‘I’m most alive when I feel terror and exhilaration’

Joel Neeb: I had the same reaction as anybody who watched the movie Top Gun – I loved the excitement, camaraderie and adventure. It’s the perfect film for creating a desire for this profession. But then, when I experienced flying, I saw it in its most accurate form as a 22-year-old fresh out of the US Air Force Academy. I’ll never forget what happened to me. They took me out of driving a car one day and then taught me how to fly faster than the speed of sound. Do loops, pull 6g forces, don’t pass out. Take off in one state and fly to another. Do formation flying three feet away from another aircraft and fly 90-degree banks when it feels like the other plane will fall on top of you! They did everything with me and taught me to do it alone. I always like to ask audiences how long they think it took them to teach me to do that. It’s four months. We’ve trained thousands of pilots that way. My last role as the chief instructor pilot for the entire Air Force training program was to ensure that we did that safely and effectively.

AA: What are you looking for in those who can make that leap?

JN: I think the same thing happens in every elite military team: success is determined by grit, tenacity, and your ability to endure. Angela Duckworth [the academic and psychologist] wrote a great book about grit a decade ago. She claimed that it was the most significant predictor of success in anything. She defined it as your ability to persevere as you continue to be challenged, and that’s really what it comes down to for anything in life. I’ve had the opportunity to succeed and fail in both flying and business. In high-calibre, high-stakes environments, the people who I see winning are the ones who show up the next day.

AA: How do you spot that resilience in someone?

JN: I’ll use as an example one of my friends from the Navy SEALs, who shared it with me, because I think it applies to fighter pilots, too. They said, “We don’t pay attention to you when you win. We only pay attention to you when you fail.” In that moment of failure, we see whether or not you have tenacity and grit. It’s in that moment of putting your hands on your hips, throwing up off the deck and having everything in your body say, “Don’t do this.” And yet you still walk into the flight room, and you fly. That’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for that person because failure is inevitable. We’re all going to fail, whether in the cockpit or in life, and we’re defined by how we respond.

AA: How did your career progress?

JN: I feel the most alive when I experience terror and exhilaration. And that indeed occurred when I was flying an aircraft! I was terrified of it. Initially, I felt exhilarated from conquering what I was doing in the sky and wanted more. However, at the same time, I had to prepare myself for those moments and prepare myself mentally because I still had this visceral fear of doing it. I got very used to it and flew 3,000 missions. I remember being upside down and 10 feet away from another aircraft in front of me. I looked up – which was down at the time because I was upside down – and I saw that there was an accident on the freeway three miles below me. I thought to myself, “Gosh, it’s gonna take so long to get home today, and I gotta pick up the kids from football practice.”

And I realised, at that moment, I wasn’t terrified or exhilarated anymore. I was just going through the motions because I became so good at it. That’s not bragging. We can all become great at something if we do it enough times. I realised I wasn’t getting out of it what I needed any longer, and I needed to put myself in a new environment. Then, I went into business school and quickly became the dumbest guy because I had spent all my time focusing on aeroplanes and not having business conversations. There was a bit of terror and exhilaration about reinventing myself in that role.

AA: What is it like to fly an F-15?

JN: Initially, you sit in the jet, and it’s amazing. They have it wrapped around you to see all of the machinery, and it’s much louder than you’d think. The whole thing shakes when the ramp falls. You’re getting ready for the inlet to be tested out, and you start the engine. It’s extremely loud, and it rattles back and forth. You feel like you’re in a tank when this occurs. It’s not like a nice Delta Airlines flight that’s quiet, and they’re handing out coffee. It’s very violent, even before you take off, but you feel swagger when you’re on the ground. I like to say that you feel cool and like this is what you’re made to do.

In the initial stages, it’s almost like you’re not even flying because you practice this so many times that you are just saying, all right, I looked at the altimeter. Now, I need to look at the airspeed. The airspeed is a little fast. I need to pull the throttles back now, back to the altimeter. How’s my lift vector? It looks good. So, in other words, it’s not very romantic. It’s not glamorous or sexy. It’s just an instrument cross-check I’m doing within my cockpit – the same thing I did in my simulator.

AA: What was it like to escort the US president through the skies?

JN: It’s one of the simpler missions but extremely high stakes. You prepare a lot for this, and you’re constantly looking. We just had an assassination attempt on one of our presidents in the United States, and we’re now investigating; how could that ever happen? You’re thinking about that in the sky as well. How can we ensure that we keep this person safe and that we’re doing everything we need to do in terms of the mechanics of the mission? Though it’s not very complex, we’re just flying next to them and staying close, which I can do with my eyes closed!

AA: What were the other highlights of your career?

JN: Every flight, I smiled when I took off, and I reminded myself that I wouldn’t be able to do this forever, that it was a privilege. It was interesting because anything can become boring if you do it enough times. If you allow yourself to start falling into the trap of thinking that it’s just become blase, that’ll happen. I remember days when I would fall into that trap and think “I hope this flight gets weathered, I hope I don’t have to go up today”. I kind of wanted to go home and sit on my couch, and I had to remind myself what a privilege it was that I got to do this. I don’t have to do this. I get to do this. In terms of the actual flights that I remember, there are not many, but there are moments. When you have bad weather, you’re doing an after-burner climb, and it’s a beautiful sunny day above the clouds. And you think, “Everybody I know in my world is having a grey, rainy day right now, and I’m playing in the sun.” You have to pinch yourself to realise that you get to do this.

AA: How did you find transitioning out of the military? While some people revel in the transition, others struggle to adapt, starting at the bottom of the ladder.

JN: I always tell people transitioning out of the military, out of these elite military role positions, that you are both woefully unprepared for this moment, but you will also add immense value that nobody else can touch. But you’re going to the bottom. Many would violently resist that and say, “I’m not going to the bottom. I’ve been leading all these things. You’re going to tell me that this guy’s been in business for 10 years, and for some reason, I’m not on par with him because I’ve been flying aeroplanes? I guarantee that I can do what he can do. Don’t put me with the 23-year-olds starting out.”

But the truth is, you need to be with a 23-year-old because you don’t speak the language they do. It’s Spanish and Portuguese, right? If you know anything about those languages, speak a little Spanish, and you hear Portuguese, you think, “Oh, I speak Portuguese too clearly because I’m picking up a couple of words here and there.” But we don’t realise that they’re very different languages. My flying language was extremely different from the business language, so I had to reinvent myself from scratch. Just as much as I had to reinvent myself to become a fighter pilot, I had to reinvent myself to become a business leader.

Joel Neeb’s new book, The Insight Age, is out soon. To find out more, visit theinsightage.com