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As you will hear when you listen to this episode, a couple of recent events have led me to dive into the topic of optimism versus pessimism this week. My intent is to get you to do a bit of self-reflection and consider whether you are a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person.

Neither is right or wrong, but it is important to understand where you are on the optimism / pessimism scale both for you own well being and for those around you personally and professionally. The intent of the episode is very much to make you think about your own personality and what your coping strategies might need to be to cater for wherever you are on the scale. Have a listen and please let me know what you think - I would love your feedback on this hugely important topic.

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

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Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

Having thought I was leaving the operational world behind me when I handed over my command of RAF Coningsby, only a little more than a year later, in January 2008 I found myself getting on an aircraft to head to Afghanistan as the incoming Commander of Kandahar Airfield, one of (at that stage) only two strategic airfields in the country.

There are a huge number of great leadership points and operational experiences that I want to cover in this chapter of my career and so this relatively short 9 month tour will result in several episodes of the podcast and I hope you enjoy them all.

In this episode, I set out some of the context and the preparation for my departure. I conclude with my arrival in country and hopefully set the scene for what is to follow over the next few episodes!

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

Another week and another great guest on the show. Rory Underwood is probably best known for his amazing skill on the rugby pitch. He represented England for 12 years, and still holds the try scoring record for an England player with 49 tries from 85 international appearances for his country.

Rory was also a highly successful Royal Air Force pilot and, having followed that path myself, I marvel at his ability to deal with the challenge of flying training at the same time as playing rugby at the international level - that was an amazing balancing act and Rory talks about it a lot on the podcast.

For just over 25 years now, Rory has been in the corporate world. He is the founder and CEO of Wingman, a highly successful consultancy and leverages all that he learned from the rugby pitch and the RAF to help companies improve their teams, their individuals, and their corporate strategy.

We cover a tremendous amount of ground in this episode and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it.

NOTE: Rory makes substantial reference to his flying career and there are a number of expressions and acronyms that might not be clear to the average listener. I hope the following notes help to demystify some of the terms used:

• Alpha refers to angle of attack, which in simple terms is the angle between the wing and the airflow. It is critical to aircraft performance and frequently used as a key element of an approach to land or in high performance manoeuvring.
• Instrument flying is the term used when flying the aircraft purely by reference to instruments rather than using any external visual cues. It is critical when flying in cloud or poor weather and is a key skill for all military and commercial pilots.
• SCT refers to Staff Continuation Training. Typically a training organisation will have a certain amount of flying hours allocated to enable the staff and instructors to keep up their personal flying skills.

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

Recording my guest for this week was one of the most fun conversations I have had in a long time. Robert (Cujo) Teschner is a former US Air Force F15 and F22 fighter pilot, who now runs the VMax Group of leadership trainers in the US.

Cujo is a bestselling author and a prize winning speaker and when you listen to this interview you will realise why! Discovering he had serious colorectal cancer at the age of only 39, his life transformed dramatically as he had to step away from the flying career he loved and totally restructure his life. His transition out the US Air Force was not straightforward but he learned a huge amount along the way, all of which helped him build the very successful business he has today.

Cujo's story is an incredible one and I am sure you will find his experiences and insights fascinating and inspirational in equal measure.

If you're a fan of flying stories, I'm pleased to say there are a few of those for you to enjoy as well! Most importantly though, there are an abundance of life lessons and great leadership tips in this episode and I really hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed making it!

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

It's always very hard giving up a great job and moving on from RAF Coningsby was no exception. The blow was softened a bit by the fact that I went from there to the Higher Command & Staff Course and subsequently to the Royal College of Defence Studies, so 2007 was, for me, definitely a year of "back to the classroom"!

In this personal stories episode, I aim to give you a flavour of these two amazing training opportunities which, whilst very different, were hugely helpful not only in developing my brain, but also with developing a wide range of deep and lasting professional relationships. It's rare that anyone gets such long training interventions during their professional career but the military is an organisation that really does do this well and I definitely made the most of it!

I really hope you enjoy the story!

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

WARNING: This episode contains graphic descriptions of torture and interrogation as well as frequent bad language.

My guest this week is John Peters. John flew Tornado GR1 aircraft as an RAF pilot and was shot down and captured on his very first operational mission during the Gulf War of 1991. He was subsequently held as a Prisoner of War for 7 weeks, during which time he was brutally interrogated and tortured on a routine basis. The traumatic pictures of him (and others) that were released by the Iraqi regime whilst John was in captivity went around the world and still shock to this day. However, when he was released from captivity at the end of the war, it was those same images that were to transform his life completely in the years that followed.

Although we focus quite heavily on his time in captivity, that is not really what this podcast is about. The bigger story is all about what John learned about himself during his time as a PoW, and the opportunities that he has been able to leverage to forge a successful business career as a result. He has built up an extensive leadership development, speaking, and coaching career that he has been able to use to benefit countless others in the 25 years since he left the Royal Air Force, and he is able to use first hand examples of resilience and dealing with adversity that very few can match!

This is a powerful, emotional and incredibly interesting story and we have a great discussion about a wide range of leadership issues along the way. I really hope you enjoy it.

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text Message

We kick off Season 3 of the show with a fascinating guest who has an amazing family story and who lives in a fabulous part of the world. Oh, and he has a lot of great perspectives on leadership too!!

Doug Rattray is the Managing Director of Fugitives' Drift Lodge & Guest House in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. Set right between the famous Anglo-Zulu war battlefields of Isandlwana and Rouke's Drift, Doug and the team at Fugitives' Drift specialise in battlefield tours but also have a private game reserve on their property and offer wonderful walking in a spectacular landscape.

My reasons for interviewing Doug on the podcast are somewhat broader though. His family history is a story of tragedy to triumph and with serious amounts of resilience along the way. Doug's father, David Rattray, was tragically murdered in 2007 and it would have been the easiest thing in the world for his wife Nicky to take the young Doug and his brothers and move away from Fugitives' Drift to start a new life elsewhere.

However, Nicky didn't do that! She forged ahead with continuing David's legacy and expanded by creating the David Rattray Foundation to improve the educational prospects of local children in this very challenging area of South Africa. The results are both fabulous and inspirational and I very much hope you enjoy this amazing story, and that it inspires you to visit the wonderful place that is Fugitives' Drift.

You can find out more about Fugitives' Drift here:

https://www.fugitivesdrift.com/

Support the show

Thank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.

You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.

You can find more about me here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBob

Website: https://leading4life.co.uk/