, but it's when you're failing in front of people and you feel you've've got that immediate feedback of disappointment letting down, and ultimately it's because she doesn't want to let her down, her team um. But I was saying to her I was like, look, you just got to do your best and that's all you can do. Don't worry about the result. You just, you just focus on um. You know, just focus on doing the best you can. That's all you can do. That's all you can ask for.
Speaker 1:But isn't that interesting Even though that message is coming from mum how deep that instinct is not to fail. And so we can. Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's one that's really. I've always tried to sort of say to my daughters I've got two daughters and I've always tried to say to them look, two daughters. And I've always tried to say to them look, just do your best. And I remember being told that as a child as well just do your best. Um, but you still don't. It's just not wanting to let the team down, and that's all she talks about. So don't let my team down. And I'm like well, you know you're not letting your team down if you do best, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that it goes. It goes back to something that I try and encourage my my kids. They get wound up with me. Sometimes I have to turn the coach sort of head off. And Dad, do you think you're an expert on everything to do with emotions? Because I live in Barcelona. So they speak English, Spanish and Catalan. They do a brilliant mix and also mispronounce certain words that they don't hear in their language but only comes from me. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1:But something that I've been encouraged to do by somebody else, whose name fails me now, is, every single dinner time, ask three questions of ourselves what have we done well, what have we learnt, as in mistakes we've made, and what was a challenge for us? And yeah, like you were saying, I'm not a perfect parent but I need to stretch the imagination. But if I could give them that opportunity, like you say, to see failure as an opportunity to learn, I feel like they'd have won the lottery, you know yeah, absolutely, and I think with kids, like the phrase fail first attempt in learning is a really good one for them to take away.
Speaker 2:but it's just, it's yeah, it's as you say, it's ingrained, so it's a really difficult one for them to take away. But it's just, yeah, as you say, it's ingrained, so it's a really difficult one to overcome, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, completely agree. Yeah, we work in hope with lots of Finding Nemo, Toy Story and other films that show our kids. We're in touch with ourselves emotionally. Brilliant, Rosie, listen. Thanks very much for your time. I've really enjoyed our conversation. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we start to wrap up?
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think everyone who's listening, I'm sure, is just trying to do the best that they can, as we've just sort of said, even when we think about kids. I think, ultimately, we don't want to let our teams down, we don't want to let ourselves down, and I think we put ourselves under a lot of self-induced pressure for those reasons and I think sometimes we just need to give ourselves a break. I think in the modern day, we all take on a lot of stuff and if we can take some of these skills and build upon them and try and, I guess with our teams, you know, build that rapport and that relationship which encourages people to speak up, I think that would probably be one of my biggest takeaways for people, because it's something that I see across the industries I work in is that it's creating that environment where people feel they can speak up and and not just challenge but share learning, et cetera, and it's a really key skill. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks again for your stories and insights there. Rosie, I'll put a link to we Are On A Mission at the bottom of these notes, but it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been great to meet you and speak to you.