[00:00:03] Tammy Barlette: I'm talking about preparing how you want to think, feel and respond when the challenges happen because you can prepare for that as well and that will make a significant difference in your performance when it really comes down to it.
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Welcome to the Hangar X podcast. We are live at Verticon and we have a special guest on today, Tammy Barlett. Tammy, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:01:15] Tammy Barlette: Yep, thank you for having me again.
[00:01:17] John Ramstead: So your company crosscheck mental performance training Training.
[00:01:21] Tammy Barlette: Yes.
[00:01:22] John Ramstead: And we're going to talk about training. And so first of all, your background total. I don't know if I can say this word on the podcast, but you are one bad mama. Jama a 10 pilot, Reaper pilot in the Air Force. We had an incredible conversation about some of the things you did in that a 10 and then you got. But you understood especially as a combat pilot and just being in such intense situations, just the, the element that mental performance, mental toughness comes into it and I completely agree. And you know, we actually just had somebody out and we interviewed them from Ars.
What does it stand for again? Rescue systems.
But they do specific training for helicopter rescue crews and hoist crews, like some of the most intense. What they found was, is that the training, it's the mental performance, it's situational training. Because you can't prepare for everything when you're in extremis, can you? So it really falls back into how you think about it.
[00:02:22] Tammy Barlette: Correct.
[00:02:22] John Ramstead: And you're also here, you're at Verticon, you're exhibiting because you're also speaking.
There's people that had you come in to talk about this. So let's do this. First, let's talk about what is the mental performance aspect of training and why is it so important, Especially today, I think is, you know, things are getting more complex even though we're trying to make them simpler with automation. But in my mind, some of it though almost makes us a little bit more complacent. Does that make sense? Yes, because we're kind of relying on the automation, but then all of a sudden, when that automation doesn't work, I have to fall back on training and my thinking to get out of a bad situation safely.
[00:02:59] Tammy Barlette: True.
[00:02:59] John Ramstead: So I'd love to hear your thoughts on why this became such a focus and passion for your life.
[00:03:04] Tammy Barlette: Yeah. Well, essentially what happened, I spent a lot of time instructing, and that's really where my heart is. And I learned that even though my job was stick and rudder instruction, that I couldn't really effectively train them, at least well, unless I could get their mind out of their own way. And so I did a lot of things where I was basically getting their head in the game. Because the saying for my business is because you can't just pull over on a cloud. And if you don't prepare mentally.
[00:03:30] John Ramstead: Yeah. There's no training timeout when it's happening for real.
[00:03:32] Tammy Barlette: No, there's not. And you have to be ready. And there's ways to train your mind. And I'm not just talking intellectually going through, like, steps and processes. I'm talking about preparing how you want to think, feel, and respond when the challenges happen, because you can prepare for that as well. And that will make a significant difference in your performance when it really comes down to it.
[00:03:51] John Ramstead: Yeah. And you said you. You wanted to get their. What, their. Their mind out of the way.
What is that? What did you mean by that?
[00:03:57] Tammy Barlette: So, like, things, like a lot of it has to do with where are their thoughts, Are they in the past thinking about some mistake they just made or in their future worrying about something that's about to happen? Because you need to be in the moment. I mean, obviously flying, there's a little bit of plan ahead you have, but generally speaking, you need to be in the moment when you're flying. And how do you get your mind there? So it's important that they're aware of their thoughts. And it does things like increase focus, decrease anxiety, increase confidence, which all inherently increase safety.
[00:04:26] John Ramstead: Now, I can see how that is incredibly relevant during an emergency. Right. There's a fire, my engine quits, I get a. You know, I just lost all hydraulic pressure. How does this apply, though, to the normal routines of and. And phases of flight?
[00:04:43] Tammy Barlette: Well, it applies to, well beyond even aviation, but things like perfectionism. I mean, people are constantly trying to do things perfectly, which is actually battling against you. So when you're just flying a normal flight and you didn't. You didn't do something as well as you wanted to, it pulls some of your brain power and now you're thinking about that instead of focusing on what you need to be doing right now. So it might not be an emergency. It just might. It might be someone who's trying to perform at a certain level, who's not getting there. I mean, it's things like getting over failures. And how do you deal with that failure? It comes from the debrief. Right. But if you're not debriefing, if you're not having the right perspective about learning about. From the failure. And how do you do that? Cause what I find is a lot of instructors will say, you gotta get over failure. You gotta get over your mistakes. You gotta do all these things. But the instructors don't say how. So I teach the how. How do you do that?
[00:05:31] John Ramstead: Okay, and let's talk about the how. Because in the military, after every mission, we train like we fight and we fight like we train. There should be no difference.
[00:05:39] Tammy Barlette: Correct.
[00:05:40] John Ramstead: And in the debrief, there's no rank, because you're talking about everything you did good that you didn't do good. Because we all have to learn because lives are dependent on it. Right. What is that kind of that culture that happens in a military debrief? You're also kind of helping bringing into regular aviation so people can learn better that how.
[00:05:57] Tammy Barlette: Right. Well, it's important that you debrief all the time, first of all, because you want to make it a culture of how you do things. If you don't debrief all the time and you only debrief when there's a problem, then it has a negative, kind of, like, feeling to it. You don't want to.
[00:06:11] John Ramstead: It feels like criticism versus growth.
[00:06:13] Tammy Barlette: Yeah. You want to look at it as like, how can we learn something? And if everything went really well, you still want to debrief that. Because you need to know, was that luck, or do we actually do something that was successful? We need to keep doing. And then when you have a debrief, that's something negative. It's already kind of how the culture is. And you're like, oh, it's just an error that we're going to learn from and we're going to move on. If you don't do it regularly, then it feels very icky.
[00:06:39] John Ramstead: That's a good point. Now, you talked about you're bringing the how to this. What is the how?
[00:06:43] Tammy Barlette: Well, the how is. I mean, it's really how. How to think better. And I know it sounds a little silly, but it's true. A lot of us don't really Pay attention to what our mind is just doing on a regular basis. Where are our thoughts going?
Because it matters to how we perform down the road, what's going on in our minds right now, what we think about ourselves and what we think we can perform. And it's really important that we pay attention to that. And there's tons of tiny little things that I teach. I have a four week course. It's a lot of little things that you change over time that can make a significant difference. So when someone recently took my class, she called me at the end of it and she said I was, I was waiting for the magic. And she's like. And I realized what you said in the beginning was true. It's like a bunch of little things that are simple, that you add them all together and you keep continually doing them and you can make. She says, I use the stuff you teach me every single day.
[00:07:32] John Ramstead: Oh, I love that. So over four weeks, if I was your student, what are some of the, I guess the principles or pillars that you go through?
[00:07:38] Tammy Barlette: Yeah. So we start talking a basic kind of mindset and what is it and why does it matter?
And then we go into confidence and how is confidence built and what are some myths about confidence and how can you build it and that kind of thing. And we also talk about anxiety and how you can get over anxiety. We get into perfectionism and failure.
Then we have a bunch of tools, like, different tools. Like whether it's a journaling or I have this thing called a re cage technique where it teaches you how to refocus. And a lot of people use it while they're flying. And inside the course there's, there's a course not for aviators and there's one for aviators specifically that has, you know, study techniques that are for pilots. There's a lot of things thrown in there to just. And then like, how do you perform better? And in the end, the last week, it's kind of a wrap up of how do you put this into your flying life? How do you implement it into your days? Like, I've had a lot of students say that they've added into their like pre flight checklist. They, they do like a mental reset, like let go what just happened. And they know, again, sounds very simple. But just the process of doing it and making sure you do it every time can make a difference in how you perform. When you get out there and you get up in the air.
[00:08:46] John Ramstead: Well, you gotta think about that. All of us have had a bad day. We didn't Handle an emergency procedure well. Or we had a couple bad landings when it was windy and gusty, and all of a sudden you almost have this anxiety or trepidation about going back up again. And I've seen some people where that's built to the point where they actually quit. I've seen people actually turning their wings. I mean, qualified naval aviators landing on the boat, got so into their head they had to quit.
[00:09:09] Tammy Barlette: Yeah.
[00:09:09] John Ramstead: So you know, somebody maybe who's maybe had a bad day or a couple bad. A series of bad days, like, what's something practical, Something kind of break out. I'd love to. Yeah.
[00:09:19] Tammy Barlette: Yeah. So I think it's really important that how we frame our failures. So you can frame your failure as is. Is it going to define you or is it going to inform you? So I always like to tell the story. I call it the tale of two Tail Strikes.
[00:09:34] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:09:34] Tammy Barlette: I interviewed two students but or two pilots before I created my course. And I said, hey, what's the worst thing you've ever done? Student A says, oh, I had a tail strike. It was awful. I, I'm. I'm such a bad pilot. I didn't. I probably shouldn't be flying, like on and on and on and on and on and just was just soaked up in that.
[00:09:51] John Ramstead: And that verbal, that verbal muck reinforces it in your brain too.
[00:09:55] Tammy Barlette: Oh, yeah, it's crazy. And then the other pilot, this pilot said, oh, well, I had a tail strike. You know, I learned that when X, Y happens, so I don't do X anymore. And so pilot A defined themselves by this error where pilot B, learn from it. If you can't have a failure that you walk away from saying, I learned, blah, it's an absolute failure. If you can walk away and say you learned something, it's no longer a failure. It's just information for you to move forward on how to do it better next time.
[00:10:24] John Ramstead: Yeah, no, I love that. I remember something I've used. It was actually taught to me by a mental performance coach who was working with my son for baseball.
And he said, comparison is the biggest performance killer. Because think about that first tail strike version is like, well, everybody's better than me. I shouldn't have done that. Right. I'm comparing myself to other pilots now. The other mindset, though, is a learning mindset. And what he taught my son to do, whether it was his worst outing or ever. And I've used this, my own life is ask yourself two simple questions. Number one is, hey, what did you do? Well, yeah, you Had a tail strike. But is there anything else you did well on the flight and what did you learn?
And the most important thing is to go to somebody who's a coach, like yourself, or to your instructor and say, here's what I think I learned, but can you help me get better in this? Because now you're just looking at. It was an outcome that helps me get gooder. I want to get gooder, right?
[00:11:11] Tammy Barlette: Yeah. You know, I find there's a lot of perfectionists in aviation and it's just so detrimental. And I like to say that there's no perfect flight. And when I was briefing my students. So the only difference between you and me is how many mistakes you make and how big they are. I make them too. And we have to just simply learn from our mistakes. You know, you can't just, you know, go, oh, well, I suck. You know, you're talking about your son. And what can you learn? You know, I, I teach the students that I mean, then when I say students, I mean student pilots all the way through 27,000 hour CFIs that take this course is that, you know, you have to just learn from those errors and don't define yourself. You know, you finish your flight, do your two up, two down, one question, meaning what's two things I did great, what's two things I didn't do great and I could work on? And what question do I need to go get answered? Because there's usually some. And you know, a lot of times we, as perfectionists, we tend to avoid the things we screwed up because we don't want to either tell anybody or show our cards that we aren't good at something.
But we have to just be okay with facing that because that's the only way to get better is to take those errors and go, hey, help me. This is what I work on. And that's one of the harder things, especially as perfectionists.
[00:12:22] John Ramstead: I love that. Now, who do you tend to work with? Individual pilots, flight departments, training schools. Who are some of the people that you're working with nowadays?
[00:12:30] Tammy Barlette: At this point, I'm just working with individuals and in general aviation, anybody who wants to jump in and take the class. And like I said, it's really a level up program. So if you understand the power of your mind, wherever you're at, if you want to level up, whether you're a zero hour student who wants to just start off on the right foot or you're upgrading one seat to another and you want to make sure you're on your game or you're an instructor who. I had this instructor take the course. A 4000 hours instructor. He said it was his best birthday gift ever because he was, he was massive perfectionist and he was trying to do everything perfectly. He didn't even recognize it and he's like, wow, you know, I mean, maybe you want to learn techniques to help your students. I am working on a CFI mindset course. There'll be specifically for instructors but it's not Bill yet.
[00:13:13] John Ramstead: That'll help bring the joy back. I'm sure some of these folks. Well, Tammy, it has been great to see it. This is the first time we. Well, we met in first. One at a time. First time we've ever done this in person.
[00:13:23] Tammy Barlette: Absolutely.
[00:13:23] John Ramstead: This is so great to have you here. So keep knocking them alive out there and I hope Verticon is a smashing success for you.
[00:13:28] Tammy Barlette: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:13:30] John Ramstead: All right. Absolutely. See you, Val. See you.
