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To disregard the status quo and embrace new possibilities in our relentless pursuit of better. Thank you. Bonjour Lille. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Barry. This is Josh, one of the brilliant minds behind Pantheon. Our upcoming keynote session is about facing fear, right? And Josh and I wanted to discuss a common business fear which is besides standing on a stage like this. Transitioning digital platforms, right? That's spot on Barry. And it's fear that holds us back. Fear of breaking things. Fear of going over budget. Fear of owning a decision that turns out not to have been a success. But embracing a new digital platform or a new practice like Pantheon and WebOps is sometimes necessary to achieve the results that we want to see. Right, so Josh, you know, can you share with the audience the key impacts that Pantheon's WebOps platform can do with businesses navigating through exchange? Yeah, so yesterday actually Dries gave this wonderful presentation about Drupal Village. And I really, I found it quite entertaining and also informative. And I sort of think, you know, Pantheon and WebOps, we look at that and we see a lot of the people in Drupal Village still pouring their own foundations or doing their own plumbing. And our work is to elevate them so they can move more quickly and focus on the house around them and entertaining for their guests. And not just be fast, but also deliver higher quality because they can continue to improve the house after its first built, not just get stuck with whatever was put in place the first time. Right, well, valid points. But what about the macroeconomical situation, right? A lot of companies, they are afraid to invest. They look at every euro or dollar, whatever you want, three, four times before spending it. Yeah, that is absolutely a the question in this environment. But I think our perspective is that only teams that can move fast and with focus can reliably deliver return on investment because otherwise you just end up stuck on these never ending projects that often have questionable business value. Hey, and what about data safety? Also an important topic, right? So how does Pantheon ensures that all digital assets will be safe during a transition and beyond? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're architected for security and in addition to the structural integrity that comes with strong foundations and professionally laid plumbing and wiring. You know, we provide great, you know, home security systems to keep all your digital artifacts safe. And as a member of the Drupal steward program, we participate in the neighborhood watch of Drupal Village, if you will. Right. So one final question, Josh, thank you. And that's about, you know, small and big companies, you know, they all, for them, the ease of use is vital, right? How does Pantheon ensures a user friendly experience? So our core is built around the developer experience. And our perspective is that a great developer experience that unlocks velocity and iteration is how you get a great user experience, whether you're thinking about the end user experience of the site publicly facing itself or the Drupal user experience for content editors or site builders. That's something that you need to continually invest in improving based on, you know, improvements in the core technology as well as feedback you're getting from others. So that ability to get the site live and keep improving it afterwards is critical to that great user experience. It's how great digital projects are built. Makes sense. Thanks, Josh. Well, those were my questions. And before we warmly welcome Sarah, who will share with us her lessons about how to manage fear and stress. I want you all to remember just one sentence about this scripted three minute dialogue, which is with Pantheon, you are able to transition your digital platform fearlessly efficient, and it will be a very renewable, sorry, a remarkable journey, right? So, visit the site of our booth and looking forward to meet you all, right? Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Hello, everybody. That was a lukewarm welcome. I've come all the way from London. Come on. Thank you. Thank you. I know that's not very far. Actually, I know we've got people from all over the world. So thank you very much for coming and listening to me talk today. And I was asked to come and talk to you about leadership, and in particular that moment when you go from being led to becoming a leader. Because I know that perhaps many of you are familiar with a proprietary system where you're led, but with an open source system, you have the opportunity and the challenge to lead yourself, but also others. So this is the moment for you to stick your head above the parapet and lead into a future which is unknown and full of possibility. And that's terribly exciting, isn't it? It's also kind of terrifying, I think. I was kind of reflecting back on my own leadership journey and some of the highs and the lows, and I was wondering what piece of advice I would have given myself as I was about to embark on my leadership journey. And I think I would have said this. The biggest thing that will get in your way is you. And therefore, the biggest and most important thing that you'll learn is how to get out of your own way so that you can reach your full potential. And then you can figure out how to get out of other people's way so that they can reach their full potential. And if you figure all that out, you're off to a flying start. And truthfully, it took me about 40 years to work that out. And I very much doubt that you have the time or the inclination to wait that long. So I'm going to give you the edited highlights of my leadership journey so that you can lead authentically and skillfully and fearlessly. So let me start at the beginning. When I was first promoted to squadron leader and I was selected to do an operational command in Kabul, Afghanistan. You can probably tell from the photograph what time of year this was. Sometimes I wish I'd had a more professional photograph taken, but, you know, it was Christmas so I was feeling jolly. So anyway, I've been promoted and I was the commander of the detachment. And the mission was to get people safely from A to B in support of Afghan government forces. So think of us as a battle taxi basically. And I was in charge of the 120 people that were dedicated to this mission. And I wanted to do a great job. I wanted to be a great leader. I also wanted to be liked. And I think I had this idea that to be an effective leader had to be popular. So I did what we all do when we want to be liked. I tried to fit in. I tried to be like everyone else. I tried to be one of the boys, actually, because they were mostly boys. So I tried to do more pull-ups and more press-ups. I tried to fly lower, faster. I would use coarse language because that's what I thought the boys were doing. I'm not saying that's what they did. It's just what I thought I should do. And, you know, it works to an extent, but in my experience, the mask will always slip eventually. And I can remember the day it did. It wasn't a particularly remarkable day. It was just another tasking day in Kabul. And I was flying into a helicopter landing site that had flown into many times during that detachment and even on that day. Now, when you fly in Afghanistan, you always fly as a pair so that you've got someone else to help you out if you get in trouble. So I was actually tucked in as the second aircraft behind the lead aircraft and we were flying in like this into this landing site. And I flew through a little bit of the downwash of the lead aircraft and my aircraft started to fall out of the sky. So I pulled in the lever and that's the thing that makes you go up in a helicopter basically. I pulled in the lever but we're still sinking. We're dropping out of the sky, so I pulled in a bit more and we're still sinking. So I pulled it all the way up to my armpit and eventually we arrested our race at the scent. We made a safe landing. And after we landed, I remember my co-pilot, he was junior to me and he turned to me and he said, you've overpowered the aircraft and you've overstressed it. You pulled too much power. I couldn't be sure but he sounded unimpressed and I remember kind of stowing that away as he thinks I messed that up. Now, you don't have time to dwell on these things so I carried on flying the mission and I did it successfully and I didn't think about it again until I was back in Kabul International Airport and I was taxing into my normal parking spot and remember, as I came to a stop, my thoughts returned to this comment and I remember feeling a bit peed off about it, to be honest. So anyway, in the Puma helicopter, when you bring that to a stop, you apply the tow brakes and then you pull in the parking brake, which is a bit like a handbrake in a car and it's quite an old aircraft so there's a bit of a knack to getting things done. You have to kind of hoick it up and twist it into place. So this is what I did. And I may have used slightly more vigor than normal on accounts of being annoyed by this comment so I kind of hoicked it up like that, which would have been fine if it had been the parking brake. But it was the collective lever, the thing that makes you go up in a helicopter. So we cartwheeled about 30 feet into the air at this point and the Puma's famously, this Puma aircraft that I'm talking about, it's very narrow with a high centre of gravity so it falls over quite easily. So we now imagine this aircraft was going to topple over and we were going to thrash ourselves to death. Fortunately that didn't happen and we miraculously landed back on all three wheels at which point my co-pilot turned to me again and said, so what happened there? At which point I knew he was unimpressed. And that was the point I realised I was so busy thinking about what he thought about me that I'd nearly killed us. Anyway, we walked back in to do the debrief, debrief the day mission and then we started to prepare for the night mission and I started to breathe the night mission. And I stood in front of 120 people and I remember just as I was about to breathe the night mission one of my crew said to me, just wanted to check, boss, you did have a bit of a shaky experience just there. Are you okay to fly tonight? And I think it was the kind of unexpected kindness that sort of caught me off guard. And I said, yes, I am fine to fly. And as I said the word fly, my voice betrayed me and it started trembling. And it was really obvious to 120 people that I was fighting back tears. And you could see everyone awkwardly looking at the floor. Anyway, I thought, goodness, Sarah, you know, pull yourself together. So I did and I managed to get through that and flew the night mission and it was all fine. And I resolved never to show that kind of emotion ever again because we were in a war zone and they needed a strong leader. And I thought I'd got away with it. But when I got home a few months later I discovered that I had earned myself a nickname. They were calling me Jekyll and Hyde. Presumably because I could be a bit moody and a bit unpredictable and I was devastated by this. I mean, I've been called worse names honestly but this one really got to me because I knew it was true. Because I was a bit moody. I am a little bit emotional and I desperately tried to hide it from the people in my team and the second I had shown them a glimpse of the real me had been rejected. And you might say, I don't think being called a nickname is rejection of course you'd be right, rejection is very personal but that's how I took it at the time. Now the point is, is that even if there were some people that had rejected me there were other people who I know benefited from my style of leadership from maybe being a little bit more emotionally transparent or a bit more maternal or feminine or whatever you want to call it. So I think the key point here is that there's no point trying to mould yourself into something you're not because the real you will shine through eventually anyway and quite right too because there are people out there that need you exactly as you are but notice I've said people, not everyone because the truth is I'm not everyone's cup of tea we cannot be everything to everyone all of the time. So there are going to be times that people don't like what you say or do there are going to be times that you don't feel like the popular kid so if you want to lead authentically you need to be able to tolerate a little bit of rejection from time to time but actually I want to take that one stage further I think it's not just enough to tolerate a bit of rejection I think we actually need to be able to embrace it and I'll tell you why. I'm not saying it's unthinkable but we've been assigned a hostage recovery mission so a woman had been taken captive and she had been held hostage for a week and the powers that be were trying to negotiate her release and we had the call to say we need you to go in at six o'clock tomorrow morning and go and get this woman out and take her home to safety. We left, we prepared the mission and I sent my cruise to bed for a good night's sleep so that it could be in early in the morning to do this mission and at midnight I got a call and they said the negotiations have slowed down and it's not going to happen at six a.m. tomorrow morning it's going to happen tomorrow night so I was looking at a long day for my cruise and that might not seem significant but actually it's been proven that error rates go up when you've been on duty for more than 12 hours so I had to weigh up the operational risk now and I had a couple of options I could go and wake them all up and say go back to sleep but have a lie in and I'll get you back in later or I could accept that they were going to have a long day in the knowledge that had an unbroken night's rest so I went with option B and when they came in in the morning I said sorry there's been a change of plan relax for the rest of the day I'll get you back in later on when I need you and most people were fine about this but there were two people who did not like this and they challenged me and they said this is outrageous what do you expect us to do all day we can't go back to sleep and do you know what I said I said I don't care the hostage is our priority so stop complaining and I'll get you back in when I need you now why am I telling you this well at the time I believed I'd done the right thing I've made a decision which I think was the right decision and I needed my whole team to get behind me and execute that decision and honestly they were being a bit whiny but I could have dealt with that more skillfully because I really wanted to get that woman home I'm sure you can all you know feel that sense of urgency that you would feel to get someone home safe but there's no point sending six people to die to try and save one person so I had to know that I wasn't unnecessarily compromising the safety of my crews by sending them on a mission at the end of a long day and the only way I can be sure of that is if people can challenge me because when people can challenge you rather than one person making a decision and six people blindly following your orders you've got the weight of seven people behind that decision you've increased the collective intelligence behind that decision the buy-in behind that decision and the probability of success of that mission so if you translate that back into what you do think of all the strengths that the people in your team bring to the table we all have slightly different ways of seeing things and doing things and you're all brilliant but there's no point having brilliant people in your team if you can't harness that intellectual power and for that to happen everybody's got to have a voice and everybody's got to be able to challenge you and when they challenge you you've got to be classy about it so that they do it again and truthfully I found that kind of hard I could be kind of prickly when people challenge me it could be hostile and while some people did I learned later that other people weren't challenging me they were staying quiet in other words I was getting in other people's way and that's the opposite of the kind of leader that I wanted to be and I hated myself for that so why was I doing it? I'll tell you why because every time someone challenged me or called me a nickname I took that as personal rejection and the reason I did that is because I believed I deserved to be rejected and the reason I did that is because deep down I was scared that I wasn't good enough and I'm not telling you that so you can feel sorry for me this isn't a public therapy session by the way I'm telling you that because I have lost count of the amount of brilliant people who share this fear in some way and what's even more tragic about it is that they give themselves a hard time for it too but let me tell you giving yourself a hard time for being human doesn't help you grow it actually makes it worse so I discovered that the very first thing that we need to do to get out of our own way is to forgive ourselves for being human and that's easy to say but it's quite hard to do particularly with high achievers so I wanted to share a bit of evidence that will hopefully convince you that you can actually forgive yourself for being human so believe it or not our brains are still developing until our mid-20s particularly this sort of the cognitive part of the brain that's responsible for kind of processing emotions ok so what that means is that as you're growing up when you go through those childhood disappointments so the first time you fail an exam or you get dumped you don't have the emotional equipment to process that the way that fully grown adults like I do and so the brain will find that disproportionately painful and because of that it develops a fear to make sure that we don't do it again and that's why we end up with a fear of failure or a fear of rejection or a fear of being wrong or a fear of being right and these are all just manifestations of this underlying fear of I'm not enough mind manifested as a fear of rejection and that's important for a couple of reasons first of all if you recognize yourself and anything I've just said can I reassure you that you are not alone and you're not broken you're wonderfully human but the second reason that's important is because we've developed these fears in other words we've learned to be afraid of these things which means we've learned to be afraid of things that won't kill us which means that we can do the things we're afraid of and we'll live probably so what that means is if you want to be the best leader that you can be you need to do the things that scare you and in fact you probably need to do the things that scare you most and I'm not talking about skydiving here I'm talking about embracing discomfort so maybe that is showing up as your true self or maybe it's inviting challenge or making an unpopular decision those things will feel uncomfortable and that's a good sign we need to lean in and there's a couple of scientific reasons as to why we can actually afford to be excited about discomfort so the first one is we actually do our best work when we are in stretch so we don't want to be really bored and we don't want to be totally stressed out either we want to be just uncomfortable enough that's where we do our best work we perform at our best so please tell us as an invitation to be excited when you feel uncomfortable but the other reason that we can feel excited is it's actually where we do our best learning so we used to refer to the stages of learning maybe some of you are familiar with this but when you learn any new skill including leadership because it is a skill we can learn you start off at unconscious incompetence i.e. you don't know what you don't know so you can imagine you'll be brilliant at it so when I was 12 I watched Top Gun and I went that looks brilliant I'm going to be a pilot I had no idea if I could fly or if I'd even enjoy it but I knew I wanted to wear one of those jacket with patches on it so really cool and then I got into my first cockpit and I went I have no idea how to fly this thing and those people over there they all seem to know what they're doing that's the uncomfortable moment isn't it it's also the moment where we go I've got imposter syndrome I can't do it and we have this overwhelming tendency to assume that we're broken and that we have to cure imposter syndrome so that we can actually progress but actually it's just a sign that we've reached the phase of conscious incompetence and we can use that phase to identify the gaps in our knowledge and maybe to use the other people around us who seem to be further along to help us to learn and grow so don't let imposter syndrome get in your way and don't use it as an excuse to stay in your comfort zone push into discomfort and ascend through the stages of learning and every time you do that you are training your brain you are teaching it actually I can do the things that are scary or difficult and I can survive them and every time you're actually kind of rewiring your brain and that means that you're actually continually evolving not just into the best version of you but someone who has self-trust and self-confidence and that means that the next time you get in your own way because you will, because we're human or the next time someone else gets in your way you have everything you need to push through and you might surprise yourself at what you're capable of so believe it or not I was actually the first female helicopter pilot to fly special forces in the UK and some people clap at that by the way but no no one ever claps and I always make them clap just so you know anyway I was the first British female helicopter pilot to fly special forces but I remember at the start there was a little bit of resistance I remember them saying to me girls can't fly special forces and I said why can't they and they said well you would compromise the mission because if the helicopter gets in trouble in the middle of a mission they're going to have to protect you but they won't be able to help themselves because you're a woman so you would compromise the mission so I challenged this I said are you sure about that would you mind asking the special forces what would happen in this scenario and to their credit they did and I said if the helicopter goes down in the middle of a mission you're not going to see us we're going to be running faster than any of you can run towards our target and I'm certainly not going to glorify military action at this point but I need to be real with you about what was going on and the missions they were going on were judged to be the highest strategic importance to global security for months sometimes years in the planning and they've got a window this big to complete their mission so they're not going to switch their focus at this point to babysitting pilots they're going to stay focused on their mission and I don't mind admitting at this point there was a bit of an uncomfortable moment for us as we realized these big strong people weren't going to become our personal bodyguards but I also remember feeling really proud because these incredibly capable people believed that I could step up to the mark even though it was uncomfortable and I thought do you know what I reckon I can actually so off I went and flew special forces missions and the point is this is that we are far more capable than we often give ourselves credit for so we just need to lean into a little bit of discomfort to do it and don't wait for someone else to go first don't wait for someone to blaze that trail for you just do it and if someone else gets in your way be prepared to challenge them because they might not know what they're talking about now truth time there's going to be some mistakes along the way actually mistakes are not a bad thing but we tend to resist that as human beings and I want to show you why so this is an example of one airliner nearly landing on another airliner in Barcelona in 2014 and this is what happened eight years later exactly the same incident different airline different airport but another airliner nearly lands on another airliner now what are you thinking at this point you might be thinking well they've not learnt from their mistakes right I taught air safety at the Defence Academy of the UK for three years and showed this footage and for three years everyone said well they haven't learnt from their mistakes but think about how many take-offs and landings have happened in that intervening period thousands, millions probably and none of them were serious because of the recovery actions of the crew and yet our instinctive response is often to say well we're not learning and that's because the brain kind of is wired to think negatively so we tend to disregard positive information and therefore we'll assume that mistakes are a sign we're not learning but it's actually the opposite which is true it's the ones who are afraid of making mistakes that don't learn imagine if I said to you now don't touch that what are you going to want to do you're going to want to touch it aren't you because we learn from doing don't we and because the brain operates on it if it's not broken don't fix it we tend to do our best learning when we get it wrong now I'm not saying that's an excuse to be careless I know nobody wants to make mistakes but being ruled by a fear of making mistakes will not help you grow and if you want to accelerate your growth and your innovation then you need to rethink what growth looks like and it looks like this having the courage to try things that other people find too scary or too difficult leaning into discomfort and then accepting that there are going to be some mistakes and the good news is is that you can absolutely turn those mistakes into learning the key is what you do with them and two things need to happen first of all we need to take ownership of that mistake because you can't learn from it if you're in denial about it the second thing that needs to happen is we need to share it so that we multiply the learning and this is where being the best version of you actually leads beautifully into the best version of collaboration because you're part of a community of developers and if you want to innovate better and faster with more success then the key is collaboration and the best way to do that is actually to share mistakes because if you think about that mistakes tend to be human in nature it's rarely technology that fails these days even if it is it's probably because of kind of an input error right so it's usually humans that make mistakes and we're all human which means we can all learn from your mistakes but I get that it's easier said than done right I've made lots of mistakes in my career and I talk very openly about my mistakes and I'm very comfortable doing it but I wasn't always so let me share with you how I first gains the courage I suppose to start sharing so we were in Kenya we were out there doing dust training when you fly in sandy environments and you get close to the ground you kick up all the sands and you can't see where you're going so you have to practice very special techniques so we were out there practicing these dust landings and I was the instructor and I had a student who was doing the flying and basically he was sort of flying these approaches out in the middle of the desert and after he'd done a few approaches we'd actually blown all the dust away so it was too easy you could see where you were going so what we did is we actually changed our approach angle by about 10 degrees so that we could kick up new dust on the way into our landing point and when we landed I noticed that around the helicopter there were a few sort of twigs and leaves on the floor and I looked back and left of our approach lane and I could see this tree and its branches were looking a bit mangled and I realised we probably trimmed this tree on the way down with our rotor blades now this is a battlefield helicopter its very robust and I looked in at my engine instruments nothing's over heating I got airborne, flew the aircraft a bit all seems to be flying fine so we agreed that the aircraft was fine and we completed the mission and when I got back to my forward operating base I got on the sat phone to my boss and I said just wanted to let you know that we had a small incident with a tree and at this point I heard a sigh on the end of the line and he said oh I've got 120 soldiers to move tonight I need every helicopter and I said no no it's fine the helicopter is definitely air worthy so we can fly that mission tonight he said okay fine and about 20 minutes later another pilot came in who had had a look at my aircraft and he said I would like you to explain to me on what planet you think that aircraft is air worthy so quick physics lesson this is what a rotor blade is supposed to look like from the side you can see it looks like a wing it's a mini wing it spins really fast creates lift the reason it creates lift is because the air has to travel further over the top so it travels faster which creates low pressure which creates lift in other words the shape of the rotor blade is quite important probably know what's coming this is what mine looked like definitely not air worthy so at this point we cancelled the mission and they conducted an inquiry they said we're quite curious to know how you hit the tree but we're really curious to know why you thought that aircraft was okay to fly and I stuck to my story I said well you know it's a robust helicopter the engine instruments were all fine it was flying fine and I remember it was at this point my boss looked straight into my soul and he said really are you sure you didn't know that it was damaged and at this point I hung my head because the second I had seen those leaves on the floor I knew it was bad but I was so embarrassed that I'd let it happen I just didn't want it to be true so I lied to myself and in doing so I endangered the lives of my crew by flying a badly damaged aircraft and I thought how am I ever going to admit that I knowingly risked the lives of my crew I was too proud to admit I'd made a mistake I don't think I can do that and that was the moment my boss did something amazing he went first he said actually Sarah I'd like to apologise because I put pressure on you to fly the aircraft that night and that must have made it hard for you now honestly I don't think he owed me an apology but I do remember thinking that was a really classy thing to do to take responsibility for his part in it and to apologise and I remember thinking it was a brave thing to do and I wanted to be brave so I gave my first speech really to a room full of pilots who looked about as impressed as you look right now I don't blame you at this point and I told them everything I've just told you and afterwards I said okay are there any questions and a hand was raised at the back and this person said actually I don't have a question I've got something I'd like to say to you though okay I did something really similar myself just last week and then someone over there said actually I did something like that too and people started sharing their mistakes and I realised in that moment that being excellent at what you do isn't about getting it perfectly right every time it's about having the courage to take responsibility for your mistakes and then sharing them with other people and the reason I'd found the courage is because my boss had shown me the way and he'd gone first and you were all embarking on your leadership journey so you can do the same thing so try this share a mistake that you made with a colleague because not only will they benefit from the learning but actually they'll probably be inspired by your courage and they'll share their mistakes too now I've been talking a lot about getting out of your own way and getting out of other people's way I'm really passionate that is actually really when you boil leadership down that's what it comes down to but there's a third stage that I want to share with you and that's helping other people get out of their own way and you might recall at the start I said I was quite preoccupied with being liked I was worried about fitting in it could really get in the way sometimes and I imagined for a long time I was the only one that had to deal with that fear but I think my greatest breakthrough in leadership was realising that I was less different than I imagined and actually everyone's going through the same stuff as you which means that you can use your own fear and your own experience to understand what other people in your team are going through and therefore lead more intuitively so we're still in Kenya but this time we're on Kazevac notice so that means that if there are any injuries because the army were out there training we would go and pick them up and take them down to Nairobi hospital for some reason they trusted me with another helicopter don't ask why but anyway we got a call in the middle of the night and they told us that a soldier had been bitten by a black mamba anyone know how long you've got with one of these? not a lot we went with a golden hour funnily enough I did this talk for vets recently and they went it's 45 minutes anyway but we were working on an hour so we knew we had to get the medic to the soldier's side within 60 minutes or the soldier is dead now this is the middle of the night in the mountains of Kenya and when you fly at night in a helicopter you have night vision goggles if you want to imagine get two toilet roll tubes and look through them but it basically turns everything green and it means you can see where you're going and it works by amplifying the ambient light so street lights from nearby towns moonlight even starlight but this is the middle of the mountains there are no towns no street lights and it was a snowstorm so there was total cloud cover so there was no moon and no starlight so what we were looking at was this incredibly uncomfortable but actually well below the normal operating limits to even get airborne but the soldier's going to die so what do you do? we decided to get airborne the next challenge is that he was on the side of a mountain not an aviation map by the way that's my depiction of what it looked like but he's where X is and normally at night we would fly at 250 feet which for reference is about the height of a 23 story building that building also was not there but I hope you can see if we'd done that we would have been in cloud and you can't see where you're going in cloud and this cloud got a mountain hiding in it so that would have been disastrous but what we had of getting to our casualty was to fly below the normal operating height now it's not been wrecked we don't know what's down there and it's really dark but the soldier's going to die what do you do? so we kept going the next challenge so as I say in mountainous terrain which is what we were this is looking kind of bird's eye view so normally when you go on holiday you're going from a 180 degree glide path to a flat runway but actually when you're flying in the mountains you fly a level approach and you use the mountain as your gradient essentially so that you've got references to fly along so this is what I was doing so I had the mountain right outside my cockpit window and I was flying alongside like this but if you remember it was really dark so I couldn't see the hill that was right outside my window now in the Puma helicopter you've got two side doors that the troops jump out of and my crewman said what about if I hang out of the side of this door on my monkey harness and then I shine this big light and then I can sort of tilt my tail into the side of the hill and I can kind of crab down the side of this hill flying down this beam so a bit like that now this is not standard it's not been practiced but our soldier's going to die so we decided to give it a go and it kind of worked and we got to 0.01 on the GPS so we knew our soldier must be somewhere just in front of us and at that point two things happened I started to lose sight of the top of the rotor blades we were about to go into cloud and the second thing that happened is the low height alarm went off which meant we were about one second from hitting the ground so at that point I dived into the lower ground I took my escape now at this point my heart is going like this I have nearly flown us into the side of that hill I can't go any higher because of the cloud I definitely can't go any lower or I will spread us across the side of that hill but the soldier's going to die what do you do? well we went round again and again and again trying everything we can think of and every time the same thing is happening and I am nearly hitting the ground and after 45 minutes I said I'm really sorry but we're going to have to go home and we left that man on the hill and we flew home in complete silence and when we landed my crew said to me we would have backed whatever decision you made but we were so relieved and you finally said that you were turning around and I looked at them and they were all shaking and it surprised me I thought I'd been the only one that wanted to turn back but I realised in that moment they would have followed me into the side of that hill and that taught me a profound and humbling lesson about what it is to be human because I was afraid of what people would think of me if I left that man on the hill and he died and if I'm honest I was probably more afraid of that than I was of actually leaving that man behind and the consequences of that and you know what I think that's exactly what they were afraid of too that's why they didn't say anything because we are more afraid of things that won't kill us than things that will kill us and sometimes leaning into discomfort means admitting you're scared of what people will think about you and the truth is is that everybody is just as scared as you are about things like that and you can use your fear to understand what other people might be scared of and therefore what they might need from you in that moment and what they needed from me in that moment was to go first and make an unpopular decision to leave a man behind so that we could live go first when you do that you're saying I'm just as scared as you are but we're in this together and I'll lead the way so I said at the start that my promise really was how to lead fearlessly the truth is is that we're all kind of born with this ability it's life that teaches us to be afraid as we've learned which means that everyone is going through this together and everyone is just as scared as you and actually when I reflect on that I realise that was true when I was looking back through my military career you know everyone was going through it together all those times I tried to mould myself to being someone that I wasn't I realised now I didn't fool anyone they had my number from the get-go and when they were challenging me or calling me names and actually them objecting to me that was them saying we see you as you are but we're with you anyway so years before I'd learned to accept myself for me they'd already done it which is proof that we are brilliant at getting in our own way but whether you believe it or not there are people out there who are rooting for you so go out there and do your thing do the things that scare you most show up as your authentic self invite people to challenge you make an unpopular decision and go first because the amazing thing about that is when you do that other people will follow your lead because fear is contagious but so is bravery and quite right to because there are people out there that need you exactly as you are thank you for listening honestly after this talk I'm absolutely speechless so it's good that other people actually providing us with the questions to us because I'm absolutely overwhelmed and that was wonderful thank you so much for sharing your experience and your thoughts that was very touching it was really true to heart and even though the examples are not of our world but I think to some extent we can certainly relate to some of the things that we do when we engage in open source work together with people we don't know so thank you for that so we have questions in the app if you go to the track you can actually post your questions that you have for Sarah there are already some questions that we have so as a pilot in the RAF yes how was it for you to engage in the digital realm and in your workshops at all in the digital realm what was the last thing you said so during your workshops during Covid, doing them digitally so forth so the helicopter rifle was 40 years old it did have a software update but yes I would probably not class myself as someone who was particularly gifted at technology and I think the thing about Covid is for people like me we were forced to level up and I learnt about Zoom and meetings online and I was quite resistant to it if I'm honest I wanted to stick with face to face and I put a lot of effort into justifying the old ways and putting a lot of effort into embracing the future would be better off but eventually I realised it was worth the effort and also realised that I was probably just scared of something I don't understand but actually I think what I've learnt is the fear will never go away you'll always find something to be afraid of but you learn not to be afraid of being afraid and you just push on through it so I think it was a really good lesson the thing about is flying related it's incredibly relevant to technology it's relevant to anything that we do because we're all human beings at the end of the day absolutely and when talking about pushing forward how do you know being a leader, being a boss of the team how do you know when to push forward and when to stop and listen and take into account the feedback that your people provide yeah absolutely I think that's a great question and that is something that you will inevitably learn and you will inevitably learn through a bit of trial and error I would say so let's take the Black Mamba as an example after we landed and they admitted that they wanted to turn back that would have been a great moment for me to dig a bit deeper and go why didn't you say anything what is it about that mission or about me as a leader what is it we got away with it this time but nobody died by the way the soldier was fine just in case some of you have forgotten about the soldier already okay we'll come back to that in a minute when you're safe on the ground and it's not time sensitive or it's not operational it's not safety critical those are great times to go right no one's going to die if we spend a bit of time collaborating now let's ask some really brave questions about what wasn't being said why weren't we speaking up and I didn't do that and that was probably a failure of leadership in the moment me making the decision to turn around and fly home I think that was the right thing to do so that's when people get behind you and execute your plan it's a great time to collaborate and ask some brave questions great so you were the boss of teams what would you do when you're not a boss and your leader is not accepting feedback what's the trick there yeah that's a great question okay I think there's a couple of things and I do get asked this question a lot and I often refer to toxic leadership and it's out there it exists okay so what can you do I think first of all I would start with the assumption no one gets out of bed to be a bad leader so they've probably got something going on that is causing them to be like that and the reason that I'm so honest about my own feelings as a leader is because I want people to see that it wasn't a desire to be bad it was my own fear so if they're a toxic leader they're probably more scared than you are so if you want to approach it in a really enlightened way you can maybe think what is it they're scared of maybe it's they're scared of looking stupid right so then you can plant the idea and then let them decide that it was their idea you know I had a boss that he would use to sort of shout at me and go no sir we're not doing it but I learned that if I just gave him the idea and gave him a couple of weeks to think about it he'd come back to me and go we're going to do this and I'd be like great fine yeah that's great because there's a lot of agencies and digital service providers here we are leaders ourselves but a lot of us also have leaders so I think that's a great suggestion and a tip for both sides of the table right also you were talking today about staying out of your your own way so what's your mantra what's your way of doing that how do you achieve that yeah it's a yeah and I think it's a really good question really making me think I think you have to be aware of how you're getting in your own way in the first place so if you and actually I study and practice mindfulness and I find that's such a good way if you start with a bit of self-awareness you start to notice where there's tension points in the mind and you'll just feel you know for me it's in my chest and I feel myself resisting something and I can feel myself pushing back against something and that's usually me getting in my own way and then mindfulness has really helped me to kind of see it accept it and then just let it go you don't have to engage with it you don't have to fuel it so I think a little bit of work on yourself really helps and then you can see where you're finding those tension points yeah so basically you have to understand yourself in order to not to understand yourself and forgive yourself as well it's really easy to then go why am I doing this because you're a human being and actually it's probably because you care about this so understand yourself forgive yourself and then just go and do it anyway basically wonderful so we have like one thing that us tech folks are afraid of sometimes is to submit a bug report something that is wrong with the software with our name on it and all so in case they did something wrong and it's not a bug right so they file the word something is wrong and it's not wrong after all that's a fear that some of us might have what do you suggest for them to do yeah and I totally understand that and that's why I shared the story about me not wanting to share my own very human mistake and I totally get that and there was a bit of me that was embarrassed but there was a bit of me that was scared on how it would come back on me because you are relying on you are hoping that you won't be badly punished for admitting that and there is no easy answer there's only a brave answer you set the conditions for people to be accepting of mistakes by going first you know hopefully you will inherit a culture where that growth mindset exists but if you don't you can create it now that's not easy but no one said it was easy being a trailblazer so I think you know you create the mindset around mistakes and you start by sharing your own mistakes also the people are wondering do you still fly yeah I do get asked that question a lot no I don't I don't fly I do this full time hopefully that was obvious from the way I spoke on stage and actually I give this my full attention and I love it and I love being able to share some of the learning that I got in the military with people outside for a couple of reasons one is the Air Force was brilliant and you know and I enjoyed it but it is nice to step out of your world and discover new worlds and I learned so much from the people that I work with and I find that I am more intellectually stimulated now than I ever was so I think it's a real privilege but also I'm aware that you know some of you maybe paid some UK taxes for the helicopters and I'm sort of trying to give back a little bit that I've taken out so thank you very much for supporting me and also I don't fly because I kept crashing so you know I think maybe we have one or two more questions that we can put into time so let me see here so there's quite a few questions coming in what kind of character traits should a leader have or can you learn them? I love this question so I remember early on someone described me as a natural leader and it's funny because I had quite an ego about that which is strange that you would feel proud of yourself for something you've done nothing to work at whatsoever but anyway it is one of those ideas that I was brought up with like you know you're a born leader the more I understand about leadership the less I think it is now of course there will be certain things that might predispose you and I think I don't know if confidence is something you're born with but I probably was for my age fairly confident and fairly assertive and I think for that reason from a young age I was selected for leadership type role so from the age of 12 when I joined the Air Cadets I was doing leadership which meant that by the time I joined the Air Force for six years you know so when your kids are at school whatever and they're putting themselves forward to be prefects so I think actually being born for it you might have certain character traits which means that you're more likely to be selected for leadership responsibilities early on and that gives you a head start but I think the bulk of it comes from learning actually and I also think I've learned as much about leadership in the military as I did when I was in I think I've learned more about influence more about understanding the human condition you know more about getting out of people's way whereas the military was very much like this way follow me so I think it's a constant journey and I think if I was to sum up a leadership journey I would say the first step is put yourself out there because you've got to expose yourself to it to learn know thyself your own way and then get out of other people's way brilliant good and when you were just starting as a pilot so what really kept you from waiting because as you say like it was challenging and you were challenged actually yeah what kept me motivated it's a great question I think that's a really important question because I think intrinsic motivation is really important and and I think it changes you know did I join because I wanted to serve my country yeah I mostly joined because of Top Gun if I'm honest because I thought it looked cool and I wanted to be cool what kept me going people told me I was cool basically you don't have to dig very deep but yeah what kept me going I think it probably was that sense of doing we felt like we were doing a good thing we were helping to keep people safer and we were pulling together through difficult times you know we were going to unpleasant situations or conditions and that kind of that sense of shared almost suffering but for you know for the greater good I think that's a difficult feeling to beat you know it's a real privilege to be able to do something that you genuinely are passionate about and that was much more important than the actual flying it was that sense of having a purpose I suppose thank you brilliant so I think we've gone through most of our time I want to thank you for your very inspiring story you'll be here for another 30 minutes or so so if anyone has had a question that you were afraid to ask 30 minutes left thank you again Sarah for your inspiring story for coming here and sharing that with us today thank you very much Sarah