What does a Mach 2 fighter jet have to do with feedback?
When I was an officer in the British RAF many years ago, I was primarily a Fighter Controller and Aerospace Battle Manager. Not Air Traffic Control (ATC) – their job was (is!) to keep aircraft apart and safe.
My job as a Fighter Controller (Intercept Controller) was to control Air Defence fighter aircraft and give them tactical information to intercept, identify, and/ or shoot down a target – another aircraft. ✈️💣
I used to intercept Russian aircraft when I was based in the Shetland Isles in the UK (mostly Bears, and once a Backfire), and also heroin smugglers in Central America, and was involved in a few other interesting situations, all of which I’m happy to chat about over a beer, wine, or coffee if you’re interested 🍺🍷☕.
We obviously used to ‘practice intercepts’ with live Lightning* fighter jets ✈️✈️ on a day-to-day basis, controlling them in the busy airspace in the North Sea off the east of the UK. That involved getting a brief from the pilots on what they wanted to achieve, then me planning and executing the ‘sortie.’
One of my favourite ‘sorties’ was what we called an Echo 13 Alpha (E13A). That involved 1 fighter aircraft (or sometimes more) being the ‘target’ ✈️and one or more being the intercepting ‘fighter’ ✈️.
I had to plan and split them a certain distance apart then turn them in so they flew straight at each other (separated by height for safety), each aircraft doing Mach 2+ (twice the speed of sound), so a closing speed of Mach 4+ (4 x the speed of sound!), and me giving the fighter ✈️ instructions to find and simulate shooting down the ‘target’ 💥✈️
On top of that, I also had to plan, work around, and avoid all the civilian airliners and other civilian aircraft, which seemingly always did their utmost to get in my way 🤦♂️😂!
Obviously, a couple of fighter jets doing Mach 2+ flashing past someone’s window seat might spill people’s drinks 😉 so I had to keep them a certain distance away.
It was full on adrenaline. We used to do 3 or if I planned well, 4 quickfire intercepts and the whole things was over in less than 30-35 minutes start to finish, when I handed the fighters back to ATC to take them home, usually desperately short of fuel.
We always used to debrief after each sortie – our culture was always about learning and getting better, and the only way to properly do that is to debrief.
I used to get feedback from various sources – my supervising Fighter Allocator (Airspace Battle Manager), fellow Intercept Controllers working in adjacent airspace (we had to co-ordinate plans and safety), and of course the pilots, all of whom took no prisoners and were always…um…not exactly restrained in giving their opinions, shall we say! 😎 I of course also gave my feedback, both as a Controller and as an Airspace Battle Manager.
Plus, every year, I used to have to do an annual evaluation, when ADGEEB (the Air Defence Ground Environment Evaluation Board) would come and sit next to me, watch me control my fighters and evaluate my performance. It was high pressure evaluation: ✅ or ❌ – pass or fail. And trust me, failure wasn’t an option here!
Our feedback culture back then (early ‘90s!) had some great things about it, and we did have a high-performance culture – but it wasn’t much of a D.E.A.R. feedback culture.
Building a great learning and improvement and high-performance culture in today’s workplace needs an ethos of what I call D.E.A.R. feedback.
This is the practical framework we really need in our day-to-day workplaces to get the best out of people in a psychologically safe environment – both giving and receiving feedback.
What is D.E.A.R. Feedback?
Good question. D.E.A.R. stands for:
D – Development (FeedForward – what you need to do to improve)
E – Evaluation (effectively ✅ or ❌, did you meet the required standard)
A – Appreciation (thanks and acknowledgment for doing a good job)
R – Reassurance (yes, you’re on the right track, keep going!)
In the context of our Fighter Control culture, there was a lot of high-pressure Evaluation: ✅ or ❌, and Development feedback – what we needed to do to be better.
Failure meant people could die, so it was our job to constantly Develop, learn and grow. That’s what we were training and practicing for – and what I had to put into action back then against the Russians and in the anti-heroin-smuggling operations in Central America back in the early 90s.
Practice, by the way, doesn’t make perfect – but it does make better. But only when there is Developmental feedback – when people understand what they need to do, what actions they need to execute to get better.
FeedForward, Marshall Goldsmith aptly calls it. Evaluation – ✅ or ❌ – on its own is rarely useful in a workplace and is often destructive in isolation.
While the D and E aspects were in plentiful supply in our Fighter Control/ Aerospace Battle context, there was, however, often a distinct lack of A. and R. In the Fighter Control context it sort-of worked ok. I say sort-of because when we had a leader who also added in more A and R it was even better – a whole leveling up on high-performance, in fact.
That applies even more so in today’s modern workplaces (which includes the ADF and Defence, who we do a lot of work with). We need to focus on building the A. and R. aspects more if we want psychologically safe high performing teams.
The Appreciation and Reassurance aspects are critical, essential foundations on which you can then build a much more productive and effective Development and Evaluation culture.
If all you do is Evaluate – “you’ve done well/ you’ve failed to meet standards” feedback – then people soon become demotivated.
Leaders, and people in general, tend to have a natural to do plenty of the “you’ve failed to meet standards” feedback. Especially when we’re under pressure, busy, and being evaluated ourselves by our managers – like most people in the workplace today! We like to judge (see my previous article – click here).
To enable people to better hear and accept the D. and E. aspects, we need to balance them with the A. and R. – Appreciation and Reassurance – parts of the equation. These are the parts that help build a truly psychologically safe culture.
If you use the A. and R. aspects to build a day-to-day, everyday culture of ‘Catching People Doing Something Right’ – telling people what you Appreciate and Reassuring them that they’re doing the right things and doing them well – then people are going to be more open to hearing that Developmental and Evaluation conversation and actually learning from it rather than getting defensive.
You’ll build a Growth Mindset culture where people feel acknowledged for what they do well and are then more open to hearing what they didn’t do well. They’ll be more open to hearing and taking on board the FeedForward of what they need to do to learn and grow – and then make the effort to develop.
If you don’t have the A. and R. foundation, people feel “you’re always telling me what I do wrong, you’re never telling me what I do well,” and even the most resilient will eventually disengage.
So, when you’re thinking about feedback to give to your team, make sure you’re stopping to consider all the D.E.A.R. aspects, and particularly the A. and R.
*The original General Electric Lightning (photo) had a terrible radar so couldn’t see much and required a lot of direction and support from me as their Intercept Controller.
I flew in the T5 training version and timed the aircraft from a full power brakes on standing start – brakes off to hitting 25,000 feet in just 54 seconds, climbing almost vertically from straight off the runway!
I was fortunate to spend a week with 11 Squadron as their thank you for my tactical intercept control helping them consistently defeat (thrash 😎!) the French fighters (Mirage F1s) in an air-to-air combat training exercise in France.
Our proven Giving and Receiving Feedback and Difficult Conversations training takes people through the D.E.A.R. giving and receiving feedback model, and more, and gives managers and leaders the practical skills they need to give and receive effective feedback.
We’ve had independent global benchmarking of our program that delivered a 26% increase in productivity, according to managers who were surveyed 9-12 months AFTER delivery of our Giving and Receiving Feedback program.
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