203- Courage to Leap & Lead with Tammy Barlette, part 2

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold.

Wow!

Let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

You had the courage to think, I belong here. I earned my spot.

Yeah.

Where did that come from?

I don't know. I mean, I really think when I, when I was growing up, the— there's the whole saying, you know, you can be whatever you want. I really believed it. I didn't know any different. You can be whatever you want to be. Which is funny because women weren't even allowed to fly fighter aircraft till 1993. And I joined Air Force ROTC in 1995. I didn't even know that when I, when I went off to fly my fighter jet, that even though I wasn't the first I was still very early, and I was still going to be fighting against, you know, having women there. And but it was just a job I wanted to do. I wasn't there to prove, oh, hey, I'm gonna go do this job and prove that women can do it. I went to go do the job because I wanted to do the job. And so therefore, I just did the best I could. I didn't look for people treating me differently because I think you're gonna see it. in places it doesn't exist in addition to the places it is happening. And even if you see it, what, what is it gonna do to— it only beats you down. So I just would just, I'd keep my head down and plug away and just do a good job. And they can't argue with a good job, you know, when you do your job well.

Were you the only woman in your class?

No, that was a weird thing. Typically, There was about 30 students, and there would be 1, 0— well, there would typically be 0 to 2. My class had 5. Yeah, 5.

How did you feel that the other women bonded together or did not bond together? Hmm.

Well, it was interesting. There was a There was most of the five of us. One was really quiet. One was definitely like, I think she felt threatened. There was another one who was just super cool, and we're still friends today. You know, I just kind of let it go, and I I connected more with the guys anyways. And when when we split off into the fighter track. And then, you know, like I think 9 of us went down the fighter track and the other, whatever it was, 21 went to, you know, whether it was helicopters or the T-1, which is the corporate type little jet that they fly. We kind of didn't, we didn't spend as much time together anymore. And there, there weren't any women in my class that went the fighter track besides me. So—

I'm not surprised.

I just hung out with the guys and they were fine. I mean, I really enjoyed hanging out with them. It's nice because they say it like it is, and they get over things really fast. And there are women out there like that. In fact, I have gotten together with— there's an unofficial organization called the Chick Fighter Pilot Association. Coolest ladies I know, always supporting each other, always lifting each other up, not catty, you know, trying to figure out how we— you know, they can help each other. It's truly amazing. And I thought initially, I thought it was just female pilots. But I ran into some heavy, like, people who fly the cargo planes. And I was like, yeah, pilot— female pilots are awesome, aren't they? And they were like, what? Like, they're not catty. They're like, oh no, we have issues. I was like, what? Yeah, dang it.

Yeah, yeah. I had that experience in corporate America where—

I bet.

Yeah. My biggest supporters were white men. I bet my biggest challengers were Black men followed by Black women.

Well, you know what I think is interesting about that is I think it's— we're still trying to weed out the whole, um, token mentality. Like, we have our one, and if that woman or whoever was got that one spot, they had to fight to keep it because there was only going to be one. Yeah, but it's not like that anymore. No, I mean, not where I am.

No, no, you're right. In the new generation of women, they are huge supporters of each other. And I thought I would never live to see the day. And I'm so glad to see that because it was hard being— first of all, being Black, two, being a female, and then in corporate America. Can we talk?

Yeah. And then you can go down the path of women trying to lead like men. And that is not always the best suited leadership method for women. So it's interesting.

It's actually interesting that now, after 9/11, after COVID, it's more of men trying to lead like women, the flip. The switch has flipped. So, okay, so this is a fascinating story. Do you feel that your upbringing played a role in your ability to say, I earned this, I'm here, you deal with it?

You know what, it had to have, but I don't really know. How or why? I mean, the only thing, the only distinct thing I remember in high school specifically, I, I'm one of those people that wants to do everything and anything, and I want to be busy. And I, I, I played the piano, I played the cello, I played the French horn. I was in soccer, gymnastics, track, honor society. I worked at Perkins. And in high school, I would work the weekend shift from 5 PM to 3 AM. So I'd work dinner through bar. And then, I mean, And my mom, at one point I got mono and she said, you gotta stop doing something. And I thought, no, I'm not gonna stop. And I guess I just—

You're one badass woman. I love this.

I just love being busy. And I think that it's your mentality. Like a friend of mine said to me, I feel like we just talked yesterday. Maybe it's because I'm becoming as busy as you. And I said, well, I love being busy because you don't get trapped in this These negative thoughts that pull you down.

Absolutely. I totally— I'm with you 100%. Okay, so then you become pilot and you chose fighter pilot.

Well, so I— yes, I went on the fighter track. And then once I graduated pilot training, when I got my wings, I'm now actually a pilot, they give you an assignment. All my friends were going off to fly their fighter jets. And I got assigned to stay on as an instructor pilot in the primary trainer, which is an honor.

Whoa.

But it was not exactly the cool fighter jet that everybody else got. So here I am doing stalls and spins and aerobatics and getting puked on. And, you know, but you know what? It was the best assignment for me. I mean, not only should you— you got to Take whatever you're given and run with it. There's that mentality about it. And that's what I do. But it— I think it really was because that's where I learned that I love teaching.

I love it.

I mean, especially teaching flying. It was so much fun. It was so challenging. Like, I love a good challenge, almost like a mystery. How can you solve it and help this person learn this skill? And, uh, so that's what I did for 3 years.

Did you have any pushback from men saying, what is this dame going to teach me?

You know, again, I didn't look for it.

Ah, yeah.

And I think some of it too is your presence. When, when I got back from training, training to be an instructor, and I suddenly— I'm, you know, 6 months from— I just graduated 6 months ago, and here I am training brand new students that I, you know, was just a year ago in their shoes. But the thing is, again, the Air Force qualified me. They gave me the training. They gave me 2 checkrides. They taught me how to do it. And even though I didn't necessarily, you know, there's imposter syndrome showing up, like, who am I?

Mm-hmm.

I was like, no, no, no. They, they qualified me and I went through the same training that guy over there did. So I might've walked, I mean, I would walk around a little bit more, you know, upright because now I'm an instructor. I can't, I can't have people doubting me. And so even just my posture. It wasn't like rude, like I'm a know-it-all or anything like that. It was just kind of a presence of I know what I'm doing. And I would, you know, we would brief standing up while the students are sitting down, and you just have to—it's how you carry yourself. And I never looked for them to question me because I knew that I would save their life literally multiple times in one flight. So they didn't really—they knew I needed to be there for them because they can't land at first. They don't know how to spin, you know. I had to, you know, teach them that and save them sometimes.

Well, I love that picture of you. That says it all right there with your hand on your hip and your helmet. Tough, tough. Okay. So, Tammy, this show is about courage. Courage to leap and lead. Your work that you're doing now, how does that relate directly to our listeners' desire to learn more about courage and leaping, taking that leap of faith, which you did over and over and over again. Successfully. What gave you—

tell us. So I did— I spent 20 years in the Air Force. And, you know, I did the instructor pilot thing, and then went off and flew flew fighter jets, and then I had cervical spine reconstruction, so I went and flew unmanned aircraft. So—

Wait, wait, wait, back up, back up.

Yes? Cervical spine reconstruction? Yeah, they took out a disc in my neck, put in cadaver bone and a metal plate. So—

Why?

Uh, aircraft injury. I was— I was not the flying pilot. I was sitting in the other seat and he's flying, and he went from zero to like 6 G-forces, and I was looking up at the time and it crunched my neck.

But, uh, you kind of sort of left that part out.

Okay, there's a lot.

There's so much. Okay, well, tell us. Tell us. Yeah, so I have to do part 2.

I did, uh, yeah, I had that happen. And honestly, I mean, here's a good— here's, here's a good story for courage and leadership. I had this injury happen and I really wanted to avoid— I avoided the doctor for a long time. In fact, I went to a chiropractor to get through some training. I got to Korea and they don't— they didn't have chiropractors because I was assigned there for a year. And twice I woke up and I couldn't move my neck, but I went and flew anyways because pilots can be really dumb. We have this idea that if we can't fly planes, we can't do anything, which is not true. But sometimes we feel that way, you know, in our profession, if we can't do it, what it is we love. So I was very scared to go to the flight doc. But I finally went because I knew it was the right thing to do. And I had the surgery and I went, I transitioned into unmanned platforms. So that means I'm sitting in the United States flying an airplane that's in Iraq or Afghanistan. And as a fighter pilot, the ego, that's very difficult on your ego. And I know that sounds terrible, but I'm just being blunt. You know, we would, as fighter pilots, you're making fun of the remotely piloted aircraft or the unmanned, you know, I'm never going to do that. But what happened was, is that I knew for that time in my life that that was a much better option for me. And the experience I had in the A-10 transferred really well into the unmanned platform community because they didn't have a lot of people with my background in the community, ones who knew how to, you know, work in a, in a war zone, in the sky, in a stack with other aircraft, with weapons. That kind of concept. So my expertise— I— what I did was I said, okay, this wasn't something I necessarily chose, but again, I'm going to take this new path and I'm going to own it. I'm going to run with it and I'm going to do the absolutely best I can. Again, it's a mindset thing, and that's what I teach now— mindset. So I shifted my mindset and said, okay, yeah, I might have made fun of this 5 years ago, but I'm here now and I have some skills I can share with everyone else. And that's what I did. I, I took what I learned in A-10, which was all close air support concepts, how to support our troops on the ground when they're, when they're in trouble, and use it in a new platform and teach these other pilots how to do that.

Um, you got in a plane when you couldn't move your head?

Well, it was like I kind of just leaned forward. And yeah, I told you I didn't— it's not very intelligent. I'm not saying it was the right choice.

But the pain is what I'm talking about.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, yeah. Okay. We're getting a full picture of you. Okay, so after your cervical spine, what did you call it again? Reconstruction. Reconstruction? Yeah. And you started flying planes from the ground, which I In my mind, I didn't even— I think that that's like something you see on TV.

It is something you see on TV.

So you're saying that your courage in switching jobs was forced because of medical reasons, but you chose not to do— excuse me, my allergies are killing me— you chose not to do the woe is me pattern. And you go on to something else. All right, tell us more about how courage plays a role currently in your life.

Currently? Oh, well, being an entrepreneur, I think it takes a lot of courage. There's— you really have to, you know, put yourself out there and not be fearful of what other people think. And that's, I think, in my life right now, that is probably the place I place the most courage because despite the fact that intellectually I understand that we need to not put too much weight on what other people think, it's been something that's haunted me my whole life. And instead of going, oh, well, I'm going to blame my past for that, I just acknowledge that it's part of me and I acknowledge that it's a battle I need to continue to fight all the time. And so I keep doing that because people could very well judge me for my new business? And, you know, who are you to go be a speaker? And like, whatever thoughts you want to put in your mind that you think other people are thinking, that they may be or they may be not, they're really irrelevant. And you have to, you have to like wade through that and get through that to find your place and find where you can really make a difference in the world and not worry about that. Because there's people out there who might be naysaying me, but there's a lot of people out there that I can help. And I will find those people, and they will find me, and it will work out.

What are you speaking about? So your new, your new position is as a professional speaker?

Yeah, I have 2 businesses. So once I retired, I started a business called Athena's Voice, which there's 10 female military pilots that are on our website, you can pick from to go speak about different leader— most— a lot of leadership topics, diversity inclusion. So I do keynote speaking, but what I found is my passion is really mental performance training. So the type of training that athletes use to stay in the game and stay focused and, you know, get control over their thoughts— I went through training for that and I shifted the content into aviation, and I teach an online course for pilots to how to use these techniques when they're flying, because we need to really control our thoughts and where our mind goes. And especially when you're flying, you, as soon as you take off, your life is in danger. It's not like you're just, you know, trying to put a little white ball in a hole on the other side of the green, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying that if though, if golfers are using it, then pilots should absolutely be using this training. Because you need to keep your head in the game.

Tell us about mental performance training. What does that mean?

So mental performance training, the type of mental performance training I do is less like cognitive ability, kind of not— some people do intensifying that, like how to think faster, how to— I do more of mindset training. So it's a lot of self starting off with self-awareness. I literally make my students for a week put an alarm in their phone multiple times a day and go, what am I thinking about right now? Because most people, when I talk about our mindset, most people treat their mindset like a cat. And I'll explain. A cat, most people don't train a cat or cats, right? Because they kind of do what they want. They're not controllable, so I'm not going to bother training them anyways. So people look at their mindset like that too, like, oh, my thoughts go where they go and I can't control it. It is what it is. I am who I am. I disagree. Our mind, our mindset, and that type of concept within our brain is more like a dog. If you don't train it, it will be all over the place and difficult to control. But you can train your mind. You can start to take control of your thoughts. A lot of people are like at the whim of their own thoughts. And they don't even realize they're in this negative spiral that's literally attacking their subconscious. And in my opinion, when it gets out of hand, it can lead to mental health issues. So I think that mindset training and mental performance training falls between, you know, needing, you know, professional help with mental, like whatever, mental health, which is awesome. It's like, just like sometimes we need a doctor.

Mm-hmm.

But there's that gap in the middle between when we don't feel perfect, which a lot of times we don't, but we don't quite need a therapist yet, right? So that's where mental performance training comes in. It's a lot of fighting perfectionism, getting over failures, dealing with anxiety, how to stay focused.

And so you said you had 2 businesses. What's the other one?

So the one business is the speaking and the other business is the course I have, the mental performance training.

And how do people find out about it?

Um, you can go to crosscheckmentalperformance.com for that one, or you can go to tammybarlett.com. It's the same, it'll take you the same website. And then the Athena's Voice is the speaking website. That one is athenasvoiceusa.com. Now Athena as in the goddess of wisdom and war, voice as in your voice.

Yeah, I got that. Yeah. So with all this knowledge, When is your book coming out?

I get that question a lot. I, I feel like when it's time, I'll know. I just don't feel I'm there yet. Yeah, I gotta have— I gotta have the passion and the mission to go, I know what I'm gonna write about, because I don't know yet. I don't I still kind of— I struggle. This is the whole, you know, what do other people think concept, right? I still struggle thinking, me? What am I gonna write a book about? It's just, you know.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to talk offline. Same thing. And notice my book is on the shelf.

Yes. That's awesome.

Well, look, it's been a pleasure talking to you. An absolute pleasure. There's just so many pieces of knowledge that you shared. And Most of all, it's— I feel for me, one of the most important things I heard you say is knowing that you have earned the right to be where you are and act further on it. And that is the underpinning for where courage can take you, is knowing that you have the right to be where you are.

Absolutely.

You have the right to be successful.

Yes, everyone does.

And I, I just thank you so much for sharing that, those pearls of wisdom. And I love how you fought for what you wanted. And I love the story you told us about your mom.

Oh, thank you.

How touching is that? And, and to me, that's what gave you the power to say, I'm gonna be there, I'm gonna Do what I want and let's go.

Yeah, she did a lot of hard things and I didn't know that until I got older.

Yeah. It's funny how when we look back and we say, wow, how did I miss that? Well, Tammy, thank you so much. I appreciate you and I love the work that you're doing.

Thank you. I, I really enjoyed this conversation. It was really fun. I— some stories I've never shared before, so there you go.

Oh, I have that wicked part of me. People call me a witch. Well, audience, I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have. And I hope you reach out to Tammy on LinkedIn, through her website, or through both of her websites, and find out more about the work that she's doing that I feel is really important, very tangent to courage. We'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you, Tammy.

Thank you.