From High-Stakes Flying to High-Impact Leadership | Merryl Tengesdal | 704

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is, uh, retired Colonel Merrill Tengesdal. He was born in 1971 in the Bronx, or the, or the B Bronx, as we say, as a kid from Queens like me might say. She's a trailblazer, blazer in the field of aviation and a symbol of perseverance and excellence. She's notably recognized as the first and only African American woman to pilot the U-2 Dragon Lady, a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft in the US Air Force. She started as a Navy commissioned officer, excelled as a naval aviator, and we'll let her tell the rest of her story so I don't botch this bio any further. So welcome aboard, Meryl.

Thank you so much for having me here.

I will concede as a kid from Queens that I should be a Mets fan, but I am still a diehard Yankees fan, so.

Then we are friends. I'm a Yankee fan, so there's no problem with that. You know, I still— what, the last Subway Series was in 2009? So I wish there was another one.

Yeah, one day, maybe in our lifetimes at this rate. Maybe.

Maybe the Yankees are struggling, man.

Yep. So tell me, where did this, how did all this happen? Because there's a lot of firsts next to your name and there's a lot of, when you and I were talking a week or two ago, like, really, that seems different. Like you're, you're, it hasn't been the typical path or journey. So how did all this stuff happen and how did you wind up as a speaker, thought leader, and all that other sort of fun stuff?

Yeah, it happened when I was 7. I, watched too much science fiction. I watched too much Star Trek. And I was very drawn to the concept of to boldly go where no one has gone before. And so when I saw that and heard that and saw the missions that the crew of the Enterprise did, I said, I want to explore space. And so at 7, I decided I'm going to go do it. And it's funny, as I'm now— since you just called me out being born in 1971, As I look back on my life, um, I realize that a lot of the things that I do, I look at it and I go, oh, this looks cool, let me go do it. And then I figure out the tools that are required to get there.

And I say, oh, that sounds like reverse engineering. 'Cause I would imagine as a 7-year-old from the Bronx, you can't take the 6 train to go into space, right? Like, right. So you got, there's a lot of, I gotta figure that out. And I would also imagine not a lot of your neighbors were astronauts.

Correct. So, you know, that one looked like me at the time, but the cool thing is, is that Star Trek, even though it was science fiction, it still had a method at which—

Right.

And, and I, and I picked up on that. So I knew they all went to Starfleet Academy because I read so much. I was so, lack of a better term, hyperfixated on Star Trek. So every— Right. Star Trek I consumed. So they all went to Starfleet Academy. They were all different backgrounds, different races. Some were, you know, extraterrestrial. We had Spock from the land of Vulcan.

Yeah. Right.

You know, they all did certain things, but their childhood, they had this dream. So for me at 7, I realized that, okay, um, they all do math and science, so I gotta be good in math and science. So I'll focus on that more than probably everything else. Um, I knew they went to Starfleet Academy. I knew I had to go to college. And then since I wanted to be like Chekov or Sulu, the navigator or the helmsman, I said, man, I gotta fly planes because you gotta fly planes to fly spaceships. So that makes sense. And that's what I started to do. And I said, okay, let's do this. And that's, that was my starting point.

Very cool. And then let's go to the other side and we'll come back to this. So now It's years later, you're retired from your military career and you decide, now what? Speaking, book, like how did this whole next chapter happen?

So, you know, once I get to the, you know, I'm in the Navy first, right? So I fly for the Navy. I'm an instructor. I'm gonna resign my commission in the Navy 'cause I wanted to go back to school 'cause I wanted to still be an astronaut. As I'm flying, my boss at the time who was in Air Force Lieutenant Colonel was like, come to the Air Force and fly. And I see the U-2 program. My boyfriend, who's now my husband at the time, was talking about the U-2, and I look at the community and I, and I love it. Fast forward, I switch over to, to the Air Force, get picked up for the U-2 program, and I'm still climbing the ranks. I was a Lieutenant Commander Select when I entered into the Air Force. So it's a line number, so they switched it from Lieutenant Commanded to a major select.

And stay there a minute though, because so I've worked with lots of folks from various branches of the military over my career, right? And never have I heard one switch from one branch to the other. Maybe I just wasn't asking the right questions. You say that as if like, yeah, that kind of happens. That's really unusual.

It is unusual. Um, in the YouTube community, we have a lot of interservice transfers, so The U-2 program, you have to be a previous pilot and instructor in another aircraft. So we have Marine Corps pilots that have flown F-18s. We have had an Army person, a Coast Guard person. So there's been a couple. I just happened to be one of them. At one point when I got picked up for the program, there were quite a few Navy and Marine Corps people that they closed the program to us because we started taking over.

Okay.

And so, uh, you know, I still was doing well in leadership and given more leadership opportunities, and I found that I'm actually, I do well in leadership. People listen to me, what I say resonates with them. I could connect with people on levels that maybe other leaders can't. And so as I'm going up the ranks and I'm retiring, I was like, man, I would love to do this, but more focus on mentoring youth because throughout my career I had mentors. I had people who mentored me.

Yep.

From, you know, the, the little girl in the Bronx at 9 years old to now working in the Pentagon, who I had a 3-star who was one of my sponsors, mentors there. And so I started doing that. I started just speaking, speaking to groups, and I did very well at it. I was able to share stories. As if we're sitting in a heritage room having a beer and people enjoy those things. So I decided I wanted to do it through personal training. I wanted to, I love personal training. It means a lot to me. Martial arts, boxing, that's stuff that grounds me, especially during times of stress or if I'm thinking or something's heavy. So I felt I can reach people better that way and Nothing is as great as a teenager who is so tired from punching a bag that they have to listen to what I have to say. So—

Now wait, is that parenting advice or mentoring advice?

That's both. That is both. My daughter right now is pushing boundaries. And yesterday she understood how much she could be PT'd. So she was very quiet last night. And so she was very receptive. But you know, just started morphing from personal training to talking, to talking to women's groups, to talking to bigger groups, to being on the reality show. Uh, because I did do social media to, you know, get my training. I worked at a local gym and once I got—

Yeah, let, let me, let me throw something at you that, that to me seems, 'cause I'm always looking for the thread, right? So I would imagine, 'cause I know other pilots as well, One of the things pilots are really good at is receiving and dealing with real-time feedback, right? Think about the, the controls and the data, and you can go in with the plan, and if you're stubborn and stick to the plan, you could be stubborn and dead, right? So whatever that feedback is, you're gonna have to adjust literally in real time and anticipate and take that data, process it, et cetera. It sounds like that's what you've been doing in other areas as well. Yeah. If you set out to be a, a, a boxing instructor or this or that, but like try something, get the feedback, and then process it and react to that. Is that a fair—

so some of it you have to come in with a little bit of a game plan, a framework, a base. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I knew, I mean, I had been doing martial arts since I was 19, so a lot of it I've done Muay Thai, I've done boxing. So when I knew I was going to be a trainer, I found a gym that didn't have that niche because I knew I had to be a salesperson.

Sure.

It's So I knew I, if I offered that and they were receptive, I can bring clientele that were different than what people were looking for. And it actually worked really well. Unfortunately, the management there, they don't have a lot of creativity. They like, they like to swim in mediocrity. Um, so, you know, I moved on for that, but I still have clients to this day, 8 years later. That come to my house that I train with. And I'm talking about clients that are over the age of 65 or younger clients that still come see me. And I still get, you know, the teenagers that come in. So.

Very cool. And then how did you discover that you've got the ability and the passion and you enjoy keynote speaking? Because that's what you're doing a lot of these days as well.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think when I, before I retired, I did one of my first kind of bigger engagements at University of Idaho in Boise. And I was asked out there while I was still in the military to talk to a women's forum. It was about 700 people. It was, and it was the first time I was doing this. And I just told my story. I, I spoke to people as if we were sitting on the couch and I'm, I'm a little sarcastic. Not sarcastic, I'm a little funny in places. I make people laugh, but I also make people think. And it just, the response was so, the response from the people there, like some women would come up to me almost in tears, like from the story that I had given. And I realized that I can reach people on certain levels, or I can disarm people with the way I say things.

And so, but wait, was that, but, but it sounds like there was an authenticity to that. It wasn't that you created, 'cause I, I've worked with hundreds of keynoters. Some of them almost create a persona that's only a real thing on the stage for 45 minutes. Then when they come off the stage, they're not that thing anymore. But it sounded like to you as an extension of your, the quirks of your personality, your style, whatever, and the authenticity as opposed to, in order to be a speaker, I have to act like this and be this and do that.

Yeah, I can't, yeah, I can't act a certain way. I'm just, this is who I am. There's right sides of me. There's bad sides of me. Sure. There's things, there's sides of me that need improvement. When I interact with you, you're gonna get the side that's most appropriate. So, so, you know, it's not, and, and I don't mean to say that in a negative way. It's just, we're gonna connect on a level and I'm gonna find these connection points with you. From my journey to your journey to help you on your journey, because I'm all about let's find some common ground. Let's connect. Let's uplift each other. Let's motivate each other. So, okay.

So once, once you figure out that you sort of enjoy this experience, 'cause to some people that experience of getting on a stage in front of 700 people would be terrifying, right? They would rather do anything but, but you get up there and you're like, that was kind of fun. That was kind of cool. Right? So then you have to, sort of figure out two things. All right, I wanna do more of that. And wait a minute, I can make some money doing that? Like, 'cause not everybody gets both sides of that coin. How did, how did you decode that?

So to decode that, I just started, I just said, ah, okay. You go online, you, uh, you type up what speakers, what they make, what they do, and you start realizing there's a huge world. There's, There's people who help train speakers, there's people who help. And again, I go back to the 7-year-old kid that's like, this would be cool. What tools do I need?

Okay.

And you, and you just start absorbing that. The motivation for me was the look on people's faces. The motivation for me for being a good leader is the fact that I can help people be better versions of themselves. And that for me, Even though getting on stage sometimes could be daunting and exhausting and you give so much, the fact that I can make someone a better version, like that makes my day. Like that's, that is what— But talk about that exhaustion, because it's so funny.

So if I said to you, you're going to train 5 people how to box today and get punched in the face a few times, you're like, yeah, it's Tuesday, whatever. But that you would say getting on stage for 30, 40 minutes is something that's exhausting. Unpack that a little, 'cause there's, there's something like, that's interesting.

So it's to give, to tell a good story. To me, you give a part of yourself. Yeah. You give a part of yourself to the audience. Right? So you are putting yourself back into that situation and you're building the, you're like a dungeon master. You're setting the stage, you're building the stage, everything that's happening. And that takes a lot of energy. And not a lot of people can do that. So there are times that it could be exhausting. There are times when, you know, you're just on and you're just feeding everything and, and making all the context. You're painting this picture for someone.

Sure.

And that, that'll wear you out. And it's, and it's in a good way cuz it makes you very reflective. And sometimes in the moment when you're speaking and depending on what's happening during your life at that moment, you make certain connections and I go, Oh yeah, that's why I'm doing that right now. I forgot about this story. You know, you'll, you'll speak about, so again, there's a game plan there.

If I said to you tomorrow, you're gonna go to speak to this type of group, newly minted MBAs or new managers in a software company, you're gonna come up with a game plan. You're gonna figure out the timing, the cadence. Here's the 4 or 5 stories I'm gonna tell. But then in the moment you might realize, you know what, there's that other story I wasn't even thinking about, but I can tell by the way they're leaning in or leaning out. I'm gonna throw an audible here, right? And I'm gonna pop that story in.

So it's like, yes. So it's like flying an aircraft, right? You know what the weather is. You, you do all your preflight planning before.

Sure.

You know what's going on, but maybe that day the, the cold front is not moving as fast, or maybe there's a little bit more turbulence. You get a feel of the aircraft, you fly, you know, you're flying the numbers, but you're overshooting the runway. So, you know, you have to bank a little bit more in the final turn. To line up with the runway. Those are little nuances. Those is, those are the things that you do in that pilot-ish at those moments, real time to, to have that perfect landing, to finesse that landing. Cause every approach is not the same. And so that's how I look at speaking. You know, I do have, I do have the overall picture of what the mission is going to look like, but it's the fine tuning parts, the trimming of the air.

That's, and if I were to say to you, 'cause one of the things that I believe that good speakers do is not change an organization, not change anyone's behavior or whatever, but they plant some seeds and some ideas that someone, some subset of the audience might consider later in that day or that week or that month, right? Like, ah, there's a way of looking at the world that might be slightly different for me. It's not gonna be this radical black and white sort of thing, but like, what, what are the, you know, if I were to find 100 people that had seen you speak and asked them a survey, uh, what are the 3 things you think they, that would bubble up to the top as an outcome of seeing you speak live?

I think one of the things is flexibility and adaptability. Like, things will never, there's a, a lot of people have, especially nowadays, this really firm expectation about what they want the outcome to be. It's, it's sometimes it's not like that. If you have kids, there's so many things I want them to do, but they are, they're a little insane. Like, like we were when we were kids. They, they're just like random molecules that just bounce off of anything. So you have to be flexible and you can't, you can't be upset when it doesn't go your way.

So, and that's relatable to any industry. That could be, you could be talking to a group of kindergarten teachers or CEOs. Right? Yeah. So what that means to each of those might be different, but flexibility and adaptability. What are the other concepts that you think people would, would be thinking about as a result of seeing you speak?

The other thing is, is that failure, if you have high expectations, failure's one of those things that's going to happen to you. And it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how you respond in that moment and what you do afterwards will define the type of person you are and how successful you're gonna be. So, you know, I always wanted to be an astronaut, but I did not. I put on a pressure suit, spacesuit, but I didn't make it as an astronaut. That doesn't say that I was a failure. It just says, look, I didn't make it, but man, I tried hard. There's still time in my life that it can happen, that I will go into space. But in the meantime, and this is the last part, enjoy the journey, what you're doing. Because I, I will tell you, I'm sitting here now and we're speaking. I didn't think 40 years ago, 50 years ago that I was going to be in this position. There are just some things that have just happened that have been amazing. A book, have my son, we adopted my daughter, like, like it's like mind blowing. And if I had said to myself when in flight school, oh, I didn't get, or And before I even got into the military, oh, the Navy didn't want to speak to me. And then that, and I didn't keep pushing.

Right.

I would not be here. I wouldn't enjoy the view. And the view's spectacular wherever you're at. Like, I show people the view of the U-2 above 70,000 feet. And it's amazing.

Right.

So.

Right. If I, if I, I want to go back to the failure piece for half a second, because if I were to go on Amazon or the bookstore, whatever. And so let's look at some of the top business books out there, right? They're all, you know, Good to Great or whatever. They're all about success, success, success. And yeah, nobody wants to go into business to lose, but the reality is some of the most amazing business people I know, the lessons that they've learned have come more from the failures, the adversity, the, the, the unexpected than the wins. 'Cause sometimes those grand slam home run wins when you push on them a little, the, it's a higher percentage of luck and skill than it is their ability, their intellect, their, their strategic thing, whatever it is. So I think it's an interesting piece as a business person to say, you know, you do need to study failure and if you're not failing, something's wrong.

Right? Absolutely. I, I laugh because I just came out with a graphic novella, so, yep. I've been working on that for years and I, I've tried to get into contracts with different illustrators, right? Thought it was gonna happen, failed. It didn't, it didn't work out for one reason or another. And I didn't stop. I was like, eventually the timing is going to work. I, I'd say to myself, okay, the timing's not right now. I'm gonna still work on it. I'm gonna still push. In every meeting that I met with people, I would listen to their stories. Is there a connection? Is there something? Right. And, and eventually it happened and it, and eventually It was local and eventually I met my illustrator who we're now friends and we're working on book 2. You know, it just, it, but it took 2 years. Right. It was like, you gotta be persistent and consistent and just not give up on that. So failure, failure is, failure's temporary. It could be permanent if you let it and bog you down and you get depressed, but it can also be. It can also be just something very temporary and it could spring you to the next thought.

Well, and I think in the moment it's overwhelming, but in the rearview mirror, it's like, oh, that was kind of a hiccup in the game, in the journey of life. But at that moment when you didn't get into the school you wanted or that relationship, whatever the thing was, your whole life was a wreck for a day, a week, a month, or whatever. Then you look back and go, oh yeah, that, that, you know, that was, that was like a bad burrito. That was no big deal. Right? Like, yeah.

It's like driving in New York, right? You hit a pothole, you know, you're not gonna let it destroy the whole undercarriage, right? So, so it depends on the pothole. Depends on the pothole.

Anyway, this has been awesome. I appreciate your transparency and sharing your story and, uh, good stuff. Thank you so much, Merrill.

Oh, thank you for having me. It's awesome. It's great meeting you.

Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.