Pilots have a name for believing that feeling: spatial disorientation. It kills experienced pilots who had every reason to trust themselves. The only thing that saves you is the instruments, and the discipline is the cross-check. You scan all six, and when one disagrees with the rest, you don't pick the one you like. You find the one that's lying.

The first time I flew into clouds on purpose, it was the most unnatural thing I had done in an aircraft. As a new pilot you are trained to look outside: the horizon, other aircraft, a quick glance at power and airspeed, then back outside. Flying on instruments in bad weather reverses all of it. I couldn't stop looking at the cloud as we approached, because everything I had been taught said to. As we went in and the cockpit dimmed, I locked onto the instruments and started my scan. Instrument flying is more precise than anything you do in clear air, and you have to notice a trend before it gets away from you.

Any decision big enough that you can't see it clearly is cloud. That is when your judgment starts telling you what you want to hear, and it sounds exactly like confidence. Most of us check a decision like that against one instrument, usually the one that already agrees with us. Smart, confident people fly straight into the ground that way, calm the whole way down.

Pilots fix it with more than one instrument and the discipline to cross-check them. Leaders can do the same with a board of advisors. In Making New Mistakes I wrote about building an informal one, a technique I copied from leaders I watched use it: a Skeptic, a Technical Expert, an Eternal Optimist, and a Pragmatist. None of them need to know they are on it. Since then I have rebuilt mine around what each person reads, the way a panel is built around what each gauge reads:

Most people build the board and then use it backward. They bring a decision to their six people, and when the room splits, they side with whoever already agreed with them. That turns advice into permission. The mistake you can't catch alone shows up in the gap between two honest readings, so when your advisors split, go straight at the gap. Put the two who disagree in a room, let them argue it in front of you, and listen hardest to the one telling you what you don't want to hear.

None of this hands the decision to the board. A pilot who scans six gauges still has to fly the airplane, and a board that agrees on everything is just your gut with company.

KEY TAKEAWAY: When your advisors disagree, the answer is in the gap, so chase it instead of picking the reading you like.

Here is the test I would hold any leader to, myself included. Look at your last three big decisions. If no one on your board pushed back on any of them, you don't have six instruments. You have one, repeated six times.

Reply and tell me who's on your six, and which seat is empty. The full method, the scan I run on my own optimism, is the Trust the Instruments framework at etladvisory.aero/frameworks.

Written by Travis Wright | ETL Advisory

Leadership and strategy for the people who lead aviation and the organizations that serve it.

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