RWS 66 – Extreme Ownership Book Review with Adrian Park

Adrian Park is an experienced military and rescue helicopter pilot who is currently completing a phd thesis in aviation human factors and communication.

A podcast that I get a lot of value from is the Jocko Podcast which deals in leadership, mindsets, ju jitsu, military history and has nothing to do with helicopters… or does it. In this episode I chat with Adrian Park a former Australian army helicopter pilot and now EMS pilot who has a special interest in aviation safety and human factors about how some of the material Jocko Willink talks about relates to aviation.

Extreme Ownership is a book written by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink (host of podcast mentioned above) who are both ex-US Navy SEALs who held leadership roles during deployments in Iraq and later in SEAL training units.

The book details some of the leadership lessons they learnt that they see as applicable to leadership in any situation. Their examples start with a military example from their own experience and then apply that in a business setting.

Today I’m talking with Adrian Park and we break down some of the ideas in the book and discuss how they play out in an aviation context with examples from our own experiences.

Adrian Park (right) next to an Australian Army Huey in Bougainville. The bright orange paint scheme was part of the peace keeping role.

Adrian or ‘Parky’ has a background in Australian Army Huey and Blackhawk operations along with experience flying in the EMS sector. Along the way he has picked up a Bach. of English Literature and Communication (something he has in common with Jocko Willink) and is working towards his PhD.

Parky is a frequent article contributor to Flight Safety magazine here in Australia, runs crew resource management training, has been involved in youth leadership development and also hosts an aviation podcast. A busy guy! But someone with a lot of helicopter experience paired with some thoughtfulness on the application of leadership and human factors in how we go about our operations.


Some of the ideas we discuss are:

Extreme ownership
– If mindset of victim of circumstance then you can’t have any input to fixing
– accepting feedback
– not blaming people / weather / aircraft
– admitting to and owning mistakes/errors
– opposite of ‘someone else’s problem’
– if someone tells you to do something that you know is a bad idea, and you do it and it turns out bad, you’re still responsible for the outcome.
– implications for accident investigations / companies that have accidents / forum discussion

Detach
– long term view rather than short term task pressure
– viable company/career in 5 years over any single task
– EMS operations and weather decisions
– risk vs reward

Check Your Ego
– proving your skill / pushing on
– unnecessary risks
– putting others down for mistakes
– not seeking input
– not accepting feedback and constructive criticism

Cover and Move (Teamwork)
– crew, ops, atc
– back others up
– share information
– help them do their job
– mateship

We end up running out of time to cover everything that we had in our notes – look out for a part 2 sometime in the future.

Adrian during an exchange posting to the US working as a Blackhawk instructor

This is the first time both of us have discussed this topic/content as it relates to the book Extreme Ownership. If you are familiar with the book or with Jocko’s other ideas and can share aviation examples of your own we would love you to add to the comments section here on the blog post.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download

Links from this week’s episode:
Support the podcast on Patreon
World Helicopter Day – Register Your Event
Cancel Sarwatch Podcast
Resonate Safety Solutions – CRM Training and Consultancy
Jocko Podcast

On the ramp in East Timor with a Blackhawk from B SQN, 5 Avn Regt. Hopefully these aircraft can continue in a flying role when retired from the Australian Army

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