Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Kim Campbell on How Do You Build the Courage to Lead EP 263

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Today, I am joined by Former fighter pilot and retired Air Force Colonel Kim Campbell, and we discuss her new book "Flying in the Face of Fear: Lessons on Leading with Courage.” Kim provides practical and inspiring insights on leadership and decision-making during our interview. Kim Campbell and I Explore How You Build the Couraged to Lead. During this fast-paced hour, we deep dive into Kim’s 24-year career in high-risk aerial combat. You'll discover principles, lessons, and stories that serve as resources for leading through life's challenges, creating a positive impact, and making a difference.  Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/kim-campbell-how-you-build-the-courage-to-lead/  Brought to you by Green Chef. Use code passionstruck60 to get $60 off, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/8WufqAGgCL0  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

Coming up next on the Passion Struct podcast. I think this idea of this fighter pilot debriefing, having time to debrief and learn from your mistakes really forced me to learn to fail forward. A failure where I kind of stayed and that mindset of mistake and failing and not learning from it did not go well for me. And so having this idea of failing forward

and learning from mistakes was something that I learned early and then took with me for the rest of my career. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews, the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 263 of PassionStruck, recently ranked by InterviewValais as the third best podcast for mindset and the fourth best for conversation. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member.

We now have episode starder packs, which are collections of our fans. Favorite episodes that we organize in convenient topics give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starder packs to get started. And in case you missed it, last week I did two new book launches with Stephen Kotler and Dr. Amy Shaw. Stephen is a repeat New York Times best selling off and an expert on human performance. And we discuss his brand new book, Nar Country, which discusses the science and application of peak performance aging. And Dr. Amy Shaw is the author of the brand new book, I'm so effing hungry.

Why we crave, what we crave, and what to do about it. Please go back and check both those episodes out if you haven't had an opportunity. And I wanted to say thank you so much for all your support of this show. Your ratings and reviews go such a long way in not only improving our popularity, but bringing more people into the passion start community where we can give them weekly doses of inspiration, hope, and action and meaning. And I know our guests also love to see your reviews of their shows. Now let's talk about today's episode where I am joined by former fighter pilot and retired

Air Force Colonel Kim Campbell, and we discuss her brand new book, Flying in the Face of Fear, Lessons Unleading with Courage. And in our interview, Kim provides practical and insightful insights on leadership and decision-making. Through our deep dive into Kim's 24-year career in high-risk aerial combat, you'll discover principles, lessons, and stories that serve as resources, for leading through life's challenges, for aiding more positive impact and making a difference. Our interview covers specific strategies for leading in high-stress situations and recognizing the normalcy and necessity of feeling brave and afraid simultaneously in critical moments.

Today's episode is an essential leadership blueprint for business and military professionals as well as a mentorship resource for young and mid-career professionals seeking proven advice. Him, Casey Campbell, is a retired Air Force colonel who was flown over 1800 hours in the A-10 war-tog, including more than 100 combat missions. In 2003, she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism after successfully recovering her battle-damaged aircraft after an intense, close-air support mission. As a senior military leader, him led thousands of airmen, both home and abroad, in deployed locations. Her final

assignment was as the director of the Center for Character and Development at the United States Air Force Academy. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in book, Flying in the Face of Courage, a fighter pilot's lessons on leading with Courage. Congratulations. Thank you. It's been a long work in progress, and so it's nice to finally see it actually happen

and get out there and get the message out. You are the first author that I've had on the podcast from Wiley Books. So I'm very happy to have you on today and bring one of their books to life. Thank you. They've been a great team. It's been such a learning process. My background is certainly not author until now. And so I'm learning step-by-step along the way

and trying to learn from people that know what they're doing and let them do their thing and all focus on the content, which is certainly close to my heart because it is my story and my lessons learned throughout my Air Force career. We're going to talk a lot today about flying and lessons that you learned from it. I understand that you first flew when you were 16 years old. Can you tell me about the thrill of your first solo takeoff? Yeah, I joined the Civil Air Patrol at a pretty young age and realized that I got the opportunity to fly as part of that. And being able to take off and assess and actually they let us touch the controls a little bit was so exciting so much so that on my 16th birthday, I asked for flying lessons.

And my parents agreed that I could do a little bit of flying lessons just to see if I liked it by then I was fully committed on going to the Air Force Academy. And it turns out I loved it. I mean, I love the thrill of flight. I loved being up in the air. I love the challenge of it. And I finally, after I think about 15 rides, got to solo in Assessina at San Jose International Airport. And I still remember to this day, this visual of taxing down the taxiway at San Jose International Airport with like big airliners and front of me and behind me. And here's me in this little Cessna just hoping I don't mess up. And I did about three patterns just very quickly, certainly not the best landings I have ever done,

but they were safe. And I got the airplane back on the ground, but that thrill of being solo, being in the airplane by myself, knowing that I had put in the work to get there, but there was really nobody else that was gonna help me but me in that moment. But it was such a thrill to be able to do that

for the first time, know that all the work and everything that I had done up to that point had paid off and I got the opportunity to solo in an airplane for the first time. Well, I have a really good buddy, Keith Keith who is also an Air Force veteran and he flew that the KC 135 tankers. Yeah, KC 135 or KC 10.

And he also flew the Lerjets and then once he got out he was flying for the family that owns the San Francisco 49ers for a while. But my son got to meet him when he was an early part of high school and it was a Sunday and we were at a coffee shop and Keith was going through his flight plans to get everything ready for the upcoming trips. And it really instilled something huge in my son to just see how much preparation he was putting into

making sure that he was doing everything correctly to get prepared. And he was telling him about, you've got to understand the length of the runway, what happens if you have an emergency, what are your diversion points, how do you balance the load, all these different things. And so there's so much more that goes into flying than a lot of people realize, especially when you're in the smaller aircraft and learning to do it on your own. So I think a great learning experience for anyone. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you've got to put in the work. And I really took some of

those early lessons with me that I learned early in my training just in terms of the preparation that you have to do, the studying to understand your aircraft systems, all the things that you just talked about. You have to have knowledge and awareness of that. So you've got to put in the work and then the practice that goes with it. For me, I found that I used a concept called chair flying, which and pilot terms sitting down in a chair and then for us, we had a paper view of the cockpit that we could tape to the wall. Nowadays, they have all the virtual reality to make this a lot better, but just practicing through it, visualizing, thinking through the motions so that when you're in the cockpit, you're more prepared because you've done the work, you've thought about it. And then I love what you said about planning for contingencies and those things that can

go wrong because to me that's the final step. You can't just prepare for when everything's going right, you need to take the time to think about what might happen if you have that emergency. And then what will you do when it happens? I think for me that helped me be more confident in the airplane as well. Well, reading your book brought back a lot of memories for me. Many were going to cover about being at one of the academies. But I remember in 1986, I was a junior in high school, a little bit older than you,

and I happened to be in this classroom because like kids all throughout the nation, we were all huddled to watch the space shuttle challenge or take off because of the significance of the crew that was on board. And I remember just in horror watching the initial seconds of that flight and the aftermath, and reading your book, you asked your mom a difficult question about why would someone put themselves in a risky situation like that. And your mom came back and said to you that there are some things more important than yourself, doing what you believe in sometimes means risking your life. How did seeing this space shuttle challenge your incident and then your mom's words, influence your desire to attend their force academy?

Yeah, that was such a defining moment in my life and I think so many of us probably remember exactly where we were that day. For me, it was just this realization that these astronauts died doing something that they believed in, something that was important that was bigger than themselves, and that they were willing to risk their lives for it. And I was in fifth grade. And so, I mean, this is a young age to kind of having these big thoughts. And thankfully, my mom was there to kind of provide that guidance and just talk me through it. But there's something that I connected with in terms of my initial goal was to become an astronaut after that. And I realized that they love what they were doing. They were so willing to do it. They were so

passionate about it that they were willing to give their lives for it. And then at the same time was just this exhilaration of flight, like the freedom, the fearlessness that goes with it. I think there was something in that moment that I connected with. And very quickly after that, I decided I had set my sights on becoming an astronaut. I figured out the way to get there after talking to my dad, who was an Air Force Academy graduate, was that a lot of the astronauts were also pilots who had gone to the Air Force Academy, also the Naval Academy.

But that was the path that I decided to take. So in fifth grade, I admitted myself to this goal and then worked really hard to get there. What's interesting because your story reminds me a lot of a mentor, a mine who was my physics teacher when I was at the Academy, Captain Wendy Lawrence. At the time, she was a lieutenant commander. She was a helicopter pilot, but ever since she saw the first steps on the moon, she had committed herself into becoming an astronaut. And at the time, she did so, there were no females at any of the service academies. And then during her senior year, they allowed the first class in. So she ended up applying and was the class of 81.

And while she was our professor, she got selected to the astronaut program. And her talk that she always gives is you have to give yourself permission to dream your dream, which resonated throughout your book. But interestingly enough, you talk about the saying that your mom gave you

that sometimes you have to do something that's worth dying to do. She was on the flight just after the Columbia incident. So the first flight after that, and we had a long talk about just how nervous they were at first, but how they got so ingrained with the flight engineers and everything that was going to happen on that flight that by the time the mission came about. She had no fear at all about going up, but I know that you faced a lot of headwinds while getting selected for the Air Force Academy and I wanted to ask you how did you give yourself permission to dream your dream? The great question, I think in 1986 what I made this choice, but this is what I wanted to do, women weren't allowed to be fighter pilots. I had no idea. I didn't even know that. So for me,

it was the goal of reaching for the stars, which is that I hung a shape of a star. It was a gold star from my bedroom ceiling that said reach for the stars. And it was my constant reminder that this is what I wanted. This was what I was going to go after. But I knew that it was going to require a lot of work. And it just a complete shift in my mind set in terms of working hard and putting in the effort. Thankfully, like you mentioned, I had mentors, I had teachers that helped support that. My dad was very supportive so much so, since he had been an Academy grad and there were no women at the Air Force Academy when he was there, I think this idea of his little girl going to the Air Force Academy

was a little scary for him and he decided that he was gonna do everything that he could to make sure that I was ready. We ran the Hills and San Jose, California in combat boots, sure the neighbors thought we were a little crazy. He helped install a pull-up bar in my bathroom so that every time I went in San Jose, California in combat boots, sure the neighbors thought we were a little crazy. He helped install a pull-up bar in my bathroom so that every time I went in and out, I could do pull-ups to help increase my upper body strength.

So he wanted to make sure that I was ready to go. And I think that was part of it. Because you have this big dream that may seem like lofty and ambitious, setting the goal is one part, but then you have to put in the work to get there. And I really put everything I had into it. And then anxiously awaiting my senior year, go into the mailbox every day.

And I got the letter in the mail from the Air Force Academy of Bright Blue Stationery. I rip open the envelope in excitement and it's a rejection letter instead that says thanks for applying right put in the application thanks for applying but it's a competitive process and we wish you best of luck next year. My translation to that was thank you for applying you're not good enough as kind of my mindset at the time was just totally crushed. This is everything that I had worked for. This was my dream, and it was crushing in that moment. I mean, it really was devastating

that I had done everything that I thought that I could do, and it still wasn't enough. And that was really hard to have this big dream and kind of see it kind of come falling down around me. But thankfully, I had a support network of my parents and family, friends, and a mentor in my liaison officer for the Air Force Academy. He said, Kim, if this is what you want, don't quit. This is your dream, then go after it. And he encouraged me to write letters to the Academy to let

them know I was still interested. And so I did. I started this letter writing campaign to the admissions office to say, every week, I'm still interested if you have somebody that turns their appointment down, I'm interested. I would write if I could do five more push-ups or pull-ups. I would write if I got an A on the test. I eventually took the ACT over the SAT and submitted my new scores that helped substantially, but there were just to have that support network around me in that really low time to encourage me to continue going after my dreams even though I had faced this kind of initial rejection. So I

Set the goal. I worked at it and then I had a team of people quite honestly around me who helped me keep going when times got really tough keep going when times got really tough. That's a great story and I've got another one for you, a really close friend of mine and classmate told me his story and he had applied to the Naval Academy for Maine and went to go visit the Academy during his spring semester of senior year and at that point he hadn't heard anything yet. He had gotten into a few other universities, but he ends up going in and he meets this marine who's in the admission office and he said, I applied, I haven't heard from you yet. Can you give me any status on my application? And the marine starts looking at things, looks at them and says, what's your name again?

And he tells them and he goes, I'll be back in a couple of minutes. And then he comes back and says, we have no evidence that you had applied. Are you sure you applied? And he goes, I'm absolutely sure. And he goes, come back in an hour, I'm gonna see what I can do.

And so he comes back in an hour and he goes, come back in an hour, I'm going to see what I can do. And so he comes back in an hour and he says, I want you to really think about how much you want to be here. And over the next 48 hours, I want you to call me back and tell me why you believe you need to be here. And he calls them back up and he says, well, I've got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is we have already filled our quota for the shipment for the year. But if you're willing to go to the Naval Academy Prep School, I will accept you immediately.

And without hesitation, he said, yes, we're coming up on our 30-year reunion. He is now a decorated Navy SEAL and ended up being the chief astronaut of NASA, Christacity. That's awesome. It's interesting how you both pursued your dreams. Well, and I think it's that determination. If this is what you want, this is your why, this is your passion, then don't quit when you've kind of hear that initial rejection,

that initial failure that comes in to keep pressing on and also to think about those people that make a difference that are willing to go that extra effort. The fact that I had a mentor liaison officer who said don't quit and encourage me, the fact that he had somebody that said was willing to kind of take a little risk on him and say if this is what you want, prove to me this is what you want, but I think that's sometimes also an acknowledgement of how we can make a difference in other people's lives, just by taking that little extra step to help them pursue their passion. Yes, that's absolutely true. And speaking of passion, another thing I learned about you reading the book is that you and I both ran cross country.

I ran at the Academy as well. But in a similar coincidence in my district finals, I was our number two runner and about a third of the way into the race, I get attacked by a pit bull who takes a chunk out of my leg. And I remember just being there on the ground, kind of in shock, bleeding. And one of the seniors on my team picks me up and says, you gotta keep going or we're not gonna win. So I end up running immediately having a good in the emergency room afterwards,

and we ended up not only winning that, but we went on to win states a few weeks later, but I understand you had a similar situation where you showed your resolve. Yeah, no dog, thankfully, that would scare me completely. I don't know if I could keep running after that. Yeah. So interesting, similar story in some ways. This was also our finals and the beginning of a cross country race.

It's teptic. I mean, you're all vying to kind of get out front and stepped on the back of my shoe and it came off and it was this half second of. Do I stop? Do I keep going? I mean, this was the beginning of the race and I elected to keep going. We ran part of the race on a road and then it veered off into the hills at a park in San Jose and Rocky dirt everywhere and I ended up running the whole race without the shoe on, which wasn't quite as fast, certainly. I definitely did not win the race, but I finished, which allowed, as you said,

at the team, them to compete. And as I crossed the finish line, I think people actually started to realize that I was running without a shoe in kind of shock. What is she doing? Why is she running without a shoe? After the race, and we had all cleared it, at the start of the race,

my cross country coach looked down and all the coaches were kind of waiting there and they looked at the shoe and she was like, oh, I know it, it's Kim's. It can only be Kim's shoe. So she knew that this was likely my shoe there at the starting line and finished the race, bloody blistered, earned a trip to the emergency room as well

to I couldn't walk for days after that just because of the damage to the bottom of my foot, but I finished the race. So to me, that was what I was after my poor mom who was at our synoncology nurse was like, what were you doing? I was like, well, I didn't want to lose. I didn't want to quit. And she kind of laughed and she called my dad at work and said, you're not going to believe

what our daughter did. And once he heard the story, he realized he was like, all right, I guess she can go to the Air Force Academy. She will be tough enough to go through it. So it earned me a little bit of, I don't know, a right into my dad's kind of environment of sharing a little bit more with me about the Air Force Academy and what it was all about.

Well, speaking of the Academy, I know my satin ralsandy stows gave you up endorsement on her book, and when I interviewed her, the Academy is today are not what they were like when we went in, and they were even worse on graduation rates when she went through. She told me at the time, the Coast Guard Academy was only graduating about 60% and for the females who went in only about a third of her class graduated. And I remember even my class, we had a very high dropout rate. Today it's in the high 90s, I think, across all the academies. It's very easy, as you probably saw, to one equip when you are having to go through

what we call plebe summer or that entire plebe year. What were some of the initial aspects of making a cadet at the academy and how did you face them? It's tough when you show up to the Air Force Academy, I think, and I think any service academy because everybody's at the top of their class, right? There's validictorians, there's elite athletes, there's class presidents, national honor society, you name it. But that's what everybody is. And so now you're average. So you're going into this environment

and they essentially break you down in a way that you have to start over in terms of working your way back up. I think mentally and physically it's very challenging. For me, though, after facing that initial rejection from the Academy, I kind of used it as motivation because I worked so hard to get there and I like barely made it in. So for me, I use that as motivation to excel. I didn't want to let the people down that had kind of taken a chance on me to give me the late offer of appointment and I didn't want to let myself down, probably more than anything. So I use that as motivation,

but I would say the other thing that I really learned out of all of that is all those hard times. Like the thing that we always took with us was like, never be by yourself. Always have a wingman, right? Somebody by your side. So if you're walking in the hallway, you don't want to get yelled at by yourself.

You walk out in the hallway with somebody by your side. And it was that initial idea of a wingman concept of working together as a team in order to excel. You could work really hard individually, but you really couldn't succeed unless you work together as a team to get through all of the challenges that they put us through. So I learned very quickly that how important it was to have a team to have somebody by your side to have mutual support, to get through the tough times. Because there were a lot of tough times. From an academic perspective, it was really hard. The hardest, very different than high school. So academically, it's very tough. But then you have all of these other competing priorities, and trying to figure that out is hard.

But having people around you that are going through the same thing that can provide you that support and kind of have your back in those moments to me, that's probably one of the key things that I learned from the Academy, just in terms of, yep, it's hard, it's challenging, but you're going to come out stronger on the other side. Yeah, my daughter right now is a freshman in college and I think she's taking 15 credits and she asked me, what was your average class load? I told her, I think my lightest class load ever was 18 or 19 credits, but most of the time it was 21 to 24. And she just said, how in the world did you do that? And how did you compete in division one athletics and everything else at the same time?

And you're right. When I think about it, I'm not sure if you've ever read Angela Duckworth's book, Crit, where she starts out by talking about West Point. She brings it up to passion and perseverance, but I have always thought that she missed one critical leg of the triangle, and that's intentionality. If you weren't intentional about how you were spending the micromumments of your day, there was no way that you were going to be able to do it all.

Yeah, I mean, that was probably one of the biggest things that I took away there was how to manage my time, how to be intentional with my time so that I could do the academics, I could do the athletics, my career in the military for sure, just because it is demanding. It's it is and I think this is with any career, right? Where you're professional and you're busy and you're trying to do a lot of things these days. It's trying to raise my kids and trying to do all of these things. It's being intentional with your time and learning to manage it and prioritize as well. as well. Well, we have a alumni magazine. I'm sure you do as well. ours is called Shipmate. And I happen to go through this month's a couple days ago. And while I was going through it, they did a whole segment on Vietnam veterans who were POWs. And I couldn't believe how many of them that there were. Just one page is after pages. And I'm building this up because one of the things that pilots and many people in the military have to go through is something called searschool.

And when people think about the service academy, they think about the regular academic year. But during our summers, I found some of the things that we were put into were some of the most challenging activities that we faced. And I thought some of the things that we were put into were some of the most challenging activities that we faced. And I thought some of the things that helped prepare us most for going out in the fleet or to an airwind, can you talk about your experience

of Searschool and what it is in case a listener is unfamiliar with it? Yeah. Searschool is survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. It is probably one of the hardest things I've ever gone through in terms of training because it really pushes you to your limits. It is the idea that if from a pilot perspective, if we get shot down over enemy territory, it teaches us to survive, evade capture, and then if we get captured to

resist by all means available, and then to ideally escape. It's kind of honestly a terrible experience. I'd never want to go through it again, but I'm so thankful that I went through it because it definitely tested me in many ways. We spent, I'd say the first, it's been a long time, but we spent time out in the woods learning survival techniques with an instructor. We spent time evading out in the woods, evading simulated enemy, and then we spent time in a simulated captivity where we had to learn techniques in terms of interrogation. So it was really tough. We also spent plenty of time in solitary

confinement and just reminds me that how when we came back together as a group, like that sense of relief that you feel that you're not alone, that you have people with you by your side. So it's an incredibly intense program, but I would agree with you, like those summer programs, whether it was learning how to fly gliders, soloing in a glider, jumping out of an airplane, going through this training, definitely prepared me very well for my future

in the Air Force as a fighter pilot. And Captain Wendy Lawrence, who I brought up earlier, her dad, was actually the superintendent when she was there, but prior to that, he was shot down. I think he was flying an F4 in 1967 and ended up getting released from Hanoi in 1973, but spent years in captivity. And I was lucky enough to have a leadership course with him at this when he was a retired vice admiral, but you just think about regardless of the service, what it is like. And so skills like, serious school are absolutely as unpleasant as they are necessary

when you think about the potential situations that you could get into. Yeah, there is an incredible book out there by Lee Ellis, called Leading with Honor, and it is the story of many of our POWs and how they survived and how they were able to return with honor. But a lot of incredible leadership lessons that came out of that as well. I highly recommend it. It's a great read just from a inspiring perspective of what people can go through and come out stronger on the other side. That's great. Thank you, and I'll put that in the show notes for sure. Well, one of the things before we leave that your academy experience is you were selected as cadet

wing commander, which for the listener, if you're not familiar with what that means, that Kim had the highest leadership position at the academy, and actually a position that her father had held 25 years earlier, making you the first father, daughter, combination to ever do it. And I was never that high. I had the unfortunate honor of being on the brigade honor of staff when we had the largest cheating scandal in Naval Academy history. I could tell you an experience

I would not want to have to repeat, but I did want to ask you how challenging was it to lead your peers and what did you learn from that experience about having to make tough calls at really a young age? Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about the Academy is that you get the opportunity to lead and really what is a training environment. And I would say that leading my peers is probably one of the hardest things I've done in terms of leadership because these are your peers, these are your classmates, and it is tough. Kedets are of high quality, but we also make mistakes. We also have moments that don't reflect as highly on us as we should. And I remember one situation where we were late to a dean's call, a meeting with the dean.

Well, the dean is also a one-star general for anybody that knows anything about the military. I mean, it's really any career, right? You don't want to be late to meet with the boss. It just does not go over well. Good majority of our class was late, kind of disruptive, coming into the briefing late. Nothing that we would want to repeat again, but in that moment, as I was in charge of the class, I had to end up taking, I took responsibility for that. The dean ended up restricting the entire class for the weekend. Could have been more, I don't remember exactly. But I essentially kind of just took that decision and took responsibility for that with some mentoring along the way.

I thankfully had leaders around me who kind of helped me through dealing with some of these things. But I just, I learned very early on that being a leader isn't just doing all the good things, the great, the promotions, the positive feedback. It is also sometimes taking ownership, it's taking responsibility for failures, it is having hard conversations, it is making tough decisions.

And thankfully I learned how to deal with that because it was not easy. I mean, it was just uncomfortable. I didn't really know how to do it. It was an opportunity for me to learn to do some of those hard things that leaders have to do in a training environment. Your Marshall Scholar, so after graduation, you ended up going over to England to pursue your master's degrees and then you come back to pursue pilot training. I think it was in 1999 and at the time there were 33 female fighter pilots in the

Air Force. And I have to ask, what was it like having to enter such a male dominated profession at that time? I think one of the good things for me is that I had gone to the Air Force Academy already. I had learned to prove myself there in terms of maintaining a high level of credibility and capability. So when I walked into my fighter squadron, it was like the same mindset of, I'm just going to go in, I'm going to prove myself, I'm going to be credible, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to maintain a good attitude. And the truth is, first off, the jet has no idea who's flying the airplane, right? So the jet doesn't care.

And what I realized over time is that the guys in my squadron, they didn't care either, they just cared that I was credible and competent in the airplane. That also to say that I think at first, like people just didn't really know what to do or how to act. I mean, that was just this unknown environment of having a female pilot in the fighter squadron.

And so just kind of helping them see that I may look a little different, I may sound a little different on the radio, but I can still fly the airplane. And I think for me that really just, it laid the foundation just in terms of how I approached those things. It was just all about, I was going to go in, I was going to be credible, I was going to be competent, I was going to work hard, and I was going to maintain a good attitude through it all.

Well, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your training. The first is, how did you develop a family forward mindset from flight training? Yeah, easier said than done. Learned it the hard way by failing. I really wanted to do well at pilot training because depending upon how well you do is how you get wrapped and stacked to get the aircraft that you want. So I knew I had to perform at this high level. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do that.

I worked hard. And sometimes you can put in all the effort, you can work really hard. And still sometimes you have a really bad mission, which is what happened to me on my final mission at pilot training. I was flying a formation mission, which is where you fly just close proximity

to the other airplane. And probably because of my high level of stress and wanting to perform well, my visor on my helmet fogged up. And it was starting to get uncomfortable where I couldn't clear the visor and fly and maintain the correct position all at the same time. I start getting a little bit worried that I'm not flying in type formation.

And I finally just tell my instructor or the evaluator pilot who's sitting in the back seat. And I was explaining this situation. And he was just calm, the control. It was just big deal, like I have the airplane, he moved away, told me to clean my visor and then told me to get back in formation, which theoretically would have been really simple and straightforward if I had the right mindset. Instead, I moved back into formation after cleaning my visor and I just, my mind was back behind me. It was back thinking about the past 30 seconds of how terrible I had flown and I'm probably going to get down grades and I'm, and

guess what happened. I continued to fly poorly because I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. I was wallowing in my mistakes of what I had done before. It was probably the worst mission I had ever flown, the worst grades that I had got on a ride. And thankfully, we sat down in the debrief, and my instructor was like, look, Kim, you're a good pilot, but that was a bad ride. And you have to be able to learn to make mistakes and learn from them and then move on. Even in this short time span, let it go. We'll talk about it in the debrief, learn the lesson, and then don't do it again the next time. So I think this idea of this fighter pilot debrief and having time to debrief and learn from your mistakes really forced me to learn to fail forward

and a failure where I kind of stayed and that mindset of mistake and failing and not learning from it did not go well for me. And so having this idea of failing forward and learning from mistakes was something that I learned early and then took with me for the rest of my career. Well, thanks for sharing that. And for the audience, another great episode if you wanna go back and listen to it was with major Pady Cook, who is a Marine Corps pilot,

but she was the first female member of the Blue Angel. She flew the C-130 fat Albert aircraft, but she talks a lot about in that episode the debriefs and how extensive they are in the Blue Angels. And that one of the most important things is no matter how bad you screw up, you openly talk about the mistakes that you're making because as you rightly point out when you're flying in tight formations, it's millimeters of error that you're dealing with at times. And also a huge shout out to the all female air crew who just flew over the Super Bowl a couple days ago. Yeah, they nailed it. It was awesome.

Yeah, it's not as easy as people think to get that time incorrect. Yeah, it's not as easy as people think to get that time incorrect. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I did want to bring up one of the things you talk about is this pilot debrief. But I think when you think about this, we often don't spend enough time analyzing our performance and measuring whether it's in your career or in your own life, different stages of output that you've had. Why do we need to be so intentional about analyzing performance?

And why does that make us so much better? This debrief concept, and you can call it a after-action report or a post-team huddle, whatever it is. I think it's important to just walk through what happened to talk about those lessons so that you improve, right? So that you make a difference the next time. I mean, we talk about doing this in our personal lives. I mean, my husband and I will debrief sometimes a tough conversation that we've had with our teenager and maybe it didn't go so well and what are we going to do differently the next time? We talk through it. So it doesn't

have to be this big formal lengthy discussion. It can be just a quick cuddle discussion. I've used it as a leader when we've made decisions about things and maybe those decisions were in hindsight not the best ones to make. We sit down, we talk about it, have the conversation, we analyze how we got there, maybe the mistakes kind of what was the root cause, and then how we wanna change it, how we wanna move forward. So this idea is that you do a debrief, you're intentional about analyzing your performance so that you can take lessons and improve the next time. For me, that next step with that,

it's good that individuals do that, but I also think it is important now to share those lessons, to share lessons with the rest of the team. So it's not like you keep it stove piped and just one section of an organization, you share the lessons more broadly so that other people can learn as well. Easier said than done sometimes because sometimes those lessons are at an admission of mistakes. They're letting people know that things didn't go as well, and that can be hard. But if you're looking at a whole concept of elevating team performance, then sharing those lessons is critical.

Well, I'm not sure what it's like at the Air Force Academy. But I know when I graduated from the Naval Academy, when you got a pilot billet, you would go to Pensacola. But you didn't necessarily know what airframe you were going to get until you had gone through some significant portion of the program, is that similar to the Air Force? Yes, we found out the aircraft that we were flying at the very end of our pilot train. So we would go through almost a year, you rack and stack how you're

performing, you put in your dream sheet, and then towards the very end of your year is when you get your the actual aircraft that you're gonna fly. So going into that, did you have the aspiration of being a fighter pilot or did you not care what you were on? No, I got my care. I mean, those days from the fifth grade, like I wanted to be a fighter pilot through and through.

I didn't know what kind of airplane I wanted to fly, but I knew I wanted to be a fighter pilot and all the way through pilot training. Despite the fact that I had about a two to three week bout with air sickness, which was pretty miserable, but still I realized that that wasn't gonna stop me. I still wanted to be a fighter pilot. And I took some time during my time at pilot training

to talk to other pilots, learn about the missions. I also realized I really enjoyed those low level flying missions, more than the really enjoyed those low-level flying missions, more than the formation missions. And the more I talk to people, I realized how much I really connected with this idea of flying an aircraft whose primary mission was close air support and supporting

our troops on the ground, helping them to get home safely to their families. Like to me, that was something I could get on board with. That was this idea of doing something bigger and more important than myself was being able to support get on board with. That was this idea of doing something bigger and more important than myself was being able to support troops on the ground. So the A-10 became my first choice in terms of flying an airplane with a mission

that really meant a lot to me. Well, affectionately known by those who have flown it as the war cog, I understand that the A-10 is the most successful, close air support aircraft of all time flying for 37 years. Is it true that it has a 1,200 pound titanium bathtub to protect the pilot? It is. It's probably one of those things most loved by the pilot is the titanium bathtub that we sit in for protection against enemy fire. So I agree with you. I think the A10 is probably the best close air support platform we have out there, but I of maybe the

whole aircraft we have in the arsenal, it was the most feared by the enemy, which I think tells you something. In fact, it was given the name across of death if I have it correctly by opposing forces. And I wanted to ask, is it true that the aircraft was designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator, and even a half of a wing missing? Well, it was definitely a requirement that the aircraft had to be survivable, and it was designed specifically so that it could take hits while performing its mission.

So this idea that it could get down low, close to the ground troops, be able to take out enemy tanks and take some hits while performing its mission. Significant amount of damage, you just relayed, but we've seen it time and time again from desert storm to our previous operation and operation Iraqi freedom that the airplane can take hits and still keep flying. I'm going to give one more tidbit for the audience just because it's one of my favorite aircraft and its automatic cannon is the heaviest one ever mounted on an aircraft so much so that its front landing gear had to be moved off to the side to allow the cannon to fit where it

fits and I think it's 16% or so of the overall aircraft's weight which is just incredible when you think about it. It's pretty impressive. I mean, the airplane was built around the gun. When they designed it, they decided they needed to have the gun. And so they built the aircraft around it. And as you mentioned, if you look straight on at the airplane, the nose gear is slightly offset so that the gun, the barrel where the bullets come out from, is centered up. So it's essentially point and shoot or we want the bullets to hit.

Well, what was that recoil like when you're in the aircraft itself? So you don't necessarily feel a recoil based on where the gun is sitting. But what you do feel is kind of a rumbling sensation that goes on when, I mean, when you pull the trigger, the whole jet shake because the gun is spinning, the bullets are coming out of the gun at a very high rate of speed, roughly 70 rounds per second. So you can definitely feel it. You can see it because you see the gun gas out in front of the aircraft,

and then you can smell it too. So full experience when you shoot the gun. And we always show that you're not really in a 10 pilot until you actually shoot the gun. Well, you've had your fair amount of times to shoot it doing over a hundred combat missions. And we all have defining moments, but how did a mission over Baghdad on April 7, 2003 alter your life? And what did you learn from that terrifying experience at the set the stage for the rest of your life? Yeah, it was definitely life defining. That's for sure, and life changing in many ways. So April 7, 2003, which is crazy.

I say that out loud right now, and it's crazy to me. That is almost 20 years ago, since this mission happened because for me, I remember it so clearly and it feels like it was yesterday in many ways. But this was a mission we were flying in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. At this point, on the ground, all of our ground forces had really pushed up

around Baghdad. A lot of high levels for closer support requests, troops in contact requests, meaning our troops are taking fire, they need immediate assistance. And so our mission that day was to just fly up to Baghdad, airy fuel, and then wait for a tasking. Because the situation on the ground really had become intense

and that we just wanted aircraft there stacked up so that when the call came in, we could go in as quickly as we could. And we got a call pretty quickly, but our ground troops were taking fire, they needed immediate assistance. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible. And we couldn't actually see the ground below.

There were clouds all over Baghdad. We were a little worried that we weren't gonna be able to be effective, that we weren't gonna be able to get in there. But when you hear troops in contact over the radio, I mean, the adrenaline is pumping. This is the moment. This is everything that you've trained for, and all that preparation, everything leading up to this moment. And you know that the troops on the ground need, need our help. And so we did everything we could. We flew right over the target area, and my flight lead just said, all right, I'm going to find a hole in the clouds and disappear.

And he, I watched him. He just rolled inverted and disappeared through this hole in the clouds. And then he said, all right, Casey, it's your turn. And look down, found a hole in the clouds and dove through. Not really sure what I was going to find when I came out below the weather, but I could instantly see this firefight. I mean, there were bright flashes and smoke and tracers going back and forth across the river. Our friendly troops were on the west side of the Tigers River enemies on the east side.

They're firing rocket propelled grenades into our troops. I mean, we could just see this firefight. It was very surreal because this is what we trained for. At about that time, I start to see these puffs of gray and white smoke and now bright flashes in the air. The right next to my cockpit, it's just half second of realization is not only that is there this firefight happening across the river, but now the enemy is also shooting at us too. But we had a mission to do. We had to continue the mission. We kept our aircraft moving. We decided we're going to do two passes. That's it. Climb up, reassess, and decide if we need to come back in. But to hindsight, on my last pass, roll in, point my nose right under the meat bridge,

which is where our target was, and immediately after firing rockets, pull off from the ground, just to get away from the threat, away from the ground. And I feel and hear this large explosion at the back of the airplane. And there is just no doubt in my mind. I mean, I know my airplane is hit.

It's a bright red orange flash and the jet just dumps over, nose low, pointing at Baghdad. I immediately pull back on the control stick and like, nothing. I mean, nothing happened. I'm can see Baghdad getting closer and I know I might have to eject and my airplane is not responding. Quickly kind of go back into this training mode of, I can't maintain aircraft control, so I quickly try to analyze the situation, figure out what's going on. I've got lights everywhere flashing,

and I realize that I've lost all of my hydraulics. Like the thing that is required to be able to fly the airplane is hydraulics. And they're gone. At this point, I've got really two choices, and one of them is not good at all. So I don't even know if I call it a choice of ejecting right over the enemy over Baghdad. And so I know I'm going to attempt to use our emergency backup system and hope that it

works. And sure enough, I flipped the switch and put the jet into our emergency backup system called manual reversion. And thankfully that airplane like finally starts to climb slowly, but up and away from Baghdad. I will tell you that was kind of the first moment where I could like take a deep breath and think that I was actually gonna survive that scenario. And so the 10 isn't fly by wire or has a backup system that allows you to fly it almost in a manual mode.

Is that kind of what you're describing? Yeah, so hydraulics are really allow you to fly it almost in a manual mode. Is that kind of what you're describing? Yeah. So hydraulics are really allow you to fly the airplane with greater ease. And because I had lost all the hydraulics, I had this backup system. It's called manual reversion. And it's really cranks cables pullies that allow you to fly the aircraft in this backup mode. I equate it to, I don't know, old school flying, just manual mode. But keep in mind, this is a 47,000 pound airplane. It's not very easy to control.

It is difficult. It's heavy, but it's flying. And honestly, that's what I care about. So how coming out of that experience, did you think about your teammates and the importance of team and then what lessons did you carry from that to this day? I look back on that mission and realize that I think I was successful because I didn't even know about it this all at the time, but I had a huge team that was there to support me, right, that had my back. And specifically my wingman, my flight lead, in that moment over Baghdad when I was hit,

I mean, all of my attention was on just trying to get this airplane under control. And as soon as I told him I was hit over the radio, I mean, he just stepped in to provide this guidance and direction to provide support when I needed it most. He immediately told me to come west so that if I had to eject, I would at least be over the friendly location. And then he'd tell me to put out chaff and flair so that the enemy was still shooting at us and he didn't want me to get hit again.

And then as soon as I told him that I'm in this backup system, this manual or a version system, he immediately says emergency jettison, all of your ordinance now so that I could climb. He had this situational awareness that I didn't. He really helped me see that bigger picture. Yeah, well, I'm just going to give the audience another episode. They might want to check out about a year ago I had on Keegan call sign smurf gill, a former F 18 pilot and he was in a dog fight with his commanding officer came out of it to do a high speed turn to come back to oppose the other aircraft. And when he did, the F18 has a limitation on how much G it allows

you to perform. So as he was coming out of this maneuver, he had a complete dead stick because the aircraft wouldn't allow him to pull any more Gs. And next thing, he was in a 40 degree angle, heading right to the water and ended up having to ditch at 200 feet above the water at 0.98 Mach. And I'll let the audience if they want to listen to the rest of that story, listen to it. But he is still here, obviously, to talk about it. Jackson seats are pretty amazing, but wow, what an experience. The repercussions of doing it is not though. Can you talk about the phrase aviate, navigate, and communicate?

I've had 20 years now to reflect on this mission, and I try to think about what made me successful. How is I able to take action in that moment where everything was going wrong? I was able to prioritize my actions to make a decision by relying on some early lessons that I learned from pilot training, which is aviate navigate communicate. So that phrase helps us to slow down in an emergency. It helps us to take that deep breath and help us see the bigger picture by aviate, right? Focus on those things that are most important first for me, flying the airplane, trying

to get the airplane under control. Even though I'm totally taciturated with a lot of things going on, I'm trying to focus on what's most important. And then navigate, right? I still have to have awareness of my surroundings. I need to be able to get on the west side of the river. I have to be aware of the threats and the risks to the mission. Thankfully, my flight lead helped me out in that case.

And then communicate, right, helped me out in that case and then communicate, right, to let, in this case, let my flight lead know that I had been hit so that he could help. But it's this idea that an emergency when things are going wrong, when you're feeling overwhelmed, it kind of recenters us and to think about what's most important and focus on what's most important first and then take these follow-on steps. And I've really used that same concept to help me lead in difficult times or times of crisis and just terms of focus on what's most important. Figure out the thing that you have to keep doing that you can't stop doing or you will fail. Making sure you have a clear path and then communicate that clear path and the objectives to your

team and also asking for help if you need it. Well, you and your husband both spent 24, 25 years, if I have it right, in the service, and during it, you were raising two kids, and I wanted to ask because it's got to be challenging to have kids when both of you are facing deployments, etc. What are some of the biggest challenges of raising children in the military and how did you overcome them? Yeah, sometimes I look back and I'm like, I don't know how we did that. To have two young kids to be commanders at the same time,

it was challenging for sure. I don't think it's just, it's not just for military parents. I think anytime you are trying to maintain a professional career and raise kids at the same time, it's hard. Thankfully, I had an incredibly supportive husband. I still have an incredibly supportive husband who has been my wingman by my side helping.

And we've been able to try to balance that with each other. And but we also, it helps us stay centered on our priorities and what is most important in our focus on our family and to be able to still maintain a professional side while also being parents as well. We realized pretty quickly that there were times we couldn't do it on our own and we asked for help. When my husband deployed to Afghanistan for a year, I'm the mom at home. I am trying to maintain a full time military job, raise these kids. And I will tell you there were

moments where I didn't feel like I was doing any of it well. And I finally realized you don't have to do this on your own, ask for help. People are offering to help. And it was just that having the courage to say I can't do this on my own, I do need help. It was kind of a turning point in realizing that it is okay to ask for help. We don't have to do it all on our own. So that was a big part of it. Sometimes it's a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves,

trying to do it all, trying to get it right. And I think for me, I realize that every day wasn't gonna be perfect, right? There were gonna be days where I was gonna spend more time at work. There were gonna be days when my Airman needed me and I was gonna have to spend more time at work. And so I tried to make it up later on.

I tried to look at this long-term balance instead of just, if you're trying to find this work life balance and you think it has to be 50, 50 every day. It just for me that didn't work. And I put so much pressure on myself and I realized that I could just look at it more in long-term. Maybe it's a month, maybe it's a year, whatever it is, you're just trying to find that long-term balance and continue to work towards it and then give myself some grace when it doesn't

go the way that I plan, which again is still advice that I continue to work towards it and then give myself some grace when it doesn't go the way that I plan, which again is still advice that I continue to remind myself to this day. Sometimes we just have to give ourselves a little bit of grace because it doesn't always go as planned. I think it's difficult for us to show in any leadership experience as the humanity that we possess when we're in that leadership position. I happened to listen to another episode of yours, and you talked about a change of command, and your three-year-old did something quite unexpected, but how did you turn that into an opportunity

to allow your troops to see your humanity? Yeah, it's funny. The things we learned from our kids, right? My very first squadron command, I was taking command of a unit, it was about 150 airmen. This was my first opportunity to really lead kind of set the example. I again put a lot of pressure on myself because I had this idea of what I thought I should be as a leader and how I should act, how I should people should view me, which was more like this tough exterior combat proven fighter pilot. Then I change a command ceremony, which is very formal.

Happens before command. Big group of people watching my husband and my son were down there in the front row. My team, my unit was in formation. I'm up on stage with a 10 in the background, just a big formal event. And about, I don't know, 15 minutes into the ceremony or so I'm looking down at my son. And I can tell he is just like totally bored out of his mind. So I give him like the quick little smile and then he looks up at me and then he stands up.

I'm like, oh no, what are you doing? So my husband and I are kind of doing this like parental silent communication thing where I'm looking at him thinking you should probably do something and he's looking at me thinking, I'm not gonna do anything because we could have a full blown meltdown like right here in front of everybody. So I look again at my son and at this point, he's now taking a few steps, like getting closer and

closer to the stage. Like he thinks he's invisible, like nobody sees him. And yet I can see him very clearly. But now I'm kind of in this, I'm getting nervous about what my team is thinking. I'm nervous about what they think about me as a commander. I don't even know what to think at this point. My son ends up like making his way to the stage and I think he might actually like just sit down and instead he climbs up on the stage and then hops up right in my lap. And I am like, oh no. I mean, there's part of me that like the mom and me is like, this is cute.

The fact that he wants to be with me is so heartwarming. And then there's the commander of me that is like, oh, what is my team thinking? What are they thinking of this new commander who can't even control the three-year-old son and is supposed to lead 150 people? And then I kind of have this realization in the moment of, you know what?

Yes, I'm a commander, but I'm also a mom. I'm also a wife. I'm a pilot. I'm all of these things. And it is important for my team to see me for who I am. That's that human side of leadership. But I was still honestly nervous about what my team was thinking about the whole thing.

And the next day, I took some time to walk around, just go to the different shops and talk to my airman. And the one thing that came up in every discussion was my son getting up on my lap because people saw that as like the human side of me, like I'm not just this combat proven fighter pilot, tough leader, no personality. Now I'm human, like I have my own challenges. I certainly not perfect. I don't have all the answers. In some way, that moment with my son climbing up on my lap totally connected me with my team in a way that I

don't think would have happened otherwise. But my took my three-year-old son to teach me to just what be who you are. That's really what your team wants for me. And I saw it through and through that it just being me and showing that human side of leadership is really what connected me with the members of my team. Well, I'm sure for them it made you appear much more approachable than had you reacted differently in that situation. Yeah, it's like, okay, we might actually be able to connect with her and trust her in a way because now she's like us. She has her own challenges, but it makes you approachable. It makes you real, makes you human. Well, thank you for sharing that, and I'm going to fast forward to the last position

that you had. And it's interesting. All the academies have leadership development components to them. In fact, when people ask me, what did you graduate in? I always tell them the academy was the best leadership institution you could possibly go to. But I happened to interview Dr. Nate Zinser, who's been teaching at West Point for a few decades. And it was interesting because they teach something there that we never had at the Naval Academy

that I think we should probably have. And that was a performance psychology. He basically taught them the psychology of confidence and how they should perform. And he's now taught everyone from Eli Manning to the Olympic gold-winning Bob Sled team to others. I know you were in a similar department, but I don't know if the Air Force Academy has anything like that, but I was hoping you could explain what your function was and how this helps the cadets. Yeah, so my final year at the Air Force Academy, which was such a nice opportunity to go back and teach at the place where my career started, but I finished out as the director of the Center for Character and Leadership Development. Our entire focus was on developing leaders of character who will go out and serve this nation in the Air Force and Space Force. We also helped ensure that the faculty and staff at the Air Force Academy also had

their own leadership development programs. So it was important and very powerful in terms of giving the cadets an opportunity to learn about leadership at an early stage because this idea that they're going to go out and for the seniors in a few short months and lead our men and women potentially in the combat. Our focus was on developing leaders of character, which was a concept of living honorably, lifting others, and then elevating performance. And all of that is first, you're a little bit more focused on yourself and developing those traits and virtues in yourself and living honorably and then progressing to

lifting others and helping others to perform at their best with the overall goal of eventually elevating the performance of the team. So that was how we looked at it. But I think this concept of developing confidence in people, I think part of that is also a mindset of confidence, but knowing that you put in the work that you've had the training that we've given you the opportunities, we talk to our cadets about own engage in practice.

We want you to own your own development, development. We want you to engage and take on those opportunities to try it, especially in training. And it's all about kind of how we can assist them as faculty, as staff, as mentors and leaders to help them in their development process. So they get a lot of opportunities to give it a try, they get plenty of opportunities to make mistakes and fail so that when it comes time to actually lead our young men and women, they have a little bit of something that they can rely on. Okay, and for the audience, I've got two great episodes for you to listen to on this as

well. One of them was with Admiral James Devredus, and we discussed a book he wrote called To Risk It All, which is all about how do you lead with character? And I also did an episode with Jeff Struker, who won the Silver Star for his heroic actions in Black Hawk Down, and he talks about how having to go back in the Humvees, especially after he rescued the initial ranger who had gone down, was a defining moment for him of what it meant to be a person of character and to put his life on the line. So two great episodes,

in addition to this one for you to take part in. Well, the last question I'd love to ask authors, him is if there was one or two takeaways that you would want to read or the audience to take from your book, what would they be? Yeah, so the title of my book, Flying in the Face of Fear, I will tell you, the thing that I've realized

over my 20 years in the military is we all face fear in our lives. I think about the many times in my life that I have faced fear, or nervousness, or worry, whatever you want to call it. But I never wanted to admit it. I never wanted to talk about it. And so this is my opportunity in the book to share some of those stories of walking up as a basic cadet at the Air Force Academy of walking into my fighter squadron being the only female fighter pilot

of leading men and women of being a stay at home mom while my husband deployed. Each of those situations there was some sense of fear and nervousness because I wanted to do well. I wanted to perform at my highest level. It's hard to admit that we sometimes feel scared, that we sometimes feel worried or anxious about what we're doing, whether it's a challenge or a new experience, because you're usually an excitement with it and it's this idea of we want to perform well, we don't want to let people down, we want to meet expectations, we don't want to fail. And so sometimes there is fear involved too. But it's all about what we do in those moments that really matters. You can feel fear, you can be scared, but you need to step up and take action.

You need to be able to act even in the face of fear. Specifically for leaders, I think that means that we are able to do the hard things, make the tough calls, make those decisions when we don't have perfect information. It's showing that human side of leadership and connecting with our team. That is what leading with courage is about. That's the goal with this book is just to share some stories and experiences with the lessons learned to make a difference in an impact in how people lead and how they can lead their teams with courage. Well, thank you for sharing that answer because I know in my own career, oftentimes those

years and years of practice and repetition and everything else, you put yourself through, come down to tiny moments like you experienced in Overbackedad that you have to put all that training into conscious effort in that moment because it could drastically impact at that period of time, whether you were a prisoner of war yourself or whether you were successfully able to land that aircraft. But those moments happen throughout our lives and with our kids and other things. So I think that's a really good leave behind for the audience.

Yeah, you never know when you're going to be called upon, right? To execute at your highest level, no matter what you're doing. And so it's putting in the work, putting in the effort, being prepared so that in that moment that you have the ability to overcome fear and take action. Well, Kim, it was such an honor to have you on the show. And congratulations again on the launch of your brand new book. Thank you for being here. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed that inspirational interview with Kim Campbell. And I wanted to thank Kim and Wiley for giving us the opportunity for having her appear on the show. Links to all things Kim will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

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