Fear or Faith

In “The process” (post #6), I shared the words I wrote to my team:

“We need calm, present, and confident aviators making critical, onscene decisions.”

Easier said than done. 

I was fully committed to athletics in my 20s (see the “going pro” section of this website). I was a practitioner and student of football and I took five years after college to get a “Ph.D.” in individual and team performance. During my “studies,” I was most interested in how an individual’s and team’s preparation and mindset translate to game day performance. That fascination continued to be relevant in my chosen career as a helicopter rescue pilot.

I recognized that attributes that lead to good game day performance are similar to the qualities that lead to well prosecuted, challenging rescues or the successful management of an aircraft malfunction.

In my study of athletes, I found two categories of players on game day (these are very broad generalizations – we could go layers and layers deep on this): those whose performance is negatively impacted by “fear” and those whose “faith” allowed them to overcome their “fear.”

“Fear” and “faith” are in quotes because they mean different things to different people. To clarify, “fear” in this context means anxiousness, nervousness, dread, trepidation, or doubt that impairs an individual’s ability to function at a high level physically or mentally. “Faith” in this context means a firm belief in the integrity, ability, effectiveness, or genuineness of someone or something that leads to trust and confidence in our actions.

Fear impairs performance when we are concerned with:

• Making the wrong decision
• Feel underprepared or not “good enough”
• Worried about what others think (specifically our peers, supervisors, and command – those that control our advancement/promotion, and agency within the organization).

One of my goals for this “operating from a position of integrity” discussion was to map a rough path that sets our aviators up for success by rooting out fear and creating faith.

Decision making – Is what we are about to do in alignment with policy? If it is outside of policy, is it warranted? Does it align with our “why”? Have we rooted out the “not whys”? If so, we are operating from a position of integrity.

Preparation – Attacking the foundational components of OPI and doing the work in pursuit of unattainable, but worthy, goal of being a “complete” operator is all you can ask of yourself. When you are launched on a challenging case, the powers present in the universe have put you and your crew in this time and place to do good for others. For reasons unbeknownst to us, you and your crew are the chosen ones, the best crew we’ve got right then and now. All you can do is to operate from a position of integrity, doing the best you can with what you’ve got.

What others think – Know that if you are operating from a position of integrity, your leadership WILL support you. More importantly, as you actualize as an operator, you know that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. It only matters what you think about you. Only you know if you are truly operating from a position of integrity and chasing the best you that you can be.

Are you operating from a position of “fear” or a position of “faith”? What action can you take to eliminate the fear and deepen the faith? Let’s go – Spiral up.