Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

Hello. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good day, wherever you are in the world and welcome to the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills. My name is David Regan, um a cardiac surgeon in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. The past director, the Faculty of Surgical Trainers for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and a visiting professor at Imperial College, London. If this is your first time for the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills? Welcome. And have we got to treat for you tonight? And if you one of the 3297 followers on Facebook and 587 on Instagram, thank you very much indeed for following the blackmail academy. Not only are we teaching surgical skills, but in the true martial arts way, we're talking bushido and mindset and mental preparation. I'm delighted to be joined this evening by a friend and colleague, Phil Beaman. We met some years ago and he is also a guest speaker on the Masters and Surgical Education Program with Imperial College on which I'm a tutor. Phil is a former R A F pilot with extensive combat experience. I think he's done 32 sorties. He later became an instructor and performance coach for hundreds of the world's finest pilots, including Red Arrows. He now works across sectors to embed human performance skills and habits to improve productivity and safety. Whilst making everyone's day more straightforward and pleasant. Wouldn't we like that in theater? When I spoke to him at the weekend, here's on an oil rig in the North Sea. Now, Phil started his career as a biochemist at Brace Nose College Oxford before joining the R A F in qualifying as a tornado pilot. And after seeing several services in operational theaters, he moved into a training role flying a hawk at the RFs Fighter Pilot Academy. This is the top gun equivalent in the UK. Here, Phil helped new pilots develop the skills necessary to survive and succeed in hostile environments. And as he puts it, this requires a change of mindset from flying your airplane with passengers in the back as we have had previously on the black about Academy with Trevor Nile to operating a weapons platform as part of a complex network in a volatile environment where people are trying to shoot you down. He specializes in designing and implementing change programs that embed effective risk management in complex, regulated in dynamic industries across all sectors. In the mid two thousands. He introduced a performance coaching technique derived from premier football, moving from teacher centric to learning centric mindset. Phil is interested in people and performance and identifying how simple, often in perceivable changes in context in relationships can produce measurable benefits to individuals and organizations. I know Phil recently joined our friend Peter Brennan in theater to watch him operating. Welcome, Phil and thank you very much indeed for joining the Blackbird Academy to start you off gently in our questioning this evening. And please, if you have any questions fill will take all questions, put them in the chat and we'll build them into our conversation. You were studying biochemistry and they went off to become an R A F fighter pilot. How did that happen? Fill? I first of all like to say good evening to everybody. Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction. Good evening to everybody. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. Um Well, it's an interesting, interesting question. It kind of started when I was in my teens and my dad said join the R F. You get Silver Service, which is kind of a dinner service which almost started off as a joke. Um But I choose to do the biochemistry route and then part way through university. Um There was the Middle East campaigns and I remember watching the listening to the voices of the pilots that were coming out some of the missions and it was put to music. I remember hearing the nerves in the voice and I remember thinking how, how moving it is and what incredible challenge it must be. So I decided to put an application and before I knew it, I had been accepted to, to join the R A F. So that's a little brief history. This was early 19 nineties and it was obviously a complete change. But I think it's probably like many of the surgeons and the, and the doctors and, and the other professionals listening that the uh that we like a challenge and we like to constantly strive to do something that probably is beyond what most people's reach would be. And I imagine surgery would be exactly the same. I would probably be a similar pathway. So you had never had any flying experience whatsoever, but you went from nothing to flying tornadoes. So how were you taught? What was working experience never having flown before? Yeah. Well, it's an interesting one. It's all part of a, a training program. Um And in the 19 nineties, which is going back about was going back 30 years now. It was, it was the concept of teaching was relatively, it's infancy. You, somebody showed you what they did and then you had to do as good a job as you could as replicating it. And there was a lot of instruction as well. Um in terms of the course prior to flying jets, you do end up doing a turboprop, which is effectively a small training aircraft with a turbo with a jet, small jet driving a propeller and you do a year flying that and then you move on to the hall care craft. When you're on the whole care craft, you do that for about a year. The initial phase probably about the first two months is just learning how to fly it, how to fly on instruments, which for those people that go on holidays and see airlines, that's like the traditional and then you move on to more advanced things. So you move onto formation flying, you move on to some aerobatics and then you'll move on to tactical formation, which is the start of how you operate the aircraft because really it's not about flying, it's about operating weapons platform um in the theater of operations. And from there, you then learn things such as you to go down the range, you learn air to ground weaponry, you do air to air weaponry, you learn how to fight adversaries in a visual combat where maybe you're about two or three miles when you reach positioning and then you'll learn how to do it from, from beyond visual range. Which if you kind of imagine if you're managing it, that would be effectively if it was in the UK, you'd have a, you'd sit in a sort of a racetrack orbit maybe over the North Sea and you just wait to be marshaled off by fighter controllers. And if any hostile aircraft were to approach our border's, then we'd be called upon to interception. That was the kind of training skills and then onto the frontline aircraft and short conversion on to the front line that seems going from zero to hero in a very short period of time. What was it like to transition between a turboprop airplane to a jet? What was the transition like? Um It's very basic skills to advance surgical skills. How do you, how do you do that? It is, I mean, the propellers got is its own challenges. Not least the fact that you've got a rotating thing on the front, which means you've got to avoid it. You also get a lot of this thing called talk. Where was when you increase or decrease the throttle? Um The aircraft can move to one side because if you imagine there's quite a lot of force on the propeller moving it. Uh the jets, the jets much quicker, much smoother and jet engines. They uh they are, they are, I would consider it a much nicer way way to travel. The designed to last lot, the designed to run for long periods of time. It's a kind of more melodic. Things are a lot quicker, but it's a bit like when you go from your bicycle to your car and then you take your to go from your car to the motorway. Initially, when you do it, things seem to go fast. But in actual fact, you just change, change your perspective. When you're riding your bicycle, you may be looking 5 m ahead when you get in your car, you may be looking 100 m ahead when you're on the motorway. You're probably thinking about when the next services is. So, and it's just a case of uh you know, just taking on the concept of that. Yeah, but you're not just going on a motorway, you're pulling some serious GS. So, yeah. What's the maximum number of Giza have you pulled in your tornado? Nine G? You wouldn't want to do? No, I mean the tornado, sorry, probably about 67 G in the tornado in the hall can training maybe about eight, maybe about eight G. Although we can go slightly higher than that. The one thing you've always aware of is that when you fly in the low performance aircraft may be under one G, then all you've got to worry about is your oxygen and your fatigue. But when you suddenly pulling g suddenly your own, your own awareness of your own body becomes more critical because you've only probably a few seconds away from, from, from succumbing to it. There was a very sad story for, for those that maybe follow it. The born meth aircrash, which is the red arrows pilot was one of my friends, John Egging and his wife, his wife at the time, set up the John Eggan Trust. Um It was the end of a very long day. He'd been sort of the aircraft, maybe, possibly a little bit dehydrated. I don't know, came in for the break, which is where the per formation of nine comes in over the runway. Everybody rolls, pulls hard and then you do a big orbit and land. And very sadly for him, it just kind of what, what we call blacked out, which is you basically succumb to the G, but you've always aware of your own capabilities, you know, an environment and you constantly monitoring your own vital signs. Um When you pull G, the impact is that the, if you've got to work hard against it, you've got a G suit, you probably go typical up to about four G. But when you put the G suit on, you can maybe go, it adds an extra G G through a G and a half. So maybe about five G, but you have to work for it as a technique. And if you work the technique, you can go to seven or eight and every now and then maybe you just not having a good day, you kind of get this thing, which is like the tunnel vision and some of the world starts to disappear. Everything starts to go into grain. That's the time to be aware and think actually I need to do something about this. So, but if it's all becoming tunnel like this and you're fatigued and you're dehydrated, how do you get out of that? Because you're still flying the plane, you're still operating, you're fatigued. Uh You're dehydrated if this comes back to looking after yourself. But how do you get out of that? Well, the first thing you've got to do is you've got to relax the g to regain consciousness. Unfortunately, if you do lose consciousness, it's probably going to be the order of anywhere to a minute, to a minute and a half before you'll get full recovery. Um, typically if you look at, if you look at any of the centrifuge videos and you see there's probably lots on the internet, you see people sort of slumped down and then they kind of come to what you don't realize the bit where you come to your absolute, you know, you're not making any sense, you're not processing the world. So you make to all intents and purposes be awake, but actually not. So the number one priority is you're always looking after yourself and you always monitoring that. So in that situation, it will be to relax some of the G to try and recover. It may be to try and identify what's gone wrong. It may just be a system failure. Maybe the anti G you may have started what we call it, anti straining. You may have started that late. But ultimately, if you're not thinking, then you're not going to survive very long in the environment. Let's give you a typical example. If you're at low level and you were to pull the G from the typical heights that training sorties flyer. If you just relax the control column, you probably impact the ground maybe about 56 seconds, something like that. It's not a typical. So obviously the minute to a minute half is pretty critical and depending on where you are and what altitude you are, um, could obviously be quite, quite important. No. Okay. This is mind blowing. So, you've been through your training, you're in a Hawker training seat with a training pilot. When are you allowed to go solo? Because you're behind a 30 million lb machine. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a very good question. The uh as an instructor, I would effectively underwrite somebody's competence and capability. Um And the most important thing I'd want is for somebody to be able to make sensible decisions and, and sensible decisions. Maybe actually this isn't going well. So I need to do something else. Maybe you're a, maybe you're approaching landing and you decide I'm gonna minute, this doesn't feel right or something wrong here. I would expect anybody that are clear to go solo to make the decision and actually just do something about the situation as opposed to press a bad situation. And typically you'll go solo after maybe about, sorry, sorry, Phil. How do you assess that because you've been instructing pilots when you know somebody's competent to go solo to make decisions. It's a very good question. The, when people are flying you want them in, uh, you want this obviously we're talking about instructing now, David. Yep. The when people are flying. Um Did you say that when you put the helmet on, you lose 90% of your brain? So everything that we do is simple and we look for really, really simple, super things. If, if anybody comes up with a plan that has any level of complexity is like stop, stop, stop, that isn't going to work that we love the plan nice on the ground, sat here, ain't going to work. Um So the first thing you got to understand is that when people put the helmet on, they lose 90% of the brain straight up the back. Uh You know what it's like when somebody's looking over your shoulder is very difficult. So, so you try and do as little as you can do in the actual event itself. So for me, it's the before and after bit. So for me, the sort of brief is all important. So how do you know? So I'm during the brief, I'm tapping into somebody's situation awareness in a non threatening way because obviously any question you asked could be a spear to the heart and then, then the emotions dig in and then it dictates what your answers are going to be in its snowballs. So really, it's all about situation awareness and what happens during the mission during the sort of run ups of the solo. Just the examples of how the situation or so I'm constantly assessing some of this situation awareness and if they were to lose it, how are they going to regain it? And you're doing that before they fly before they left the ground? Okay. So the, the brief, I think we call it a brief, but it's interesting that the brief is the last thing that it should be. I know that an industry will work with a similar concept. They call it toolbox talks. And the talk is the last thing it should be, it should be, it should be where you kind of just ask somebody about, you know, what, what their views are and you know, all the things, all the behaviors, all the mistakes that people happening there, the observable signs, what you want are all the internal ones. How people feel, how, how anxious are they? Do they not understand something? So building trust in the brief is critical because otherwise people won't let you into the heart and they won't tell you all the things that just give you tech cancers. So really during the mission itself, it's very little. Um Sometimes I've sent people solo that have done things that aren't ideal if I can, if we can work to identify what it was, what part of their mental pro what part of their thought processes failed. Um I always say that whatever, whatever you think you're gonna give somebody 99% of their world is already been constructive. So I can take somebody and I can do somewhere to ground weaponry. And when I start on the brief of the mission, I know that whatever think I'm going to get them 99% already there. What it's a case of me doing is to understand the model that they have, what their awareness is a bit like we're doing now in a discussion kind of thing where you just follow the threads more is a constructive help than a, than a criticism or sort of, you know, formal you should know this before. Does that make sense? David? It certainly does. And I'm drawing parallels with a trainee operating with a consultant present that a lot of this should happen before you even go into the operating theater as sorting out your fears, worries and your thinking and worst case scenario planning. Absolutely essential. I I'll be honest, I I, you know, I've had very short mission briefs, but you know, the short mission brief was because somebody, you know, can we all I know it sounds like really, you know, it can be very, very short super once. But, you know, for me, the concept of actually getting headboard without any brief would just be something that I wouldn't feel comfortable with because you wouldn't, you wouldn't know what you would know what lies ahead and you know, things can go wrong at the drop of the hat and you need to capture those things when they go wrong, you know, with, with lightning speed. Uh And I need to know what awareness somebody has or you know, what, what their, what their, what their mental model of the world's doing. So they can identify where we need to go and also identify where we're not going, where we need to know where things are starting to depart from where we want to be. Uh What questions would you ask? What sort of questions would you ask beforehand, then to take this out? Because I wouldn't know how to tease this out. No, it's really good. And it, and it's really, it's really interesting in being and actually what you're doing now is actually really, really good. So uh so pretty much if you, if you copy what you're doing now, then that's probably a pretty good blueprint. Um But you got the first thing you do is you uh if you want to establish trust. So I don't, they call it icebreaker, but you just say something to, you know, prove that your friendly forces, you're not, you're not out there to, you know, you're not out there to criticize them. Uh And then everything has an objective. Uh And that's one thing that I've kind of discovered in, in lots of other environments. Sometimes the objectives aren't very clear. So we both got to be absolutely crystal clear what, what our objective is, you know, the sort of smart, specific measurable. Uh And then we just kind of discuss, uh, and we'd start to discuss what we're going to be, you know, what's happening and it would all be a discussion. I think the trick to the discussion is making it so it's not threat because any question you potentially throw at somebody could be regarded as a threat. So you've kind of got to just open it up. So, you know how we're going to do this, what you're going to do there, are you going to see this? What are you going to do if you see that? And there may be some corrective points or you may be able to say, you know, so, you know, you may be able to just concur or agree with what they're doing, which is the ideal way. But if it's not, but the big thing that you're looking at this point and this is the bit that's really important is the fact that what you're trying to do is you're trying to learn what's going on in somebody's mind. You're trying to learn what the, what, what's, what their, what their vision of the world is because one of the assumptions that we make is that what I'm thinking? If we both read the same book, what I'm thinking is what you're thinking when that's not the case, that's far from the case, you know, it's our emotions, you know, past history, you know, I've got a science background. So if I read a book about flying, I'll look at it from a different perspective. Um, and what trying to do is I'm trying to pick up the words that somebody uses that, that they use to describe situations and I maybe want to use those is that there's a prime in the air or if they miss out a certain step, for example, they were doing to an air to ground weaponry event and during the, the sort we call the tipping if they were to miss something out, a check on it, um then, then I'd probably look for that in the air because I know they'll probably gone through it, but for whatever has happened, whatever practicing, they may miss it out in the air. So instead of me sitting in the aircraft and looking for just about everything, I can kind of focus, I know what that person is thinking. I know how the visual the will. I'm kind of almost, you know, I'm living the world as their live in the world but, but from, but from my own seat and this things start to depart. I know what keywords that, that probably I can use to maybe recover the situation or just get them to, to recover it. This implies fill that you must have built a relationship up over time. And how does that sit within the coaching and mentoring framework as a trainer to a trainee pilot in a jet? Yeah, I mean, it's, it does, I mean, when, when you're in a jet. So say, for example, I mean, a lot of the jets, single seat now, um, if I'm in a jet, if I say nothing to a student and that may put them off, if I say something to a student that may also put them off if they're really busy and what going on. And I say really well done, that's a nice, good job that may put them off. So you've almost kind of got, you got to put them, you got to put them ease it kind of all to get in there to wait to where you need to be, you need to build trust. Uh, and it's, uh, and if it's very easy to destroy trust and the best way is to just not to destroy it for me. Uh I see, I see trust sometimes being, being compromised. Um, kindness or benevolence is for me, it's the number one thing that is so important when you're, you know, clear communication. Uh, and also being predictable, you know, so that they're not wondering, I wonder what fills going to be looking at now, what he's doing now? Why is he being quiet? Why he's not saying quiet? So, you know, it's, you know, there's some more things. So, so you're exactly right, David got to build just, um, honestly, it's dead easy because all it is is about being a nice human being and looking after people. Uh And if you take, if you take that approach just works. It's just really easy many years ago. Why did you come and train some surgeons fill? Uh so interesting. So with that trust and confidence, you're able to fly solo. But, but now in contrast to our previous uh weapons platform, how do you deal with that as well? Um Well, it trying to train for that. How do you train for? Uh Well, we have this, we have this phrase which is train hard, fight easy. Um The, it's, you always, you always have the same standards, whatever you're trying to do and you always have high levels of professionalism, self awareness, you always try and you always trying to do to, to do the very best that you can do. And that one of the most important ways of doing that and two is kind of, you know, building up relationships and, you know, it's interesting people see a fighter pilot and this is a single person. So, you know, it's quite a lonely pastime but you know, my crm I kamu communicate with people. I communicate people with whether I would call my wings if my lights go on and off, if I'm not, if I go somewhere where they're not expecting to, to me to be. Um So in terms of the operating as a weapon platform, we kind of all come together um in terms of how you take that forward, we just always have that same level of professionalism. And at the end of it, we try and capture where we can improve, not in a, not in a critical way but in a what things we saw and it's always good as a trainer, I was always taught many years ago, you know, I always tell them, never make your mistakes, always showing. But I find the best way to do is that to say, you know, this is where I think I could have done a little bit better on that. But I noticed you did really well on this one. How did you find it? Did you have any concerns with it? And sometimes if you've got that trust, right? You can say something like that and people that just open up, it's dead easy, just what you're doing now, David, just what you're doing now. So zero feel. How, how do you consider and deal with the unexpected you in the theater of operations? You've obviously been for planning beforehand and now you're thrown into the thick of things, literally, how do you deal with the unexpected? Um Well, probably the first thing is you've got to know that it's unexpected. It sounds obvious, it sounds obvious. Uh As an individual, we can always miss it, miss anything. So we, the team that we always operating teams, we never operated singleton's the minimal be to typically a fighting unit will before and most of the times that we go into any operations will probably much bigger than that. You know, they'll be able to, every few hours there'll be electronic warfare's. Um, so, but really it's all about, it's kind of all about the network really. Um, we're all, we're all acutely aware of where we should be and what we shouldn't be and what, what everybody's doing and when we see things, when we see things start to slide, we communicate things if you imagine you to balance the ruler on top, you know, is with the short end up, right? And just let go of it, it kind of stays where it is and you could let go of it for maybe about two seconds and then capture it again. But if you were to do the same and maybe gave it about two or three seconds once it starts to move, it absolutely departs. So really recognizing that that things are start going off, relies on everybody communicates and knowing what having a good situation, awareness, this kind of comes back to the brief and all, you know, shared understanding, you know, a common vision of what's happening. So everybody knows actually something's not happening. Um So I'd say probably that's the biggest way to deal with the the the unexpected. Um We don't like surprises, but we like to spot surprises early and it's amazing if you get things early enough, they're not a surprise to just something else that you can manage. You trained red arrows. Pilot and they renowned for their situation awareness because the closing speeds must be after 1000 kilometers an hour. If not more. How do you train situation awareness? How do you make people more aware of the situation? Had? Um So if, if I understand that question, that the, how do you, how do you make more people? Where? Um well, I think, I think the big thing is to, to have an understanding of not what, what, what's expected, but to, to create an interaction before you, before you get airborne. So, so it's not just knowing what's happening, but it's a, it's able to think through the consequences of what you're trying to do. So for example, if you were to look at some of the red arrows maneuvers, in actual fact, you have what's known as contracts when you're flying in a tactical environment, we're forever working these things called the contract and a contract may, may be something as simple as um, so for example, say you're flying tactical formation, which you could have, you know, two aircraft flying maybe four miles apart when you want to turn through 90 degrees and you don't want to disrupt it. The contract maybe as one go, one as one, as one of the two aircraft turns, maybe one, the contract will be one will go high and one will go low. So you, you forever got these, you forever got these contracts and if somebody doesn't make the contract, then you need to pick it up. The one thing that I kind of relate this to with other industries is that the, you know, you've got to understand when you need to stop the job or where you need to take control. Uh, and sometimes some things when they happen, if there's significantly, if there's significant or they're important, then, then you really, you know, your mental space is not going to be where it needs to be. So you kind of almost got a plan, what you're going to do before you, before you reach that. I'm not sure whether that that makes sense next. Uh So do you asked trainee pilots to give a commentary when flying? Is that, or do you think that is that advisable or not? You know, I would say, uh you know, it's a really interesting question. Uh My, my, my, my answer is that my, my answer is this that I would never ask for a commentary because, because it can I find that it's an extra bit of the brain that you don't need to use. So my, my, my, my initial, my, my comment to people about when they want to say would typically be well, if you want to speak, that's up to you, but don't feel you speak. And I personally find it, it eases my capacity. Then I found I'm kind of privilege because I fly with people in the right on the edge you know, it's almost on the cliff edge, you kind of hold on and every now and then you discover some really interesting corners. And one of the interesting ones is that when people are talking what they're doing sometimes that the brain can think really quickly, but the mouth speaks, it's a little bit slower. So not only does it take thought processes to speak, it also slows you down and this is a curious thing. Yeah. So, so every now and then you discover it. So people, so I find when people speaking, it slows down what they're doing and then, and then they don't do it until they've heard what they've spoken. So you end up with a really curious feedback loop. So I find sometimes if the wrong words come out, despite the fact they know what it is, then it goes in through the years and despite thinking about one thing, they end up doing something different. Um I think, I think it relies on a, an instructor to be observed and, and, and, and to just help and monitor and you know, really what, what we are, you know, imagine it's the same you trainee surgeons is to make it to make, you know, the surgical theater and the fast check, culprit a safe, a safe environment to learn because it isn't very safe. Is it when you think what you surgeons have got to do, you know, it's closer to life and death than I've ever been on a grand scale. It's interesting that, that comparison because you're the training techniques. The question was asked by somebody I know has got an advanced driving license and they encourage to talk through what they're seeing and doing. But imagine in a jet it's too fast to do that. I think it may work in the, in the arena, advance of advanced driving. Um But, but, you know, surgery is just like faster aviation. Some of the other environments are working where you just really, you know, you just really need to have all your break. You know, you sometimes that, you know, when the situation is getting really chaotic and you've got to, you can't just stop, you've just got to keep going. You really need every little bit of an ounce of capacity in the brain to think about it. Sometimes you just slow yourself down to stop running ahead and just think, right, I'm going to just take control the situation. I'm going to maintain control. What does that mean? But it may work in advance driving. So, you know, maybe different, maybe different, maybe different systems work in different environments. So what happens when something goes wrong? Phil, how do you deal with that in a tornado plane? Um Well, well, it, I don't know, it's, it's probably, it's probably similar. I mean, I've had a wonderful conversation with yourself and, and wonderful conversation with Peter Brennan and Geneva and you've all very formative individuals that are incredibly talented. Uh And, and it's interesting because you all seem to say the same thing, which is why is the first thing you've got to do is just maintain control the situation, they say, yeah, well, that's obvious. But actually when you analyze what it means, it's very, very easy to uh to run ahead to the next stage. So for example, say, for example, you're in an aircraft and you're just getting airborne and maybe a 300 ft, maybe you're in a jet, maybe you have a, you know, maybe an object, maybe a bird goes down, the engine damages that damage the engine. Uh The temptation is to try and manage it. And two, but in actual fact, all you really want to do is just keep going upwards and accelerating. And until you're at an altitude that you can clear from the ground and you're not reducing speed, then you're not into control the situation. So don't do anything else. So when things go wrong, the first thing to do is to just maintain control. And, and I think, I think Roger Knee Bone said this comment that I think and I think it with yourself. And the first thing you do is just put a swab on it and just like, you know, work out, I might actually in control this situation cause it's very easy to then go on the next stage and the next stage would be to, to analyze that. Uh And then you can think about doing your bold face, which is the, which is what, you know, the perception is the checks. But I think what I would say is that most of these things, what does maintain control and what does analyzes very contact sensitive. So that's where you were, have a discussion with a pilot and say, well in that situation, what is your view of that? What, what would that be? Because there's no right, there's no right or wrong answer. But it's interesting. It opens up a discussion. It's all about, you know, the little 1% of the brain process, 99%. They're all you're trying to do is just trying to work out how maybe you can just optimize that little link such that if the worst happens, they're not going to fly themselves into the ground, which unfortunately happens all too commonly because people don't recognize that they're no longer in control of the situation. So that's an interesting point because our previous pilot Niall said he's focused because he goes down with the plane. But you can inject. Is it as simple as that? Uh you can inject and actually make an injection decision is an incredibly hard decision. Imagine, imagine if you're flying 80 million lb aircraft and suddenly it goes wrong and you're trying to work out. Oh, it's that easy. I'll throw this away. It's not as easy as that. And the, there's lots of, there's lots of the sort of disbelief in the situation that find yourself in when you're still descending. Well, I must be able to do something. I must be able to manage it. Uh, it's all too common and, and it's very sad occurrence that a lot of people don't make that ejection decision because it's such a, it's such a kind of almost out of body experience. It's just a surreal thing to happen. And the kind of brain goes in, I must fix it. I must fix it when in actual fact, they should be straight on the maintain control. You're not in control of the situation, you're going down, you're losing altitude. Um So the injection option. Yeah, and, and it's then, and, and really the fact, you know, actually being able to make that decision is quite tricky on so much so that, you know, it's one of the currencies. I'm sure your surgeons have it every, I think it's 6, 12 months you have to have ejected in the simulator just to prove that that your thought processes. That it sounds a bit strange. I um I was, when I was a young boy, young boy, it's a lot of years ago now, granted the uh was that loss of mouth in Scotland? And I saw I was just waiting to cross the runway and I saw these two jaguars getting airborne and then one, the normal reheat yellow, one of the reheats on one of them was like a little green. And then it started, they were, they were getting airborne together, you know, a bit like the red arrows together. Then it started dropping back and then it started dropping back and then lowering. And I was just kind of watch this and then I watched this and then it just for anybody that's been lost him out. That Scotland, the runway goes out over the sea and the site, some woods burn it and it disappeared behind the trees. I didn't know it was my friend at the time, but it was, and it was like, I can't believe this, but the interesting thing was, um, where he was number two of, of two aircraft formation and he had a problem with the engine. He didn't maintain control. He kind of tried to manage the engine. Unfortunately, during the process, he shut the wrong engine down, he shut the good engine down, left the bad one. Um, and he didn't, his call, his, and he was trying to work the aircraft to try and recover it. And the only time they ejected was when he heard this Mayday, Mayday, Mayday and whatever call sign it was pilot ejected. Um, and if, as pilot ejected, oh, that's me. And then he ejected because, you know, it's one of those sad things that when you kind of your minds locked into, I must fix this problem. Um, does that make sense, David. So, coming back to uncertainty and you've been in combat, have you been shot at? Yes, it has to deal with that. It's quite surreal thinking that somebody's, you'll make somebody else's day by, by them that really in your day. Um, it's kind of, you kind of go through in the simulator and you talk about it the first time that it happens. It's a little bit peculiar. I've had various forms of had missiles thrown up Tripoli, which is anti aircraft artillery. And what they do is they fire, align a machine gun up there and one, every, I think it's, every 10 rounds is what's known as a trace. So it lights up. So you almost see like a string of pearls coming up when you go to the right, the string of pearls defects to the right and then you go to the left. It can mythology because they're trying to predict where you're going to be. Um, the sad fact of life is that they tend to put those things right where the targets tend to be. So, right when you're busiest and trying to preoccupy most with weapon area is right around about the time when you're probably going to get targeted. Um, that happened to me once in the Balkans and, you know, kind of we would actually were dropping a laser guided bomb and designating it with our own pod and part way during the web, the sort of time of flight of the, of the weapon. We got a missile lock and then it was your time how long it takes to impact? Because you need to put a laser dot on the target while this is happening. And it was like, okay, well, locked up. Now it's 10 seconds to time to impact the thing. What are we going to do it? So we'll just run our 10 seconds and then we'll sort out in 10 seconds hoping that nothing will happen, which it did, which it didn't sorry. But in that 10 seconds and, and to ground missiles coming granted missiles coming towards you. Yeah, that's correct. So it's like many things that the sort of, you know, before hands we'll discuss what we're likely to see because we try and we try and avoid surprises and we like to control them. So we had an inkling that this was going to happen. So we had our electronic um jamming pods on, we were putting some chafe out. We also use code words as well. So when you go in these kind of areas, you'll have other platforms that will be supporting you. And we had some what sounds F 16 cj's they fire these high speed anti radiation missiles. So you get the call over the radio when you're being and you call defending of Magnum and then you see these red glows coming in as everybody was coming in to try to help you out. Which is, which is reassuring. Gosh. So what are the corners uh do you think are problematic for the pilot? You came in, you mentioned one assumptions. Why is it? Why is assumptions corner in your mind? I think assumptions. Uh because we kind of our minds, our minds like, you know, a fighter flight creature's and you know how rapidly respond is part of our saving grace. But unfortunately, when you take that into environments where you actually just need to sit and process what's going on and analyze it, it's very easy to, it's very easy to go down the wrong pathway. Um I think assumptions would definitely come in would be the sort of the analysis. Uh Sometimes when things happen and you hear noises, it's very easy to naturally assume a classic one. And if you're multiengine aircraft is, if you got a problem with one engine is to miss, I'd the engine. So it's all much of it. You know, it's a bit, I would imagine it's like surgery much. I hate to call that minefield. But, but life is like a minefield and sometimes it doesn't matter. But in some industries and some environments like, you know, the offshore that work and the surgeon, in fact, you know, you've got to be, you've got to understand when you actually, when you're at a point where you're about to make a cognitive error and just slow down and just take time to process it. Accepting the fact that the consequences of not rushing, of rushing will be much worse than not rushing and how to deal with complacency. Complacence is really is an interesting one. And when you do lots of repetitive, I'm sure you're probably aware. It's the, it's quite common. We're all complacent. We're trying to be complacent. You know, when you go back, you know, 1000 millennial, I don't know how far we go back. A little bit of embarrassing numbers in public. So I'm sorry about that, but we're kind of, you know, we're trying to, to identify where the food is, identify what's going to hurt us, fight what's going to hurt us and take the food and if it doesn't hurt us, then it's not a threat to us. So you drop it from the scan and focus on what's important. So I think the first thing to realize is complacency is always there. And you know what? It's interesting, one of the higher risk events that we're doing is like, it's just the same, it's just the same, you know, same as we did yesterday. And I always find it interesting when somebody says, oh, it's the same as we did yesterday. Nothing is ever the same that we did yesterday because at one point, our minds are not in the same place, you know, where things, a lot of things happened since yesterday today, you know, issues with the family issues with money issues with trying to get parking into work, the house purchase has gone through or not gone through. So, complacency, I think is you've always got, you've always got to give yourself time. Always expect that it's going to happen. Uh, never ever assume that it's the same because you may, you may have the same thing to find people there physically. But up here, everything of one of us will be in a different place from where we were before. If that makes sense. David, it certainly does because there's no such thing as a routine operation. I suppose there's no such thing as a routine combat flight either. Uh You know, it isn't. I've been into an operating theater with, with Professor Peter better. I can't tell you how impressed I was and how incredibly professional, the challenges that you face, the level of complexity. Um And I was also lucky enough to sort of see robotic operation, which I found quite fascinating because I was trying to, one of the surgeons, they've been working the Davinci machine and I said, you know, what's it like? And so I bet you lose track of time down that, you know, when you're working. He said you do. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because that's exactly what we do down, down the target and it's easy to get behind the timeline. But the, I tried to Peter Brennan when you're talking, you know, the sort of the pre, pre, pre brief, presurgery brief, I find it quite interesting because he gave this brief. And I said, Peter, where did you get that brief from? And said, oh, it's what we've briefed and it was to do with the sort of this, a lump on the lady's chief. And I said, well, you know, it's really fascinating because we give an almost identical brief and we have Friendly's and hostels, you know, the friendly is the skin and the nerves, you know, all the good the hostel is like the things, you know, we have trip lines, stop, stop lines, how we're going to identify who's going to spot it. And it's like that is exactly like the tactical brief that we give. But so, so the parallels are there, have you ever made a mistake? Phil uh make mistakes all the time? They always say great people always say not me obviously, but they always say that the sign of a person is the, it's not how well they do but how they manage mistakes. Um And the one thing I, all the one thing I always say is that it's not the mistakes that you make, but it's how it's how you handle it. Um If I made mistakes, I've made quite a few mistakes, I think you're leading to the uh do tell us that story. Uh that story. Uh right, the uh many years ago, uh not that many years ago, but it is probably relative to some of the, probably young listeners. It probably before you maybe, I don't know at this age, but the, we was invited to do a five power demonstration in Kozo which is an airfield in France. Uh and it was post the Balkans conflict and the French Air Force had organized it. Uh There was a range about half miles south of the airfield, Casos border border region. Um And the plan was, I think it's about 50 aircraft that, that took part in the Balkans. We're all going to get, we're going to get sort of loaded up with stores and with weapons, we're going to get airborne. We'd all go and sit in a, you know, a sort of a racetrack holding pattern a bit like the ones you go to Heathrow, maybe about 40 miles and then we're going to close the airfield and about half a mile south, the airfield, there's this wonderful range and what we're going to, we're going to go through one at the time. We're all going to drop the weapons and they had a huge TV. At the time. It was, this was late 19 nineties. This was like, you know, state of the art. Nowadays, everybody's got one in the living room but they, uh, and I was part of, and we would, what they wanted to see was I was flying tornadoes. They wanted to see four ship low level attack. And typically for us we'd go in somewhere between 50 ft upwards we'd go in, go in about 500 knots and then we'd have to climb to release the weapon to about somewhere between 100 100 and 50 ft would say the numbers. And then you want to, uh, this and then you descend again. Well, I was number four and because it was a, it was a, it was a, something that was pre organized. He wanted everybody to come in from the same direction and the wind was almost from the 12 o'clock. Well, the first aircraft went in and because the target was in sand, it sort of hit the tie. It was a huge explosion. San debris went in the air and then it all came down and then about 30 40 seconds later, the second one and more debris in the third one came in in huge debris in there and it came down. And by the time it was my turn at the back, quite literally from the beautiful, glorious gin clear day. All I could see was this huge cloud of sand in the air in front of me. I thought right, what I don't want to do is not drop my weapon because I couldn't see the target. So I thought I'd get nice and ready. So just I was approaching the target a few miles away. I decided to make my weapons lives because I didn't want to miss out on my glorious opportunity. So I made, I made my weapons live. And just as we crossed the dual carriageway, a few miles short of it, we kind of hit the turbulence from the aircraft ahead because it was still there and just as my thumb was resting over the thing, it just grazed the top of this red release button. And I was like a and, and then, and then there was a clunk and I thought, did I just hear a clunk? No, I didn't, you know, the bit where you just deny it and it didn't really happen. So, so there was a clunk and then we went about another 40 seconds, 50 seconds on and then I released it over the target and I thought I am, I'm looking good here. So I was in the tornado moved the wings back, turned around the target to have a look. And when I looked back, I saw two big mushroom clouds that were quite a few miles apart. Um, anyway, um, I was told that if I ever made a mistake with the weapons that I would never ever fly again, but I was stopped on the ground, the jet was impounded. The police came and met because, because he thought was, it was something that deliberate and it's interesting that you kind of learn about accountability. I thought my position was, was compromised. But in actual fact, the person that authorized me was the one that was more worried than I was because he basically, you know the bit where you're cleared to go solo is that it feels good to get so low on that one. He's okay. Right. So, so I understand. Do you the only person to drop a live bomb on France and peacetime? Think so. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's a record. That's a record. You've heard it on the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills. So, a part of this is where does Reflection and debrief come in with your flying. You've been interaction, uh you've experienced being shot at, you've made dropped bombs in France, where does Reflection come into your preparation and mindset going forward? It's always important, isn't it? It's the, even if you go back and you know, say, how did that go, how do you feel any bits that, any bits that will read you? Um Okay, you know, even something like that gives you a chance because you just, you just don't know. It's one of those occasions where you've got something inside and having that little conversation sometimes can make wonders. And I imagine it's the same when you're, when you're in the surgical theater. Um, you know that when things go wrong and everybody looks around, it's fine. But what you don't know is actually one of the persons, you know, one of the surgeons when anesthetist, one of the nurse, I, I don't know, it could be anybody in there. It might actually be relatively traumatized. You just want to talk to somebody about it. Uh, you know, this is what I saw. It may be something as simple as that. I was really frightened by that. That worries me and somebody say, yeah, not to worry. That is, that is normal. Here's what you'll feel tomorrow because that's what I felt when I had it. Um, and it also gives you a chance for the things that you weren't expected to just, you know, when you sort of, you leave something, you're not quite sure how it left off the next time you try and pick up from a similar situation that happens again. You're gonna have the same uncertainty and the same challenges and the same stress and the same anxiety. So it's an opportunity to uh it's an opportunity to just like, you know, it's just, you know, an opportunity to, to, to clear out, to discuss it, to say, yeah, that's fine. No, no, I thought it was good. Yeah, you will see it that quick, but it doesn't matter. It's always like that or, yeah, today it was much quicker than it normally, you know, you know, that, you know, there's that kind of reflection, David, but it's certainly no blame, no blame. No, it's the, it's interesting when you kind of look at the accountability and certainly operates many industries that there is a corner of it where, where you, where you deliberate the know the rules and you go actively out of your way to do something and it kind of fits in the bit where it fits into the, but, you know, as, you know, it fits into the box of sabotage but, but certainly the mistakes is no blame. I think the problem with blame is that it closes down conversation. It's such an easy thing to do pacing on an individual. And it's like, well, there we had job done with fixed, it was that person and it never to do it again. And it's like, actually, you know, somebody didn't, if somebody did make a mistake, in actual fact, there was probably something to do with the process that, that could have affect that, that could have done it. I mean, I've got to be careful what I say. I, I was working on a project, I'll just say in the last few months where, um, something was attributed to, to individuals and human factors weren't looked in and, and I think, you know, one thing and it was to do with it was to do, I've got, be careful what I say that the, uh, I think, I think they, I think that the attributed to individuals and I think they left latent defects in the, in their process, but it's not my process. And, you know, I gave, I gave a suggestion that maybe is there so, so, but you're exactly right. No blame really what you want to do people. The thing about the blame is it, it talks about it, talks about something happen, that's a discrete event. Like that's the only thing that's ever going to happen in the world. But actually, what you want to do is you want to make the place about, you want to make a better working environment for everybody. So, although it may be, it may be, it may be then today it may be you tomorrow and we have this saying you're only as good as your last mistake and you know, you really are and we're all prone to it. Um But, but certainly is that and you know, it's all about the know, blames all about building relationships so you can work together so you can have those difficult conversations and you know, you can open up to each other because let's be honest, all the technical skills that you have all the proficiency is the competences. They're just the observable that they're driven by how you feel inside, how you perceive the world, what your awareness is that they're driven by everything that you really need to tap tap into. And if you start blaming, you ain't going to get any access to all that golden areas, which is what you actually need. Uh Does that make sense? David certainly does. And it's an interesting compare contrast with surgical training. So how would you advise team's working in the BUCA environments? This is the volatile uncertain complex arenas. Yeah. What, what is your key piece of advice because I think the operating theaters, one of them, uh, you know, it's, the operating theater is right top of the tree. It's, uh, you know, it is even more, you know, it's even more, it's even more, even more so than the Fighter aviation or any other one because of the very nature of what you do and really on top of the tree, um, the first thing I would say is that only those that have worked from an environment and there are few, you know, music is one of those environments, you know, the the theater is one of those environments, although it may not be life and death, in actual fact, you know, a lot can go wrong and you got a manager, um probably the biggest piece of advice. And the one thing that I have done that, that, that I work on and I work on by helping people is listening and it's like, you know, the one thing that would all improve in the world if people just listened to what somebody else has got to say and welcome their opinion. So, so what do I do? I really, I really just, you know, you know, it manifests itself in the toolbox talk, which is the brief in the after capture of it in the planning phase uh in the, in the sort of, you know, in the execution for phases, like somebody's just had something in a really valid comment. Why don't you see what they've got to say and see why they're saying it. And, you know, it's just as simple as, you know, if we just listen to what people have got to say and understand it and not stand on our own personal opinion that was probably, and everything else just stems off from it. And when you stand back and you take that perspective and you actually look at it and I'm sure most of the people listening to this, if you actually, you know, next time you're in the theater, just watch who listens. It sounds really simple and it really, really is so simple. That's in my, that's in, in, in my having done all the talking. Obviously, Phil, I think that's a wonderful note to end our discussion on and the production this evening would not have happened without Gabrielle in the background. Thank you very much indeed for listening to the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills. Thank you very much, Phil for your time and your insight. We didn't, we didn't talk about Top Gun and Maverick and the movie and Hollywood it would come across there's a lot more common sense, mundane and simple than you could possibly imagine. I hope this has made sense to you. It certainly made sense to me and I'm very grateful to fill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for joining us. Uh