So here I am. I’d been a fighter pilot eight years before I joined the
Thunderbirds. I had every single certification and qualification you could have as
a frontline fighter pilot. I walk onto Nellis Air Force Base and towards
that Thunderbird hangar that first day thinking I knew everything about
teamwork and trust.
Trust does not come to you from other people on a team.
Trust emanates outward from your actions and your
behaviors. Remember, the standard you are willing to walk past is
the standard you are willing to accept.
The energy, the story, you could just feel the passion.
It was just amazing.
Three,
two,
one.
Don’t you ever write yourself out of the script.
And as leaders and teammates and professional colleagues, don’t you ever write
anybody else and their wild ideas out of the script either.
Nobody wants to lead a scripted life.
Six jets flying at 500 feet, 500 miles an hour, upside down,
18 inches to three feet away from each other.
All it took was one of us not doing our job to the highest standard of
excellence, and that entire elite mission would fall apart.
Nicole is an elite fighter pilot, a decorated military leader,
and a trailblazer who knows firsthand what it takes to push the envelope.
And she is a badass. Colonel Nicole Malachowski.
The single greatest honor of my professional career was being the
commander of the 333rd Fighter Squadron.
It was me and 100 totally elite, highly
skillful, macho men. It was good to be the queen.
Am I right? And just as we start to split to our individual aircraft,
the last thing a flight lead says to their wingmen is this, “When
in doubt, always honor the wingman contract.”
This is who we are. We have expectations of each other’s standards
of performance and execution. And under this wingman contract,
I promise you, I will hold myself accountable to that standard.
And out of caring and compassion for you as a teammate, I promise to
hold you accountable to the standard.
To top it off, these two guys
were my top instructors in the squadron.
They were literally my train the trainers.
How in the world did this happen? I looked right at them and I said, “Well,
boys,
steel sharpens steel. My weekly Friday meeting, you are going to take the
stage in front of the entire squadron, not just your formation, all 100 of
your brothers. You’re going to take the stage, and you’re going to talk about this
mistake, how it happened, why it happened, but more importantly, how we get it
right.” And for sure, there were some guys who were like, “Great, this is what
happens. We got the woman leader. Now we have to talk about our feelings in front
of each other.” Right?
And Friday after Friday after Friday, I was consistent.
I would pick somebody to stand up there.
I said, “Steel sharpens steel,” because there was always something to learn
from. There was always something that week that we could have done better, that we
could have done to that next level of excellence.
But to me, a lot of times when change comes along, it’s like a headwind.
They are disruptive, challenging, unexpected, and
sometimes quite unwelcome. But what I learned across my career is that with the
right mindset, we can actually harness the headwinds that we
encounter in our personal life and our professional life to our favor.
My career, this amazing career I’ve been sharing with you, was gone
in the blink of a bite.
For four years, my body had been trying to fight that on its own until finally it
got to my brain stem.
And in that moment, I knew my career was over.
In that moment, I lost my identity
as an Air Force officer, my profession as an Air Force fighter pilot, my means for
providing for my family. For nine months, I laid in bed, unable to walk, talk,
read, and write. And as I sat there rightfully feeling sorry for myself,
these words came to my head clear as day,
“Yield to overcome.”
Yield to overcome. And in that moment, yielding meant
not quitting, surrendering, or giving up, but about full acceptance.
It’s not about what you can’t do anymore, Nicole.
It’s about what you can do. What can you do right now with what
you have to move forward?
And I hope by sharing this story, it is a reminder to all of you that
we all have the power to reinvent ourselves at any
given time.
The runway behind you is always unusable.
All you ever have is the runway that’s in front of you.
And the second we hit that turbulence, instantaneously, my body tenses up.
I get a knot in my stomach, and instinctually, I start to grip that stick
as hard as I can. We promise each other as a team that when any one
of us encounters turbulence in our own jet,
we will immediately
loosen our grip.
The exact opposite of my instincts as a pilot when there are jets 18 inches to
three feet away from me, and the exact opposite of our instincts as human
beings when change and turbulence comes along.
The Thunderbirds taught me a very valuable lesson very early on, and it’s
this: Nothing of significance is ever accomplished
alone. There is not a single one of us on this stage that is either
impressed or intimidated by naysayers or indiscriminate critics.
Choose now to aspire to greater, choose now to
serve others, and choose now to live your life with courage
of conviction.
What is it that gives your life meaning?
What is it that you value and why?
Why do you prioritize things a certain way?
I have discovered that the human beings who can honestly answer that question for
themselves are the ones that can much easier, more carefully, more
gracefully, more completely navigate the headwinds and the
turbulence that come along.
