Throughout my military career, leaders bestowed the blessing of empowerment that allowed me to learn and grow with experience. Often, that experience proved humbling, painful, and embarrassing. Luckily, it never proved catastrophic. I endeavored to provide the same type of rope that others afforded me to more junior leaders. Again, I tried to set conditions that prevented those leaders from catastrophic failure.

Military leadership doctrine distinguishes between mission orders, where operators execute with the Commander’s Intent, and control, where Commanders apply constraints and limitations to meet objectives. It is important to note that this distinction is not mutually exclusive. The application of military leadership included both command (mission orders) and control, where Commanders apply varying levels of both, given relationships of trust, assessment of skills, attributes, abilities, experience, resources, and many other operating environment variables. There is no binary equation, where a Commander determines if this, then that. Leaders must constantly assess the situation to determine the proper mix to achieve the objectives.

As a very young aviation officer, I assumed a role, where I led a team flying small, underpowered, single-engine, antiquated helicopters in the Republic of Korea, often along the Demilitarized Zone. A few, short years before my arrival, another crew failed to properly navigate and crossed into North Korea, where North Korean air defenses shot down the very same aircraft I flew. Global Positioning System (GPS) did not exist in a usable form at the time, which required repetition and memorization of the terrain to navigate effectively. As it would prove many times in my career, I benefited from an extremely experienced Vietnam Veteran Instructor Pilot, who carefully trained and mentored me as a brand new aviator in his first assignment. He provided the necessary tools for me to effectively and safely fly our aircraft as a single pilot. He drilled and trained me through rehearsal and repetition to know the terrain as I would my backyard. All of this training provided skills to combat the true lack of experience that I could not overcome. This process mitigated risk for me, our organization, the leaders, to whom I reported, and the potential strategic risk to our nation, should I fail catastrophically through poor navigation.

Luckily, I did not experience any significant issues with navigation that might result in true failure. However, I learned hard lessons through many hard experiences that easily could have proven calamitous. Again, the tools that the more seasoned leaders provided allowed me to learn from these hard lessons. One of those occurred on my very first flight as a single pilot, Pilot-in-Command (PIC).

For a young Army aviator, achieving PIC status is a paramount goal, demonstrating a basic mastery of aviation skills, while serving as a license to learn. Upon earning this status, I accepted a mission to transport three leaders from another location. On the day of the mission, I performed all of the preflight activities exactly as I learned, including a thorough weather check. I received a “clear, blue, & 22” forecast, meaning clear, blue skies, and unrestricted visibility. Only experience over time would cause me to dig deeper into weather forecasting. I accepted this forecast as reliable and completed the rest of my preflight tasks. After departing my base, I flew 5 minutes to the northwest, where a hilltop marked the opening of a large north/south running valley. As I crossed the hilltop, I suddenly found myself in Inadvertent Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IIMC). In IIMC, a pilot enters some obscurant, preventing him from any type of visual cues. This is a particularly dangerous time, as a pilot enters this condition without planning it, often with significant terrain or man-made hazards he/she could contact by the lack of visual cues. The proper procedure includes leveling the aircraft, initiating a climb in altitude, and stabilizing the airspeed.

My windscreen became white as I entered a low-lying cloud. I looked left, found blue sky, and made a sharp left turn. This was absolutely not the right procedure nor what I was trained to do, but I rapidly exited the cloud, picked up my visual cues, and promptly returned to my base, where I shut down the aircraft and thanked God that I was terra firma once again. When I called the leaders, whom I failed to transport, they remained unhappy. They would miss their meeting with other senior leaders. The organization’s Operations Officer threatened to complain to the leaders within my organization. As I knew that my Boss would support my decision, given the trust that we established, I highlighted that I would assist in this disgruntled customer’s communication with my Boss. I was not pleased that I failed to perform the mission but knew that was not possible, given the weather conditions. My Boss and her Boss supported my decisions and actions. I could not ask for more.

I learned many lessons on this first PIC flight, one that would carry me for over 3000 more flight hours. However, I could not have learned these lessons, had my Boss and team failed to provide me with the right tools, constraints, limitations, and support to fail, but not catastrophically. The culture and climate did not prevent risk, but they mitigated risk and allowed our team to achieve objectives while failing in lower-cost ways. This same atmosphere allowed me to learn valuable lessons that shaped my ability to manage risk as a senior throughout another 25 years of aviation leadership.

When we allow our people to learn through hard lessons, they remember them best, but catastrophic lessons prevent continued growth and learning. It is up to the leadership team to set the right conditions for this hard learning.

Authored by: Matthew Weinshel, Managing Director