Opinion: Great Leadership Doesn’t Happen by Luck

I have always felt like Forrest Gump: a dumb kid who gets lucky in life. As proof of that luck, I had the privilege of serving as captain at a major airline for over 20 years. I followed that luck when I led the aviation department of a Fortune 500 company. There was considerably more luck when I was appointed by three presidents to serve on the NTSB for 15 years, including four years as chairman. And along the way, I was lucky to pick up some not-so-dumb things about leadership.

Good leadership starts with humility. Yes, I realize we are talking about people who can defy gravity and who are Sky Gods, but seriously—put your ego aside. Some of the most accomplished people I have ever met—people who have so much to brag about—are those who are anything but braggadocios. Take retired Navy Capt. Jim Wetherbee, for example. Jim flew jets umpteen times off aircraft carriers and was a Navy test pilot. He also was a six-time NASA space shuttle astronaut, including serving as commander on five of those missions. No other astronaut has flown more shuttle missions than Jim. Yet, when meeting new people in a business setting, Jim never mentions any of this, other than to say he was in the Navy and worked for NASA. It is called being comfortable in your own skin. You can spot the insecure ones a mile away because they are quick to make sure you know who they are. In a world where humility seems to be in short supply, I list this at the top.

Having a leadership vision is critical, but just having the vision is not enough. You must clearly articulate what you are trying to accomplish and then have people buy into it. You know you are successful when others in the organization are treating the vision as if it is theirs.

Likewise, an organization needs values, which form the guardrails for what is acceptable to the organization and what is not. Most organizations have values, but what separates a good organization from the rest of the pack is that good organizations make a point of actually living their values.

We had values when I became NTSB chairman, but they were values that had been decided upon and handed down years earlier by the five-member board of presidential appointees. I knew if we expected our employees to live the values, they had to own them. So, we created a team of employees from different segments of the organization. After several months of workshops and thoughtful consideration, the team came back and presented our new values. It was significant that these new values had the ownership of the employees. They were not just thrust upon them; instead, the values were developed by their team, and they understood the meaning behind the words. These were the unwavering attributes of the organization that we would adhere to, no matter what. They knew that we could refer to our values when faced with difficult choices. If what we were doing was consistent with our values, it was probably okay. However, if the planned actions did not align with these values, it gave us pause and helped us realize we needed to reconsider.

Leaders have the obligation to shape the safety culture of the organization. They insist on standardization and strict compliance with standard operating procedures. Most readers will recall the 2014 Gulfstream G4 crash at Bedford, Massachusetts. The crew attempted to take off with the gust lock still engaged. They overran the runway and killed all seven onboard. Of course, conducting a flight control check before takeoff would have detected the locked controls. However, this was not done and neither was the checklist that would have called for the flight control check. The investigation found that not doing a flight control check on the accident flight was not a one-off event: We determined that this crew had not done a complete flight control check in 173 of the past 175 flights.

Striking was the disconnect from the crew’s apparent routine deviation from procedures and the glowing comments from their last International Standard for Business Aviation Operations (IS-BAO) audit, where the auditor remarked: “The SMS of this operator is well-developed. Best practices are consistently employed in all facets of the program. Continuous SMS improvement is actively pursued. The Flight Ops Manual is remarkably well-written and comprehensive. Safety culture within the department is shared among all team members. Open reporting of hazards is consistently encouraged by management. Solid safety program, maturing nicely.”

How does an organization go from such positive audit comments to one where checklists and safety checks are routinely skipped? It goes back to leadership. The chief pilot, the head of this small flight department, was one of the pilots on that ill-fated trip and apparently condoned this behavior. Jim Schultz, who coauthored the book “Leading People Safely,” wrote that with good safety performance, people and organizations can easily become complacent. Here the G4 operator had great safety performance based on its last IS-BAO audit. “To counter this complacency, there must be a leadership obsession with continuous improvement,” wrote Schultz.

Another essential attribute of leadership is integrity. It is what people do when no one is watching. In his book “Safety, Culture and Risk: The Organizational Causes of Disasters,” Andrew Hopkins wrote that leaders influence safety by “what they systematically pay attention to. This can mean anything from what they notice and comment on to what they measure, control, reward and in other ways systemically deal with.” With that, consider this scenario: While doing a preflight inspection at an outstation, your pilots discover that one of the fuel shutoff valves will not close during the engine fire test. If there is an actual engine fire, fuel to the engine cannot be shut off. Failing this test is a no-go item. Add to this—the CEO is a passenger on this flight. You have been preaching safety all this time. Now, people are watching to see how you will handle this situation. If you fail this one, everything you say about safety from this point forward will be meaningless.

Another strong leadership quality I picked up was servant leadership, which flips traditional leadership models on its head. You may hold the title of chairman, president, captain or boss, but a good leader is one who realizes they are there to serve and support those in the organization—not the other way around. I am reminded of a flight department leader who, when the pilots called him on the flight phone to say they were running late out of Teterboro and would not have time to eat before their next flight, stopped what he was doing and went to the nearby deli to get sandwiches for the crew.

A good leader understands that safety is not just an abstract. It is personal. They have the chronic unease of realizing that the ultimate responsibility for lives rests upon their shoulders. They also realize that it is never about them: It is always about the mission of the organization and the people who work there. A wise person (my mom), emphasized to remove the pronoun “I” from my vocabulary. She was right. Any successes I have ever had were the result of the team I was fortunate to be part of. Always acknowledge the team when accepting praise and accept responsibility when things do not work well.

Great leadership does not just happen by luck. It requires constant work, attention and a willingness to listen to employees. However, if done right, it can have tremendous rewards.