Page 100 - Never Fly Solo

BREAK RIGHT! | 73
refocus on the mission and perhaps avoid a dangerous prob-
lem lurking at your six.
Honest, ego-free, two-way communication is critical.
After all, sustained success requires fast, accurate decisions.
To get these decisions and their consequent actions right, you
must rely on training and instinct. And when these two
resources are limited by stress, lack of skills, or task overload,
you have your wingmen there to build the picture and still
succeed at the mission.
The key to establishing all wingman partnerships is self-
leadership and accountability.
Self-leadership is necessary for the highest level of trust to
exist between partners. If you know that your partner is
always prepared, you can breathe easy, confident that she will
do her part every time. Of course, the same has to be true of
you. If you are the weak link, it will be difficult for others to
stay ready to watch your back, since you aren’t prepared to
watch theirs. Not only must your partner be prepared to do
her part in fulfilling the mission, she must be prepared to help
you do yours as well. This is the foundation of what I call
wingmanship—the unfaltering commitment to a wingman
relationship. Imagine how I would feel walking to the jet on
a combat mission and wondering if my wingman was truly
ready.
Consider the last time you launched into a shared endeavor
with people who were not prepared. Wasn’t the pressure on
you that much higher? If you were prepared and they weren’t,
didn’t you feel a sense of injustice—even anger—toward these
so-called partners? For a wingman relationship to exist, there
must be the highest degree of self-leadership so that the highest
degree of trust is instinctual. There will be times when the
slightest hesitation means death—whether of a prospective