Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit
Just fix it! Immediately.
Published Guide updated 2 min 3 sec
Sharon’s flying mentor answered uneven wings, an unsteady nose and a wind-affected approach with the same instruction: fix it immediately. She took that into ordinary life, including an oil warning light she used to leave on. Small corrections, repeated, keep little problems from becoming the leadership issue.
Key takeaways
- Correct the deviation as soon as you see it.
- Delay is what turns a small fault into an expensive one.
- The habit is proactive: you lead the problem instead of reacting to it.
- She suggests trying the rule for three weeks.
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Edited transcript
Sharon told a mentor at her flying school that she was having trouble keeping the wings level. He said to fix it, straight away. The same answer came back for the nose, which climbed when she looked at the trim and wandered when she checked speed or power, and for landings that were being rocked by the wind. Just fix it. Immediately.
She carried the instruction off the airfield. When the oil light came on in the car, she took it to the garage instead of leaving the light on for a month, as she had done before. The small repair, she says, probably saved her a much larger bill.
The question she leaves is how many parts of life get postponed until they are a bigger problem. You may not be flying a Cessna 152. When something is wrong, fix it immediately, and try doing that for three weeks. Little problems get handled before they grow, and the mentality shifts from reacting to being on top of them.
