650: Michelle "Mace" Curran - Building a World-Class Team, Running an Excellent Debrief, Rebuilding Trust, Feedback Loops, & How To Turn Fear Into Your Superpower

Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. And that conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. And one of the most important elements or services that I provide is my learning leaders' circle. And I open up applications one time per year and that time is now at learningleaderscircle.com is where you can apply. Now this is the most inefficient element of my business because I personally read every application and I personally choose who will go on to the next round and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next learning leaders' circle. And I only do it one time per year and that time is now. If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you. And you can apply at learningleaderscircle.com. We meet once per month on Zoom and then we meet one time per year in person for our leadership retreat for members of my learning leaders' circle. So if you'd like to apply, go to learningleaderscircle.com. Welcome to the Learning Leaders' Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to the Knights Featured Leaders. So good. It's Michelle Mace Curran, a combat veteran, former fighter pilot, and only the second woman in history to fly as the lead solo for the Thunderbirds, the U.S. Air Force's elite demonstration squadron. Now on a new mission, Michelle is using her story to inspire others. She has a new book called The Flipside, How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower during our conversation we discussed. The biggest mistake Michelle made when she became a new fighter pilot and what you can learn from it, then she tells a crazy story about a near head-on collision she had as a Thunderbird pilot during a training session. And then we go deep on the debrief process, how to run one so that giving and getting feedback becomes embedded in your culture. So good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Michelle Curran. So to start, love your new book. And there's a lot that I want to talk about from it because your story is just so inspiring. But two people in your life that you wrote about in the acknowledgement section, we were mom and your dad. And you said, quote, they endlessly believed in every wild dream I set my sights on. When I see somebody who's grown up to become you, my natural instinct is to say, what did your parents do to have somebody turn out to be like you? I'm a dad of daughters, right? Like I'm very curious to raise daughters who become and do things like maybe not be a fighter pilot, but at least make such a positive impact on the world like you've done and are currently doing. So what were your parents like? What did they do to kind of make you you? Yeah, I like this question. I mean what I said, you know, thanking them because it was such a critical piece of me getting to where I am now. I grew up in a small town in rural north central Wisconsin. So like farms, woods, lots of like factories that kind of setting about 4,000 people. And we were in a military family. We were in an aviation family. So I didn't have exposure to that world. But there were some things that my parents exposed me to that I think when later on in college I did get exposed to aviation, gave me the belief in myself to be like, oh, I could set this as a goal and go do this, not just like, oh, that's cool. And then back to something more mainstream. My parents were very hardworking. Both had full-time jobs, blue collar workers worked crazy hours. So they weren't there as much as they wish they could be, right? I think parents are really hard on themselves and they're like, no, they want to be the perfect parent and I work too much. I don't spend enough time with my kids, all the things. But that did actually make me super dependent because they did have endless love and support even when they physically were at work a lot of the time. And I think another piece of it is that my dad, his big hobbies growing up, the things he loves are very much guy things like hunting, outdoor stuff, NASCAR, football, all that kind of stuff. And I was the youngest and my brother and sister are seven years and nine years older than me. So for a good portion of my childhood, they were out of the house. So it was almost like I was an only child. Every single year, my dad took me with him out in the woods to the hunting shack during deer hunting season Wisconsin. So I'm like a seven year old little girl going along with my dad to this hunting shack. That's all guys. My vocabulary of profanity expanded greatly, I think at a young age, but I think it also just exposed me to that I could hang in that environment and it wasn't a big deal. Everyone there was super welcoming. I was the daughter or the sister or whatever that they took under their wing for the week. And they were so supportive of me as I got to the age where I could participate more. And I also spent a lot of time in the woods with my dad and like doing outdoor stuff. And as I got older, I would be by myself, right? He'd be like, okay, go sit in this tree stand or go away here. Bye. And that's scary for a 12, 13 year old. I remember sitting while we were deer hunting and a wolf walking past me. And just like it didn't know I was there and I was just staring at it and like afraid to move. And I remember like the my heart racing and stuff. But also that gave me the sense of adventure and this independence and this confidence in myself and this belief that I belonged in any room that I wanted to go after. And I think that even that alone really impacted me so much. And as I got older and I wanted to first be in law enforcement, I wanted to be an FBI agent and they were like, heck yeah, sounds great. They actually sent me to a criminal justice camp at a university one summer. There was a stint where I wanted to be an archaeologist and I went to an archaeology camp one summer. And so while they worked super hard, they did that so they could afford to give me opportunities. And these weren't like fancy summer vacations. It was always a road trip. But most of the time it was to expose me to something I was excited about. And I just learned so much and just gave me this mentality that when an opportunity came by that I got excited about, it was just, it wasn't just an opportunity. It was a possibility and I could go after it. It's interesting that your dad took you in an environment with all these guys. Yeah. And you kind of grow up to then work in an environment with a bunch of guys and be able to hang and be judged based on though your competence and your ability to do the job great. It didn't matter if you're a guy or a girl. It mattered if you could fly the airplane, right? And how well you could. And if you couldn't, again, it didn't matter if you're a guy or a girl. You better be able to fly that thing because once it's in the air, right, that's all that really matters. What do you draw from those times growing up as then you progress in your career and you decide on a job, right? A fighter pilot where typically you think of guys who do it and that's basically what you're surrounded by again as you progress in your career. Yeah. So when I entered the Air Force about 2% of fighter pilots were women. Wow. Is it still that? What is it now? It's around 4% now. Really? I would think it would be higher now. Yeah. I think the number is increasing quicker. Okay. Recent years, you're just seeing a lot more women represented in that world like right female Thunderbird pilots. The Blue Angels just had Amanda Lee who flew for their demo, even pop culture stuff like Phoenix character and Maverick Top Gun. Like that does influence young girls and young women to be like, oh, this is something I could go do. So that rate starts to go up even though it's already been an option since the early 90s. That exposure is huge. But I almost went into it naively thinking that it didn't matter at all. Because I'd grown up in an environment where I felt like if anything, it was a positive when I was with my dad's friends in that group because they were always like, oh, our little buddy Michelle's here, right? And they were just so supportive. So I was like, oh, I can hang with the guys. That's fine. I've done this my whole life. And it's a little bit different as you get into the military and then you get to that high performance environment. Definitely the number one thing is of course performance and competence. I would like, right, the jet doesn't care about your gender. But there were like nuances that started to be really apparent to me as I moved further into that world that I didn't want to impact me, but they definitely did. And I think I went into it just naively believing like, this isn't going to be a thing. This is what I want to do. And I'm going to work my ass off to make it happen. And like, who cares that I'm a woman? And it got to a point where I became like hyper aware of it and super, I would say hyper vigilant about how I showed up and how I acted and how I interacted. You mean you have to overdo it a bit to be like, hey, I'm tough or I'm because like sometimes being naive is good. Like starting a business, I think if you sometimes know how hard it's going to be, you might not do it. So being a little bit naive, you just get started and do this thing and then do the next thing and then do the next thing. I wonder, did you experience some of that? And in a way, did it help you or did it hurt you? I think it depended on what part of my career I was in. Initially helped me for sure. Not that anything like crazy happened, but had I known just how much the like death by a thousand paper cuts would start to wear on me, I don't know if I would have gone after it. Really? Like gone after what? Be it to be a fighter pilot? Yeah. Pursued that is my job. Even though I ended up in the Thunderbirds, right? Like I obviously, I did well. I took to it quickly. I was able to perform at the highest levels, but there was a period during my first combat squadron or a station in Japan, you know, I'd just gone through three years of training, just spent a year learning to fly specifically the F 16. And now I get here to actually do the job. And so many factors went into this part of it was that I was always like a perfectionist and a high achiever. I was a straight A student. I got a college scholarship. I got this, you know, fighter jet that was really elusive, hard to get, you know, like two are available for my class of 25. It was so competitive. And the fact that I got one almost felt like I had won the game. Right. Like I've done the thing. I've achieved the goal. But then you actually get into the job and you realize that you know nothing. The training you just went through for the last year to learn to fly the jet. You better be able to be able to fly the jet with your eyes closed while your task managing 500 other things. Like that has to be such a background thing that doesn't take any bandwidth because you need to manage so many other things. And I was just kind of overwhelmed by how technical and complicated and difficult the job actually was, like the tactical execution. And it wasn't something I was going to get good at by just like studying really hard and working my butt off for months. It was going to take just years of experience and failures and exposure to different missions on the job training in the most extreme way to feel comfortable and to feel like I gained credibility. And I had never had something before that took that long. And so it kind of shook my identity. So drawing from that, the fighter pilot element of you is not as relatable to just people in general, because so few people can fly an airplane, let alone be a fighter pilot. So if you could draw from that experience and say, let's say somebody is starting a new job and maybe it's a big step, it's a big first promotion. It's a big new leadership job. And they're like quietly or to their best friends are like, Oh my God, I'm not ready. I had no idea it involved all of this. I just looked up and thought, well, yeah, I could do that job. And then they get into it. They're lost. They're scared, but they don't want to really admit it to too many people. Right. This is this is very common when you get promoted. What advice would you give to them that you could draw from when you got in there and you're thinking, Oh my God, there's a million different things I have to do. And I'm unsure of a lot of it. I'm scared. What advice do you give to that person? You just described that so well, right? Fighter pilot, that sounds cool, but you don't realize what it all entails until you get there. What I did wrong that I think would have helped me a lot that a lot of other people also tend to do wrong is they feel like asking for help, seeking out mentorship, admitting how they're feeling like they're in over their heads is this massive red flag that's going to show everyone that put them in that position, that they were the wrong person for the job, that they don't belong there. But if you step back and you're like, does it logically make sense that I just hired you for this new thing you've never done before? You are a beginner. Does it logically make sense that I should expect you to know how to do everything right out the gate? Of course not. No one would be like, duh, there's a learning curve for everything. So when I think you can acknowledge that and you're like, OK, these feelings of anxiety and fear and stress and inadequacy, they are not signaling to me that I am not the person to be in this role, that I don't belong here. They're just signaling to me that I'm a beginner. And now as a beginner, what are the tools I have available to me? Some of it is your own work ethic, your own willing to put in the time. But a lot of it is your ability to find the subject matter experts to seek out those mentors. And that means admitting that you don't know what you're doing. When I was in that time in my career, I was so afraid to admit that I didn't know something, even though it was to be expected. I'm like literally going through all of these formal training programs in this new squadron because I don't know what I'm doing to teach me so that I do know what I'm doing, that I wouldn't even ask questions because I felt like asking a question was just so uncomfortable. I'm like, they're going to be like, how does she not know that already? And that made me worse, right? Because I'm learning slower. I'm creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because I'm hamstringing myself by putting on this lone wolf mentality that I have to prove myself. And I think that's where you get into the overcompensation for gender. When you're in a role that's unexpected for someone like you, you do have this pressure where you feel like you can't be average. You have to be better than average. You have to know everything. You have to figure it all out on your own. Otherwise, people are going to start to doubt if you deserve to be in the position you're in. So the advice would be to find kind of your foxhole, to find your tribe, to find your mentors, to be open to chasing down your curiosity and actually asking those questions. But knowing that that was a battle for you, for legitimate reasons. You're representing all gender of people in a job that they don't normally do. I don't know what that pressure is like. I have no idea. I've never had anything like that. But I can imagine that that would be brutally hard. And you feel like, I want to help other women do this. And if I show up and act like I don't know what I'm doing, they're going to say, ah, we can't have another girl in here or something stupid like that. Right? Because she doesn't know what she's doing or she's asking too many questions. I can understand why that would be really, really tough. What did you do in order to start chasing down your curiosity, to start having the courage to ask questions so you could learn, so you could become one of the best fighter pilots in the world? I definitely felt that added pressure that you mentioned. I, there wasn't like one specific woman that I felt like I was letting down. It was this like, all of them, a big, U.S. group of all of them. Right? Like some woman that's five years younger than me, that's going to show up to this squad or next anything I am good at. The culture, which doesn't even make any sense, because all the people I was there with, they turn over so quickly with active duty military would be a whole new group of people. But I had this idea that the fighter pilot culture in general is going to believe all female fighter pilots are just terrible at dog fighting because Mace had this bad flight, you know, and it's not even logical. For the most part, it is a little bit true, but not to the level I was making it out to be. Honestly, for those first three years at my first assignment, I did not figure this out. Struggled along. That's a long time. Yes. Yes. It felt like running a marathon, but I was belly crawling, pulling myself by my fingernails every day for certain periods of it, not the entire time. It had highs and lows. Well, mentally, I would think that would be just brutal when you go home at the end of the day, be like, oh, my God, I don't know what I'm doing. This is brutal. I can't ask anybody for help because then I'll look like I don't know what I'm doing. Mentally, it has to just wear on you. It definitely does. And there were periods that were very dark. And I would say I should have sought out help for even depression. Yeah. Because I also went through a divorce during that same time. Yeah. And that felt like the biggest failure ever. Right. And it's so public, not in that, like I'm a public figure and have a social media account that people know at that point, like no one knew who I was, but it's very public in my squadron, in my military unit, because we all lived on base, like I lived in a four unit apartment and every single apartment was lived in by another pilot in my squadron, where our cars are all parked outside all day long. We know each other's spouses. We know each other's kids. When you're not at work 12 to 15 hours a day, you're socially hanging out with those people. And it was amazing in some regards. We had some of the coolest theme parties I've ever been to. But also you're in a fishbowl. Yeah. So when something does happen and someone does go through something, everyone knows about it. And there's no work-life separation. So you go to work and all your neighbors know that you came home in the middle of the day because you had to sign some legal paperwork for your divorce. It's such a weird environment. So I think divorce is really traumatic for anyone. And then you take it into that environment and it feeling like just such a massive failure when I already was really struggling with these feelings of failure and inadequacy professionally. And that was the period where it was like seriously a slog of drive the squadron, sit in my car and just be like, I don't want to go in this building today, but what else am I supposed to do? Get momentum and commit myself to just get out of the car and walk into the building. It was like literally living one thing at a time, which is terrible. And I think anyone who's been depressed or gone through like some traumatic life and event can probably relate to that feeling where it's like, let's just make it to lunch today. I don't want it to sound like the entire three years was like that because there was a period in the middle that was probably like six months. And then I started to crawl out of it by volunteering to be part of some things on base that got me away from that environment. And I ended up being part of the Pacific demo team, which is a single aircraft F 16 air show demonstration team that travels all over the Pacific for these events. And I wasn't the demonstration pilot, but they take another jet with, so they have a spare in case there's a maintenance issue. And so you have mutual support and you're a safety observer, like you're on the radio with the pilot and do a bunch of admin stuff. Usually they would take younger pilots to do that. As soon as one of those spots opened up, I was like, please for the love of God, give me this position. And that allowed me to travel to Malaysia and to Hawaii and to like work with that small group of really awesome people and just to remove myself a little bit from this like just crazy experience I had had over the last six months. And that's when I started to feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And I probably did that for like six to eight months before my assignment in Japan ended. And it was really the time where I got to leave Japan, move to my next base, which was in Texas. So kind of coming back to the US, you know, it's a little bit more familiar. You can have friends outside of work. There's not a language barrier. That was a pivotal moment where I was like coming up for air. Yeah. I was like, okay, this is a fresh chapter. Like no one here knows about my divorce. No one here knows all these struggles I've been going through. Because honestly in the jet, I was doing fine. This entire time I was doing fine. Yeah. Like performance wise, I was not struggling. One of the parts that being have a background in sports and playing team sports, like my whole life until I've gotten into the professional world, I think there's something really big in community and being a part of a team. And you're bulky right about, you said curiosity plus vulnerability equals community. And you said people around you were starting to ask very specific pointed questions that were uncomfortable at times. And in a way though, it helped you become more vulnerable and it brought you closer as friends. And I found, I think curiosity is my love language. It's both how I give it and receive it. I think curiosity is a great way to show that you care about somebody because you want to learn about them and their story. And it sounds like you feel the same way you wrote again, you wrote about this in your book and how it became like a turning point. So I'm curious how you use this combination of curiosity and vulnerability to build community, not only then, but how you continue to do this to this day. Yeah. I remember what I wrote about in the book came from exact conversation. Like I can see it in my mind of sitting in my living room in my on base housing and one of the other pilots, actually two of the other pilots came over and were just like, how are you actually doing? I kind of stopped hanging out with people and stuff. So it was noticeable. And just how much that meant that they were curious beyond the platitudes because I had gotten a lot of, you know, these are people I was friends with at work and lived with and knew their families and they'd be like, Oh, I'm really sorry you're going through the divorce. And they'd like, it was kind of like the pad on the shoulder, like, let me know if you need anything. Right. So they kind of felt like they checked the box, right? Oh, I said something. Okay, we're good. But that was me just being like, OK, I don't know what I do with that. Great. I'm glad you feel better now that you said that. But this was so different. It was wanting to actually know what my experience was. And it wasn't putting the weight on me of let me know if you need something. It was being there, being present, not being distracted. Smartphones weren't what they are now. So it's a little bit tougher for people. But, you know, setting that phone aside, looking at the person and empathizing with them, like letting them know that you see them. And maybe you've never been in the situation that they're in. But surely you have something where you felt something similar. You have something you can empathize on. You can imagine what that would be like. And just letting them know that you're there with them, you see them, and you're going to support whatever that looks like. And I think now it's given me a much better toolkit to help friends who have gone through some crazy stuff over the last decade. I actually just told my husband recently, I was like, it's a really nice compliment that I've had three friends in the last five years that I've had really, really bad stuff happen to them. And I've been one of the first people that they've called every single time. And sometimes it's so hard to be that person. Like you feel that responsibility. And sometimes these situations, there's not good answers and they just suck. And they've just been dealt a shitty hand. But to like just be there for them and be curious and ask them point of questions. And I can't solve it for them usually, but I think that they feel supported, even though they don't know whether the storm and go through it. And so that's like the personal side, like having that experience yourself and like having that one person that's willing to be vulnerable, because it's not comfortable to ask people when they're going through something bad. People don't like those emotions. They're like, what if they cry? Like, what do I do with my hands? But it means so much if someone's willing to sit there with you and like sit in it. Yeah, and show that you care. I think as a leader, I mean, we know this, that our favorite bosses, the favorite coaches, teachers, the people you've been around, I would imagine the ones who made you feel as though they genuinely cared about you because they did. And I think being curious and asking questions and especially showing up when it's really hard just yet sort of did a like a video about this. I don't know, like a year ago, I still remember it, though. He says the people who called him right after his parents died, like he'll never forget them. He'll never forget the people who because like some people are scared, like of death. So they just say, I'll just wait and then they wait forever. Or maybe they show up with the funeral, maybe not. But the ones who called him like physically called him, right? When just like you've been doing for your friends, it sounds like over the past year that you actually talked to them. But I think as a leader, you have to show up for people, whether it's personally or professionally, you show up for them, especially when times are really, really tough and definitely show up for him to celebrate when things go well, too. I think all of the spectrum. But that to me is something for us all to think about is, OK, I care about these people. Now, how do I ensure that they know it, that they feel it? And I think like you're saying, showing up when it's really, really tough is a great way to do that. Yeah. And I know that was a very personal example. But I think, you know, when I think about the high performing teams I've been part of and like the best leaders I've worked for, they were the ones that knew you as a person. They weren't just like, oh, are they doing their job? Cool. They must be doing fine because I don't have any issues with their work performance. So check on to the next. But I think a lot of people will show up and their work performance will be fine. Reference my flying while I'm in Japan. But behind the scenes, they can be struggling and they could be so much better. The level you're getting from them might be good enough, but it's not what they're actually capable of. And if you're willing to create that openness with them, and sometimes that means you have to be a little bit vulnerable yourself. I had one boss who I worked for before I went to the Thunderbirds and he was just awesome for a lot of reasons. But I was one of the more senior officers that worked under him. And he was leading like 190 people or something. And all these people have lives going on, right? Like since people are getting divorced, people had like legal stuff that would happen. Just life stuff with that many people. And he is the commander that that all falls on. And he would confide in me in a way that wasn't like betraying their dirty laundry or anything like I didn't know who he was talking about. But he would be like, one of my troops has this going on and it's just really hard. Like I just see what they're going through and I want to support them. And I have done all the admin stuff I've supported them in. But as a human, like I just don't know what else to do. And the fact that he was willing to tell me who was underneath him, that he did not have all the answers, opened that to a communication up between us, where now if I have something going on, I feel very secure in going to him and being like, Hey, I'm really struggling with this, whether that's in my personal life or that's a concept in the air. I'm struggling with going through the instructor upgrade or something on a deployment or whatever. And I think as a leader, if you're going to have a high performing team, the only way that that team reaches their full potential is if you have that two-way flow of communication. Yeah, where they feel they're comfortable to talk through it. And I want to talk about a tough moment. We've got to focus on tough moments, but let's talk about a tough moment in the air that you had as well as how you were able to keep going. So you have a near head on collision at one point in your flying career. Can you take me inside that story? What happened? Why did it happen? What did you do following the near head on collision? Yeah, so I'll try to keep it as concise as I can. There's kind of a decent amount of background information, but this is my second year with the Thunderbirds. It is our winter training season. So no air shows this time of year. This is when the new pilots are coming on, which of the six pilots you see flying a demonstration, half of those are new every year. So 50% turnover rate, which is a whole nother thing we could talk about it's wild. But I am now the experienced person. So I am the instructor for my new solo who has just been hired. So I'm the lead solo. He's the opposing solo. He's also new to the F 16, the jets that we fly in the Thunderbirds. He had been flying a different fighter aircraft in the Air Force. So he's already experienced fighter pilot, great guy, but he's in a new airplane. He doesn't have a ton of experience in that. So there's just a learning curve there that takes some time. I am new to instructing in this role. And I've spent the last year being kind of the student flying all these air shows with a senior person as the lead solo. He's now left to go on to his next assignment. And I have moved into that role with only a year of experience, which is really not that much. And for anyone that's seen the air show, we're doing opposing passes. So that is head on pass, looks like a game of chicken. If everything goes perfect, our jets pass while we're both rocked to 90 degrees. So you're seeing like the tops of the jets or the bellies of the jets perfectly planned form. And it looks like the two jets cross through each other. When that optic happens, we call it a good hit. We are not literally hitting each other. We're about 70 to 80 feet apart, I would say. But for perspective, we are each traveling at 500 miles an hour. So when you talk about closure, you know, how quickly you're getting closer to the other one. If we're each traveling, I feel like this is an SAT word problem. If two trains leave the station, if two jets are flying at each other, each at 500 miles an hour, they have 1000 miles an hour of closure. It's insane. So we're nose on that we have all these safety contracts where we have to be visual with one another by a certain range, because there is no computer in the jet that sets our distance laterally, that 70 to 80 feet. That is purely done with your eyeballs. Really, that's all manual. Yep. Yeah. Wow. OK. So it takes a lot of repetition because you have to train your brain for what that should look like when, as this closure is happening so fast, as this tiny little speck is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, as this other jet comes straight at you, you have to learn a mental pacing for, oh, I should see it start to drift towards the side it's going to pass me on at this point. And like just how big it should be when all that kind of stuff. And it just literally takes a ton of practice to do that. It's kind of like in sports, you know, learning hand-eye coordination, a specific skill for the timing. So as all new solo pilots are, he had consistently been too far away from me because your survival instinct does not want you to pass another airplane at 70 feet, going 500 miles an hour the opposite direction. And this is not like two cars on the highway where we have a yellow line, right? Like there is no delineation in the sky that's like, OK, cool. As long as I don't touch that, like we won't hit each other. We do have the show line at an air show. It's often a runway that we line up on. In our training range, which is where this was, it is Brown Tan Desert, pretty featureless. But it has Connex shipping containers that are like lined up, spaced out every so often so that we have a visual thing to like at least line up on. So I'm on one end of this. He's on the other end of this. We're like a couple of miles from each other as we start. We're a few hundred feet in the air at this point. Now that this hasn't already been confusing enough, this is called an opposing inverted. So I am upside down. OK, casual. So I am flying inverted a few hundred feet. I mean, we're like 500 feet. We're not down to our minimum altitude yet because he's still learning. So we would stay a little bit higher. I'm like 500 feet, something like that upside down. He is flying straight at me initially, which is fine. I see him. He sees me. So everything should be good because my contract as the lead solo is I'm just going to line up over that show line on the ground, the Connex containers. I'm going to set my heading, my altitude, my airspeed, and I'm going to be as stable a platform as possible. He owns the job of trying to match my timing so that we pass right at the center point, but also off setting a little bit higher than me and a little bit further away from the crowd than me. So it looks like our jets pass through each other, but we have that like 70 to 80 feet of spacing. That's all on him to visually set that spacing. Mind you, he's pretty new to this. And I told him in the brief, I'm like, hey, look, when we look at our passes, my jet is very big and your jet is very tiny because you're too far away. So people can tell you're like much further away. It doesn't look good to the crowd. We want the jets to look the same size, which means he has to be way closer. So it's like, yep, you got to get closer. You got to kill that survival instinct a little bit to get closer. And like we would say that regularly because it's true, but you don't think that someone's just going to point straight at you and no flinch. So I'm upside down. He is in the middle of my heads up display. So call it my windshield. You know, it's got some information in it, but right in the middle, which is okay initially because we're going to pass so close that for a while, he's going to be in the middle. And then when he starts to drift off to the side, just like a car coming down like a two lane highway at you, right? Like initially it's right in front of you, but as it gets closer, closer, all of a sudden it like, if you were to follow it with your head, you'd have to like break neck, turn your head super fast as it whizzes by. So that's what essentially is happening. There is a point where my internal timing clock is like, oh shit, he should be starting to drift to the side he's going to pass me on at this point. I have done this a ton of times and he's still not moving. So he is still pointed at me and I'm like, he's going to hit me. He's not offsetting at all. Like Raymond for 80 feet and I'm expecting him to be further than that. Again, because he's learning. He's way too close. Like he's just pointed straight at me. This is what my brain says. And then in about two and a half seconds, which I think is the time we had before when I between me recognizing this and us actually passing, I had the craziest temporal distortion I've ever experienced, which is where time slows down. Anyone who's been in a car accident has experienced this where it's like, you see someone's about to hit you and like it's slow motion, but it's not like you can do anything faster than you normally can. But your brain speeds up super fast. Like, oh no, that is what's happening to me. And I'm like, OK, we have a safety contract. Like if we all of a sudden lost visual with each other, I rudder and move slightly towards my side, which is the crowd side where people are actually watching the air show from. He rudders and moves slightly away from the crowd, kind of like rules of the road. Mind you, there is no one watching out there. It is just brown desert. So as I'm inverted, I have no visual cue to what side is my side. Right. Because what was on my left is now on my right. And when you're upside down over a runway and there's a hundred thousand people there, it's very obvious where the crowd is. But when you're training and it's a pretty featureless desert, the time that I had to make sure my side was actually my side before moving was just not enough. So I'm like, OK, I should rudder to my side. Oh, shit, I don't know which side is my side. If I rudder to the wrong side by accident, that is a worst case scenario. Right. Because in theory, he should still offset away from the crowd like he's supposed to. Like surely he's not just going to fly straight at me. And so I make the assessment that it's even riskier to try to move if I might move the wrong way. So I hold the line and wait. And I just see. This is all happening so fast. I can't even there's not really words to describe how fast all of this happens. But his jet gets ginormous in my hood in my windscreen. And then right as he's about to disappear below the nose of my jet, I see his wings start to tip as he starts to roll so that he doesn't hit me. And he goes below my feet, which is actually above me, because I'm upside down. And I like close my eyes for a second. And then I'm still upside down and he's passed. And I'm like, OK, I'm alive. We didn't hit each other. But I'm so shocked that I'm supposed to say, so low's ready. Hit it. And the hit it is where we both roll up and we get that like 90 degrees of bank where we pass through for the good hit, which is for this story, not a great term that we use. But that's what we normally call it. I don't make that radio call. I'm supposed to like roll out and then call like a pull and a smoke off. I miss like three or four radio calls because I'm just stunned into silence. Eventually, I just roll up right. I clear the line. I say, five's clear. He says six clear. And now we have the moment where we like set up for the next thing we're going to practice. And we can't just like pull over and take a breather. We're in an airplane, right? So we're cruising around at 300 miles an hour. Like we'll slow down a little bit when we're not on the show line. And I'm the instructor. It is on me to be like, do we just go home? I'm like angry. I'm scared. I'm shocked. I have like all these emotions and I'm just like, oh, I'm the only one here to decide what we do now. And I was limited on training hours where I was limited on fuel available. It's not cheap to put jets up. So we have like half our gas left. I'm like, OK, no more of opposing passes. Like let's set up to practice our individual maneuvers. And so we do like our aileron rolls and our four point rolls and all that stuff where it's like one jet at a time. And we get good training out of the rest of that flight. And we go home and we land. And I know had I done that to my previous lead solo, he would have been so pissed. So pissed. I feel like he would have yelled at me or not talk to me or just like lost his shit, which I get why. But during that time after that near miss and on the little flight home, which is not doesn't take very long. It's like 10 minutes. I was like, that already happened. Like I can't undo that. That was scary. But what is the most productive way we can respond at this point to get the most learning from that and to like not shut my opposing solo down, but to like continue to build this extreme level of trust that him and I need to have to do this job. So like we got back before like we go into a formal debrief where we go into a room, we close the doors, we pull up recordings from the cockpits. We analyze all the data we have. Before we do that, we just get out of our jets and walk back into the building. And as soon as he walks up to me, he's just like, I am so sorry. I did not need to berate him. He knew and me being mad and yelling at him or giving him the cold shoulder would have just extended the mistake longer. And honestly, he learned that maneuver, those maneuvers, the opposing passes really quickly because of that experience, because he had been too far away for so long. And usually you slowly get a little bit closer, a little bit closer with reps until you're like, OK, I'm about where I should be. Oh, he found the inside line. So now he has a visual reference and an experience of, OK, that was too far. That was too extreme the other direction. Now I have a boundary there, which allowed him to find the right spot actually a lot faster, not that I would recommend doing it that way. Yeah. And so that's obviously it's a long story. It's complicated and it's one that I haven't really told on social media. I haven't told on a ton of interviews because there's so many little nuances to it. And that's why I saved it for the book. But it is by far the closest call I had in 13 years, flying thousands of hours in high performance aircraft. Wow. How hard was it to trust him? It wasn't. Really? Yeah. That didn't degrade our trust, honestly, because. But like because part of that, OK, outsider, obviously never flown anything. But my thinking is like, let's say if I brought it to my world of like football or something, if my left tackle bust an assignment and my receiver messes something up, he's got to regain a little bit of trust because it shows that he doesn't know what he's doing or he's a mental lapse or all that. So in a way, like, especially if it's a newer situation where you have, you don't have many reps together and they're like, oh, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. You didn't have that feeling of, wait a second, we haven't built up any reps together. Now that we have one and it was bad, this guy's got to prove it to me that he can do the thing. We were flying like 10 times a week at that time. OK. And so maybe there was some apprehension. It doesn't stick out in my mind, though. Like I'm sure I thought about it the next time we did an opposing pass, just like, OK, keep an eye on him, keep an eye on him, make sure I know for sure what side is my side. Part of that was on me. I should have had that moment of confusion. I know why I did, because the circumstances are not ideal for it being super clear. And part of it was also on me for the brief of being like, you just got to get a little bit closer. I should have also talked about here's your cues. If you're too close, my assumption that survival instinct would keep him from getting anywhere in that realm was incorrect. And so as the instructor, a lot of that responsibility was on me, not just on him being inexperienced and making an execution error. In the fighter pilot world, mistakes not to that level of high stakes because the Thunderbirds just perform with such a small margin of error, but mistakes like that with people you trust. Like, it's a thing that happens all the time. And I don't think it's the mistake that sabotages the trust. It's if we go into the debrief and they don't take feedback and they're not willing to have an open discussion about what they did wrong and what they were thinking and what we could do next time to make sure it doesn't happen again. And it's really that vulnerability, that willingness to fess up to those errors and not feel like all this shame and embarrassment around these mistakes that just happened all the time. Again, not to that level, but of any degree, that will sabotage trust. Like, I can't trust you if you're keeping secrets when you mess stuff up. I can't trust you if I give you feedback and your ego doesn't let you accept it. But if you make a mistake airborne, that's part of the learning process. Kind of surprised, I hate to even say this, that more like crashes don't happen. You fly so close together, you pass like that. I watched the documentary. Like it seems like this would happen not frequently, obviously, because I know you guys are super, super safe, but you're doing something that's not safe. It's very dangerous to fly an airplane. It's very dangerous to fly a plane very close together. All these things, or at least it looks dangerous, you pass as you just said. It feels like this would happen more frequently, but it doesn't seem to. Yeah, I think it's because we have such rigorous programs that build people up in that training season and we have such specific training standards. And honestly, the last couple of years with the progression of tools like a GoPro that we can have mounted on the canopy, looking at the jet next to us, looking at the student who's trying to learn to fly formation in a maneuver. We have so many tools that we can analyze film afterwards. I tell that story because it sticks out as like the one closest called by far of all of the time. I did it for three years. I have almost a thousand hours in a Thunderbird jet. Close calls like that were not a regular occurrence. It's a tried and true building block approach where we start further apart. We have all these safety contracts. We start higher up. We work our way down as people's proficiency increases. And that debrief culture allows us to catch things, catch trends very quickly. You know, if someone starts to suddenly join up with the other aircraft with like too much speed or they like start to do something weird with the angle that they're doing a maneuver at or they start to like let themselves get too slow or whatever, we will catch that probably the first time it happens. If not like the second time we're like, OK, you've done that twice in a row now. Like let's talk about it. That really is so critical in that safety culture to not let things start to drift where they actually get into the realm of not the inherent level of danger, but over beyond that, like something is going to happen. Something's going to go wrong because of how we're doing it. I think there's so much to be taken from the debrief culture and in our military and fighter pilots and the Thunderbirds. I love to hear kind of the makeup of those meetings and then how you could take from that room and put it in a room and let's say a Fortune 500 company with managers, with leaders so that they could say, oh, OK, they say this, this is how they open the meeting. This is how they get the feedback. This is how they ensure that mistake doesn't happen again. This is how they ensure there's trust moving forward. But is that room like and what could we take from that room outside of it and more of a corporate America environment? Yeah, there's so many things. I think one thing to preface that with is before we go fly, we of course plan, but then we also do a brief, like a mission brief beforehand. And the thing that we always open that with is our objectives for this mission, our objectives for this day are. And it's usually three to five things that are up there and they are very much aligned with smart goal format. Right. They're specific. They're measurable. They're probably attainable for that specific mission. But I think really the measurable and the specificity are super important. And those three to five objectives support the overarching commander's intent is what we call it. And that is coming from some higher level. Being like our goal for today is to destroy 80 percent of this country's surface air missiles so that we can get to forever on the scene. Top Gun Maverick, right? Go in and take out 80 percent of those surface air missiles so that our strikers can get it or something like that. Like it's a big, our mission is successful if we do that. But to that, we have to have other objectives that feed to it. So that's important to set up because as we get into the debrief, A, there's no distractions, no phones. It is like sanitized. You're going to be there until it's done. No interruptions. Like it's kind of intense at first, but you very quickly get used to that being how it is there. And it doesn't matter who you are. If you participated in that flight, you're going to be there. So whether you're a brand new lieutenant, like I was in Japan, who's truly a beginner, just trying to learn everything for the first time. Or if you are the wing commander who might be like a one star general who oversees the entire base, but is a pilot by trade, they still have to fly a certain amount of times per month. They could be number four in a four jet formation going out to do a mission. And they're going to sit in that brief, who's probably led by like a mid-level experience, super tactical captain major as far as rank, but people don't know rank. They've been flying for like four to eight years. They're like, where the rubber really meets the road. They're the experts. Your Brigadier General, he's just not that good because he has so many other things to worry about, right? You might have a kind of experience, but his skills are rusty because it's not his number one priority. So rank comes off, status comes off, and the flight lead. So let's say that captain is going to get up there and be like, okay, we went out and did this mission. Our objectives were those are on the board. And then they're going to start running through. And the first thing they ask about was like, Hey, did we have any questions from the brief? Was there anything where people went out the door and execute this mission with a question mark above their head? Did you understand the plan? Which I think is a key thing that a lot of people don't talk about. Like, oh, you messed this up and you start to peel back all the layers of why that person messed that thing up. Turns out they didn't really understand the plan before you even started executing the plan. So that's the first thing we ask about. You have to clearly define what success looks like. Absolutely. And someone has a question, we'll say like a question mark above their canopy. The odds of them executing incorrectly in the high paced, high stress environment that is the flight are very high. So you talk about that. And then you go through the mission and you're like, okay, that went great. We executed that well. Everyone did what they were supposed to. Does anyone have any questions or feedback from like that segment? So it's an opportunity like when something does go well, maybe it went well, but we got a little bit lucky. And there was actually something that was a mistake that was made an execution error, but it just worked out. So we still will talk about that. And then we'll move on to, we're taking it like logical segments, right? For us, it might be like, oh, take off taxi, like departure, good there. Okay. Now the actual mission will divide it up or whatever. So that's going to look different depending on what you're talking about. But then let's say we failed at something. We lost friendly players, right? Like we're simulating an air to air fight and some of our good guys get shot down. So we're going to look at why that happened. Why didn't they have the protection? Why didn't they defend themselves? Why didn't they run away when they're supposed to? Like there's different criteria for all of that. And it's, did they not have the information they needed to make that decision? Did they have the correct information, but they just made the wrong choice? Or did they have bad information? Like looking at it very specifically and pulling that back to not just, oh, Lieutenant Taylor screwed up. Bad on you, Lieutenant Taylor. Do better next time. It's okay. He chose to prioritize this instead of the correct thing because this radio call was made at a really poor time that distracted him. We will just peel back the layers. You've probably heard if you just keep asking why, if you ask why like five times. Yeah. Probably got into like the actual cause. And I think a lot of people stopped before that. So we're all, we're big on that. Now you get to the end and we're like, okay, did we meet our objectives? And we will go through each of those. Like did we have no more than two friendly losses? Did we have bombs on time on target? Did we have whatever? And we will grade those. And if we didn't meet them, that should have been reflected in that discussion. We should have gotten into the why. And then we come down to the root cause of the ultimate thing that failed, if that is true. And that is like our biggest thing was lack of communication between this entity and this entity. And we've already like gotten into the nitty gritty of the why, why, why. And then I think something super important is we always walk away with a lesson learned. And the lesson learned might be like if I was a student doing a dog fighting training flight and I was like late to try to employ my weapons against my instructor. And so I missed my opportunity to take a shot. I might be like, today I flew, sorority XYZ. I did not take a shot when I had the chance. Next time I will. And it's going to get into like probably three ish, really specific teaching things that can keep it from happening again. Next time I will assess this amount of closure, like this many knots. Next time I will look for this visual reference on his airplane. Next time I will, whatever in a corporate environment that might look like. Oh, our communication was shitty. And I didn't let the finance department know that I needed the invoice paid by this date. Next time I will create a timeline. I will bring this person in as a backup to make sure this happens. I will blah, blah, blah. And it's like rubber meets the road tactical, super tangible things that they can take. The last piece is that don't keep a secret for the thing that you learned. Yes, share it with the rest of the organization, the rest of the team that wasn't part of that mission. And so some squadrons like back in the day when I was young wingman, we had a bulletin board. And we would fill out these post debrief sheets that were in that format. We just discussed and you would put it up on the board. And so if I was going to go fly that mission that my buddy just flew last week, I would go to the bulletin board and find his sheet and be like, OK, what did he mess up and what did he learn so that I don't have to make that same mistake? And obviously, you do that digitally now. Yeah, I love that so that we don't have to make the same mistakes. We can learn not only from our own, but learn from others. I was going to ask you, for example, I worked in sales in corporate America before doing this full time and there's a rep level. There's a manager level. There's a director level and there's a VP level. And sometimes for like the really big deals, you might bring all of those people on the sales call, right? When it goes bad, what happens is there's not enough planning. So there's not the pre-meeting brief. There's like, all right, this is a big one. OK, you're going to kind of run it and we'll support you. That's sometimes how they go like, all right, your point. And then we're just going to kind of come in here and support you as opposed to like actually having a plan. And then you get out of it and maybe the VP, who's a little out of school because they're doing all the VP stuff and not the sales stuff. And they maybe not know what they're talking about, but they think their power or title can add and then they don't do a good job. But the rep or the manager is still like, can I tell them? I don't know. And it certainly depends on the VP. Some of them want it and are good at that. And some of them don't, right? I've had both in my career. How was it in that room when you have the mid-level person with the senior person? You could use ranks if you want. But how was that communication up and down the chain when doing the debrief? I think it only works because it's so ingrained in that culture. Like that senior person, they came up through the ranks and you are taught when you are going through your initial training course to learn to fly the airplane and you're being debriefed every flight because you're a student and you're just bad at everything. That like, hey, we fess up when we make an error. We we talk about the mistakes. We learn from them. We apply them next time. And you'll often hear people say like more learning happens in the debrief than actually does during the flight itself. And then you have to go, of course, fly again and apply the skills to really solidify it. But if you are the top person, the general or whoever, you've probably been doing this for like 20 years. And so you are very much bought into that culture. The egos that people see in Hollywood around fighter pilots. I think there's some external confidence there that can come across as arrogance. But what they don't show and what people don't associate with us necessarily, is the humility that has to happen behind the scenes, like among your peers. I think of the scene in the original Top Gun. He's like, hit the brakes and he'll fly right by and then he engages and gets them. And they're in the debrief, though. And Charlie is like, that was way too reckless and dangerous or whatever. Like I would imagine that's obviously dramatized. But but that's like a look at a debrief, I would assume. Yeah. And that would happen. Like if someone did some super aggressive leg roll upside down thing to rejoin with their flight lead when they could have just drove forward and slowed down. People aren't going to be like, whoa, bro, that was so cool. They're going to be like, why would you take on all that unnecessary risk? Like that was reckless. I better not see you do it again. Yeah. Yeah. Michelle, I could talk to you forever. I love this. And I appreciate all of our conversations in between. Last time we recorded in this one, I'm so pumped for your book to come out. But before we get to that, I just have one more question that is, let's say you're meeting with someone who's maybe early to mid 20s, maybe a college grad, maybe in the military. But they want to leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not exactly sure how. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? I think when you're young, there is a period where you have to be a little bit more focused on yourself and on learning and honing skills and making some progress and starting things before you feel ready and stumbling through and making mistakes and figuring it out, because that experience, it's not self-centered to spend that first six to eight years in your career doing that, because now there's going to be a point where you've built your competence because you've gotten the reps with whatever skill you're honing. And that has inherently given you some confidence. Like you've proven to yourself that you have a track record that, yes, I can do this. And even if I mess it up, I can learn from that and that's OK. And I can keep going. But then there's going to get to a point where you realize you've gained a little bit of wisdom and that doesn't have to be like 40 of that. Right. Like I think a lot of people start to experience that as they get to their late 20s, early 30s. And now you get to reach a hand back. Yeah. And you get to get with that new grad or that new hire or that person that you can see yourself in. And when you remember how scary it was and how uncomfortable it was, and you can be that mentor, you can be that person who goes with curiosity and vulnerability and is like, I see you. I remember when it was like that. What are you going through? What can I help with? Is there anything struggling with right now? And I think it, of course, helps that person you reach a hand back to. But it also becomes one of the most fulfilling things for you as well. I mean, you went from year one to year two. So year one, you're kind of being trained to year two, where you become the teacher, the trainer. I found, I'm curious here from you, when you shifted from year one to year two, when you're teaching somebody else, and you know, this because you're speaking on stages all over the world, you got to know your stuff. So there might be no better tool for learning than teaching, right? Than being the mentor, than helping others because you want to be useful. You want to be helpful to other people. And so when you're in that role, whether you're on stage or you're in year two, as a Thunderbird, you're the one who's actually probably learning a ton. Yes. And I think that was one of those things I didn't have perspective on at first. I was like, Oh, the IP, as we call them, the instructor pilots, they just know everything. Like I put them on a pedestal and then I became an instructor pilot. I was like, Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm doing. I had all of this like performance anxiety myself. Even though I was the one grading the student, because reference that in your head on collision, a lot of onus is on you as the instructor. And your students will teach you more than you probably learned and in a different way than when you were a student. And I think that like first year of being a brand new instructor pilot is stressful. But the growth that happens for the person doing the teaching during that time is is immense. Yes. All leaders should put themselves in the position of being a teacher on a regular basis. You learn so much. Michelle, books called the flip side, how to invert your perspective and turn fear into your superpower. I know you've worked like crazy, not only on writing it and putting it together, but also on launching it big. I'm pumped for you. I think it's going to be huge. It's super well written. It's enjoyable. It's useful, entertaining, kind of checks all the boxes. So again, excited for you. And I know we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Absolutely. This is fun. You asked a bunch of questions I haven't been asked before. So well done. Cool. Thank you. All right, we'll talk again soon. See you. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note. Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Michelle Curran. A few takeaways from my notes. The pre-mission brief. What is our objective? What does success look like on this mission? I love how they are crystal clear on what their goals are. And then they build the plan to hit those goals, to hit the objective. The debrief afterwards ensures that they learn from both the success and failure from each mission. Did we hit the objective? What went well? What went right? What didn't? What can we learn from this? I think we should all do this in our business lives. We could have a pre-session brief. What are we trying to do as our group goes on this sales call? And then afterwards, we debrief it to ensure that we're learning from it. Next, don't keep it a secret for the things you're learning. I love that they actually have an actual bulletin board hanging up where people could post their notes and key learnings so that others could learn too. A learning culture is a healthy culture. Now you could do this digitally. You don't need a bulletin board. But I think having some place for people to share mistakes and key learnings and what they learned from both the success and failures of what's going on within their worlds could help the team and the company overall get better. And then the idea of curiosity plus vulnerability equals community. One of the ways you can show someone else love is to be genuinely curious about them. Ask them specific questions. Listen, ask follow-up questions. Show them how much you care about them by how curious you are about them and their story. And then you got to be there for them, especially when times are hard. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Michelle Curran. I think she'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to The Learning Leader Show and you're rated hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.