• Close Call: How I Almost Killed My Teammates

    Even though it’s been a very long time since I logged flight time in an F-15E, this story remains fresh in my memory, reminding me that we can have the best kinds of reasons for doing things and still be tragically wrong. That’s true in our identities as fighter pilots, as leaders, as colleagues, as…

  • After 9/11: How I Needed Courage to Nap on the Jet

    My 9/11 story as a United Airlines pilot is about where I wasn’t and what I wasn’t doing that day, and the courage it took for me to take a nap on a jet a few days later.

  • Remembering My Desert Shield Wingmen, 35 Years Later

    All these years after Desert Shield and Desert Storm, it still moves me to think that someone went to the trouble to take the picture of me here, as a crowd of my squadron mates took the trouble to meet me at the aircraft after my “fini flight,” to celebrate my departure from the unit.

  • Musings from a Housepainter Turned Fighter Pilot Turned Leadership Coach

    All my experiences throughout my life’s journey have helped instill me with my passion for partnering with others now as a leadership coach, in what the International Coaching Federation defines as “a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires [others] to maximize their personal and professional potential.” Sounds like good work, if you can get it,…

  • Coaching Culture & Wingman Life

    When we live a wingman life with our family, friends, and colleagues, as wingmen for one another, we are practicing coaching culture – and I don’t think there is any better kind of life. No jets required.

  • Wingmen Make Me Better

    Many fighter pilots fly solo, and they generally manage just fine without backseaters, but never without wingmen. On that day in Iraq and Turkey, Cheater and Dietz were my wingmen in the other jet, and Gump was my wingman three feet behind me.