Watch or listen to this episode below.

Brief summary:

In this episode, we hear from Dr. Tony Cortés, a Director of Aviation Safety. Listen in as Tony and I discuss the personal drive that's pushed him through the many challenges in his life and career, and specifically a few points that he makes about fuel or a motivating force that finds you versus the other way around.

Key insights from this episode:

• TC: (at 9:38) TC: When you make a big mistake and you hit bottom or you think you've hit bottom, that imperative need to focus on that immediate recovery instead of dwelling on the error is just fundamental.

• (at 17:39) Dr. Cortes shared what he felt shifted internally when he needed to change his drive from one source to another.

• LA: (at 22:36) Leila Ansart speaks to managing your own ability to recover when negative, and even horrific circumstances happen in your world. What it comes down to is focusing on what you can control. Certainly there's not a whole lot you feel you can control, [like] when you lose someone that you love, or in other types of situations, like a loss of a job, or loss of clients or loss of your health. At those times, we can admit that we can’t control what’s happening, but we can try to identify the lessons that are there to be learned. So shifting your focus to be open to learning any lessons that are there, and focus on that --because there are more than likely a few things there you CAN control.

• (at 23:49) Tony and Leila discuss insights about leading across generations & cultures.

• (at 26:47) Dr. Tony Cortes shares how one of his ‘fuel sources’ found him, rather than the other way around. He tells the story of the incident that caused him to steer his career away from the operational and towards the accident prevention world --a field he originally had no interest in whatsoever.

• (at 33:37) Leila asks Dr. Tony how his own self-awareness of what drives him has been helpful to the teams he’s led. Tony discusses how leaders lead with asking questions vs. making statements, and how to be effective in sharing your drive and vision with others, including identifying your own errors in perspective.
  

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Transcript:

FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
EPISODE 2: Interview with Dr. Tony Cortés, Director of Aviation Safety at EagleView Technologies

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
INTRO: I’m excited to introduce to you today a leader in Aviation Safety, Dr. Tony Cortes. Dr. Cortes, who goes by Tony, is currently the Director of Aviation Safety for Pacific Fleet Aviation. Starting out his career in flight operations, both for the United States Air Force and Midwest Airlines, he transitioned into academia for about 10 years, teaching as a university professor, and then transitioned again into Aviation Safety, where he’s been in his current role (and a previous role with Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation).

Tony is the kind of professor you wish you had in every class in college: enthusiastic, caring and down to earth. I can't wait for you to get to know him today, in this episode, where we discuss the personal drive that’s pushed him through many challenges in his life and career, and specifically, a few points that he makes about ‘fuel’, or a motivating force, that finds you, verses the other way around. Welcome Tony! 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me on your show, Leila. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Absolutely. Why don't you, for the benefit of the listeners, just explain what you do and the company that you're currently employed with. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah, you bet. So my calling, if you will, in life is to protect people, protect resources and protect reputation. That is what a Director of Safety does. And that's what a safety officer does. Currently, I'm working for a flight department, specifically Aviation like you mentioned, that's part of the EagleView Technologies family. That's based out of Seattle. I work out of Florida and we have a fleet of aircraft, and I'm doing my best to work with those people to keep them safe.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Awesome. Now, Tony and I met in the last year, and it turns out we are Florida neighbors. Both [of us] are located in Florida in different cities. I have to say Tony, I always enjoyed our conversations in the capacity that we worked together specifically because your outlook on life is so energetic and positive. But I feel like the word ‘positive’ is a little ‘wah wah’.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah. It sometimes can be. I agree.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I admire the tenacity with which you pursue your directions in life and the stories that you've shared with me. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Well, thank you. It was a pleasure working with you as well. That's why I call you coach. You're a great coach. 

When you consider 'positivity', if you will, as what General Powell called it, the 'productivity multiplier' or an 'effectiveness multiplier'. It really does change things. I think it's also infectious. It's something you can transmit to others who you're working with. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yes, exactly. Fun fact, as you sent me over some fun facts prior to the recording here, it looks like your father was a linguist and I kind of went oh okay, makes sense because you do have very good diction and pronunciation. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Thank you. I don't know if it's because of that, but dad was a polyglot. Somebody who speaks many languages and his area of focus was Semitic Philology, which is a fancy way of saying languages of the middle east, near east so Hebrew and Arabic and things of this nature. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I find that in the experiences that you and I have discussed, you have this outlook that is about, these are my words but almost, what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow from this situation?

You've shared that numerous times. As somebody who's traveled quite extensively and lived in a lot of different places, I'm referring to my notes here, but you've traveled to 75 countries. You've lived in Germany, France, Spain, and throughout the US and multiple states. I would imagine that view, the difference in culture and how your understanding can be so different than those around you has, I would imagine, served you quite a bit. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
That is one of the greatest catalysts for self-growth in life, I think, is to travel and there's traveling, right? I'm not referring to taking a cruise ship down to Cozumel and drinking Margaritas in a bar, that's not really travel. 

I'm referring to as close as you can come to basically embedding in another culture and those countries that you listed, that you experience and the people, I mean you can make the argument that deep down everyone's the same but you can also discuss how our worldview is so different and somebody can look at a situation from another culture and see it's so different from how we see it. 

It's not just different countries, but also the ability to work for different employers. My former ones are radically different enterprises. One is a very traditional Japanese, 19th century founded enterprise and all of the values that go along with that and the other one is very tech-savvy, agile, artificially intelligent, engineering-based US one with some ramifications internationally. One of the fascinating things isn't just moving around the world to different countries, but seeing how different company cultures operate very often because of where they're tied to nationally. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yeah, absolutely. I would imagine that, one, having those different experiences gave you great fodder for empathy, for self reflection and the ability to see beyond yourself, but two, I would imagine you had a lot of quite interesting experiences and stories to tell and that really leads into the topic of this podcast which is: what drove you when you found yourself down on your knees (metaphorically)? What helped you to keep pushing through? Share something of that nature with us, if you would.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
We've all had experiences with adversity in one form or another. I think my first lesson that I really learned there that was intentionally taught versus just learned by doing it was, at the start of my career I was an air force officer and I remember going through basic training and there's this one time where my group of cadets had performed very very poorly. At two in the morning, we were dragged out of the barracks and punished because of it. I remember our drill Sergeant sitting there spraying us with water and making us do push-ups in the mud and with all the chiggers and mosquitoes and stuff. Then he had us go all the way down in the puddle and he started telling us how we had scored the bottom of all the possible teams and stuff like that. 

Then there was this big dramatic pause and he said, “ You lucky bastards“.  I knew we were all confused. Did we just hear what we just thought we heard? And then he went on to explain how when you hit rock bottom, there's only one direction to go and there's very little decision-making required. There is nothing but up after that. 

That gave me pause. It was  an intentional teaching moment but I have seen that it ties directly into aviation. It ties directly into any other high consequence setting. What I mean by high consequence setting is something where the stakes are very high, where small errors and mistakes can result in very big negative results because the people in those settings know that, be they surgeons, first responders, aviators, merchant mariners, et cetera. They know that therefore that resilience of prevention and the resilience of recovery, that's where I'm getting at here, is so critical.

When you make a big mistake and you hit bottom or you think you've hit bottom, that imperative need to focus on that immediate recovery instead of dwelling on the error is just fundamental. 

And so I'm thinking when the surgeon makes a mistake in the middle of an operating room and then maybe the assisting physicians or the nurses notice that mistake, that ability to acknowledge what has just happened and immediately transition to improvement and the next step and focus exclusively on that.  That resilience, I think, is kind of what was taught to me at 2:00 AM in the mud that morning. It kind of laid that foundation for me to grasp these concepts going forward that have proven very helpful. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I'm loving how you said to focus on the immediate recovery instead of dwelling on the error. I think if all of us could take that life lesson.  I feel I'm a highly resilient person based on the challenges and adversity I faced, yet that phrase is still so inspiring because it makes you say that there's even more improvement to be had. The way that I describe that is by shifting your focus. I see it. I'm very visual, so I see your focus as the direction that you're facing, the way that you're turning your head. 

Are you turning to the left where you're focusing and dwelling on it and marinating in the “oh my God, I can't believe this happened”.  Or “I did this, or this happened to me”, (or however it is that your situation dictates)  to shifting your head and literally turning your head the other way and saying, “No, I'm going to change now and look for the recovery, look for the learning here and the solution.”

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
The fact that you tie this to vision intrigues me, Leila, because as predators with our binocular vision, we're looking straight ahead. While the herbivores tend to have eyes so they can see the predators coming up behind them. For some reason, I thought of that when you were mentioning this. In that sense, we need to be aggressive predators in terms of our resilience -- versus the herbivores, waiting to get taken out by the jackals or the tigers, and stop looking back and start looking forward. 

I recognize that this is so easy to say on a beautiful sunny afternoon and it's very hard to have that mindset when you are down in the mud at two in the morning, unless you have a good team around you, and maybe that team is your fuel. 

Maybe that team is your family, your coworkers or whatever, who can just give you that initial push out of the hole, and sometimes all you need is that little bit of inertia to realize that something better is coming. That's hard sometimes though.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
It is hard. I find that those of us who tend to be a bit more optimistic, such as you and I, can get inspired by the idea of it and yet when we are down in the hole, it can, as you said, be extremely hard. Tell us a story about when this happened to you and what it actually looked and felt like when you made that transition in your focus.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
There's a funny story about when I made that transition and it was just pure luck that saved the day, but that's probably of no value to this show. (laughs) Let me think of another one. I can tell you a story that is very emotional to me but I think illustrates the point. There's been a couple of long, very challenging endeavors that I've performed in life, like many of us have. One of them was chasing after the PhD, which again quite a few people have as well or done something similar. 

In my case, circling back to my father and how much parents influenced us sometimes. My father had his PhD and he had gotten his later on in life. So he was already an established professional. He was a diplomat, actually, in the middle east when he finished his PhD.

It was at that time kind of unusual to finish it older in age. Today, it's very normal. I kind of followed a similar route. Those are long duration programs. I mean, some people go through it in Afterburner in three to four years, others take 7, 8, 9, 10. I was in the seven category. Really, one of the things that prompted me to pursue that degree was the inspiration from my father and wanting to make him proud that I decided to follow a scholarly pursuit, just like he did. Dad was really the fuel for me through that doctoral program, except he passed away a couple of years before I finished it. [He] never got a chance to see it come to fruition. When he passed away, I took a leave of absence both from work and from the degree program in order to settle the estate, which is overseas, and things like this. 

I was in the hole, Leila. I mean, I was in the hole because these types of programs require a massive amount of commitment and energy, and I would save an enthusiasm. You do not want to try to finish something like that up right at the hardest stage which is the dissertation, defense, et cetera. You don't want to actually undertake that coming out of a hole like that. Yet that's where I was and my fuel was gone. I took a while to lick my wounds there and to mourn his passing. I had a very difficult decision to make, which is how in the world do I move forward? And if so, how do I do that? And I just literally had to transition to an alternative type of fuel if you will, or some other motivational source. In my case, it was more of how completing that program would benefit my immediate family, versus, doing it for dad. 

So, I did manage to do that pivot. It was painful, but it's clinging on to that different source of fuel to get me through to the end and it worked. But these are always difficult challenges. You're asking some hard questions, coach.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Well I'm going to ask you to dig into that story just a little deeper, if you would. I said in a previous episode that when we're in the middle of a great sunny day, like you mentioned, it's easy to talk about these things and to set such great aspirations for how we're going to handle the adversary or the adversity that comes our way. Yet when we get knocked down, it's quite easy to lose that well-intentioned choice in just the sadness or the grief or the anger depending on what the situation is.  

I've lost family members that have been very dear to me. I know what that pain is like, and it's not something you can rush your way through in terms of recovery. If you would, and I don't mean to dig too much here, but share with us kind of where you felt internally something was shifting in regards to that fuel source changing.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Well, everything is interconnected, isn't it? And so it wasn't just the loss of the family member. It was also a deep moment of reflection of, well, I'm entering a new phase in life, and how does that impact the rest of the family? How does that impact me professionally and very important, how does that impact what I want out of life?  

It does take its own timeline, doesn't it? It's interesting. You mention that it's very hard to force it, that personal change in some ways reminds me of cultural change when you're trying to change the culture of an organization if you're an executive or some type of a corporate leader, and it's almost like pushing against a cooked spaghetti. It has its own timeline and you can actually even damage it by trying to push it too fast. I think maybe that's true of personal growth as well.

You know what would have helped? A facilitator to guide my thinking in that way. I had to basically just figure it out on my own. But somebody who can see the forest versus just the trees in front of you in the forest, somebody who can provide that perspective. Sometimes they're therapists, sometimes they're coaches, sometimes they're their friends and family, or whatever. That would have been very helpful looking back, versus just kind of going out there and trying to find things with your hands while blindfolded. I don't even know if I can get remotely close to answering your question.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
You did so we're good. (laughs)

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
If you say so.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Asking the question, I was thinking to myself, this is definitely a hard one to answer. I think that actually speaks to the answer if you consider it. I don't know that when we're in the middle of such a deep adversity and a deeply emotional one, such as losing your father, would be that we can necessarily find the defining line when our positioning shifts.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
The loss of someone you care a lot about is a crisis moment. I'm not too familiar with that, but I am familiar with other crisis moments. As we mentioned, these high consequence environments where people face crises be they if you're a surgeon and the patient starts to flatline, or be it if you're a pilot and an engine catches fire, or be it if you're a first responder and, your fire truck hits an electrical cable over the road that kind of thing. 

So, how you react in that crisis moment, there is a lot of science around that, and there are accepted ways through that to produce best outcomes. But I don't think I've ever been exposed to using those learnings into personal situations like the one we've discussed. That would be very interesting. I mean, I can tell you from experience that pilots have mental scripts that are rehearsed in case things like that happen. And then those mental scripts are backed up, if you will, by either electronic or paper checklist or whatever, because there's a lot going on and there's some important stuff that you can't exactly forget.  I know medicine's made a lot of improvements based on some of these concepts from other industries, be it the nuclear one or the transportation sectors, et cetera. That would be intriguing if we came up with a mental script or emergency procedures for personal life. Never thought about that. Actually.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I love that you just said emergency procedures for personal life. That would be a good book title, Tony. (both laughs)

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Well what's interesting is that, again going back to these high consequences environments, these emergency procedures, sometimes they're just called EPs and the most dreadful ones to handle are the multiple or compound EPs where you have more than one happening at the same time. That can happen in life and they happen constantly, be it that you find out that a loved one has cancer at the same time that you find out that another loved one is addicted to drugs. These things do happen. These compound EPs do happen in personal life.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yeah. I think what I have found in having been through many of these personally, these high consequence situations as you call them, is it really comes down to focusing on what you can control. Certainly, there's not a whole lot you feel you can control, [like] when you lose someone that you love. In other types of situations, more specifically a loss of a job, or loss of clients or loss of your health, even, to be able to say, okay, I cannot control this piece of it. And in essence, that's kind of the turning of your head to focus on which direction you are going to go. Whether it's a failure or the circumstances that happened to you, I can't control it. 
However, there are more than likely lessons to be learned there. So focus on it to learn the lessons and do that in a facilitated manner as you mentioned, if need be, if you're having a block doing that yourself in contemplation. But what lessons can you learn there that you could take into your future with you, and then shift your focus the other direction and focus on that solution and enacting and focusing on things that you can control.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah, it's wonderful. The former educator in me really appreciates the fact that you are focusing on lessons that can be learned and applied in the future. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about lately is as I face situations, how would I have faced them differently 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and it's very interesting to think of how the 20-year-old me versus the 30-year-old me versus the 40-year-old me would have handled a situation versus now. Not necessarily worse sometimes, by the way. That's kind of interesting, but I usually think worse than I would now.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
With age comes knowledge.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yes. It's very interesting. You also forget about some of the stuff. But here's where it really is curious, especially if you're leading across generations, is how difficult it can be to remember the way that I thought 20 or 30 years ago. It wasn't very different. It really was. And when I'm trying to communicate with a 20-year-old coworker or a 30 year old, or et cetera, there are some pretty amazing gaps there in terms of perspectives, in terms of knowledge, in terms of values, and what somebody cares about. Those are all potential impediments to communication. Boy, if you add in the cultural dimension, like now I'm trying to communicate with a 30 year old Sudanese or even a 20 year old Australian or whatever. Wow. Now we're starting to get into uncharted waters. That's hard.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Oh, absolutely. It really is an opportunity for more learning when you think about it. It's an opportunity to take a step outside of your default communication style, your default assumptions, your default worldview, and get curious about others.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
We have a saying in the safety profession that it's very good to learn as long as it's not a whole bunch of learning all at once, right? (laughs) That means something really bad has happened.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host 
That's a good one. Tony, when we were chatting prior, you talked to me about this concept around fuel that finds you versus the other way around. Would you share what you were discussing about that.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
So the examples I've cited thus far are ones where you're almost intentionally seeking out a fuel source. It's almost like you're scavenging for firewood or something out in the woods to build a fire for fuel. But sometimes the fuel finds you most unexpectedly. I'll share another story that's very emotional to me and actually reshaped my career trajectory.

That was in 1996, many moons ago. I lost six very dear colleagues in an accident. It's not one of those where you say we should've seen it coming. No, we did see it coming and we were truly unable to alter the organization and the dynamics of the organization in order to prevent it. We just didn't know when and where it would happen and how, but it did. And it snatched them away from my life and the life of their loved ones in seconds. 

Going in every day after that and sitting down at my desk and seeing the desks, there was another desk across from me that was empty because that person was now gone, and seeing how that sudden loss completely obliterated the lives of their families at least for a long while. It was because of that event that I decided to steer my career away from the operational realm and more towards the accident and incident prevention world. I've been in it in one way or another ever since then. That was fuel that I didn't even know existed. That was fuel that came out of nowhere and smacked me on the head. And it's actually now  a very important sense of professional fuel for me. Safety is a tricky profession, Leila, because it's usually a negative feedback profession. By that, I mean you only get feedback on failures, and very rarely do you get feedback on successes. By the very nature of it, if you succeed there's nothing to say because everything is going well. 

So you have to operate on faith that your efforts are making a difference. Occasionally, you do get some positive feedback. Somebody recently said, “You said X during training and I thought of that when I was in this new situation that was dicey and I made a decision in one direction instead of the other because of that thing you said a month ago.“ Wow. That's a rare moment of appreciation. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
It's the purpose that found you.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah, purpose. It’s a calling. Safety is a profession, I'd like to think of it as a noble profession because you're doing things for others in a very service-like way. It was something that honestly I never had any interest in, whatsoever. Yet when you realize that there are actions that can be taken to make, not just a little difference, but a tremendous difference in the life of others. It kind of strikes you again, coupled with aging and coupled with new perspectives on life, it kind of has a significant purpose around it. When you wake up in the morning, you're not just waking up to make a buck. You are waking up to make sure somebody else goes home for dinner that night. That's pretty cool.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
That's incredible. I just want to thank you publicly for all of the safe flights that many people have taken based on your efforts and those that you’ve influenced.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
I hope that's true and I appreciate you saying that. It's an interesting profession and it, by no means, is the only profession out there that's doing these things. But it's really neat. I work for a company now where everyone values that. That's not necessarily the case elsewhere. In fact, I'm very familiar with some companies where it's just the opposite. It is seen as an obstacle. If a catastrophe occurs, finger-pointing commences and sometimes your organization disappears very quickly. What was considered the obstacle is then, after the fact, realized as being not just the proper thing to do but the imperative action to take as well.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yeah. May there be more companies who value the safety function, the safety position in the company and less of the former.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
That's right. It is incredible how sophisticated some parts of the world have become in terms of safety. When I'm going back to the 1990s which was a key decade, just to speak of the airline industry in the United States, where we had a series of greatly catastrophic accidents and in some cases with very little respite between them.

Today it is very hard to think of a major US airline accident that has happened over the last few years. It's hard to think of because there hasn't been one or at least depending on how you categorize an accident, that's pretty amazing. It's so easy to forget how bleak things used to be. There are other parts of life where it's still a problem. You look at the rail industry, the surface transportation, you look at medicine, you look at where there are accidents that are occurring in great numbers. There's a lot of work to be done still.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yeah. It's so true. Tony, I want to bring our attention to your role as a leader in the organization you're in now and in previous roles. How do you think an awareness of your internal motivator, your internal fuel can help your team?

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
There is a direct relationship, I think, with the ability of a leader to share passion with results if it's done correctly. I think a leader has to be very conscious of the voice that is used and how often it is used. 

I was having a fascinating discussion recently with some colleagues on leading by asking questions versus leading by making statements, and it was a truly thought provoking discussion. We'd talked about the ratio and we self analyzed, what is your ratio of leading through questions versus leading through statements?

And we had some kind of mini epiphanies there. I mean, some people were saying, I don't remember the last time I asked a question, it's always do this, do that, we need this delivered. I can think of some leaders, who I greatly admire, who rarely ever make a statement. It's all about asking the question,  and formulating the right question to ask is sometimes extraordinarily difficult, but if it changes the way someone thinks then you're on your way. 

Circling back to the initial part of the question, having that internal passion for something [and] if you can channel that in such a way that it is communicated, be it through questions or be it through scenarios, then I think it can be very effective.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
So pretty darn important.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
It is. I catch myself all the time now where I'll stop what I was about to say and I'll ask myself, can you rephrase that as a question?

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I find it's such an epiphany that the leaders that I speak to regularly around the power of the aha moment, speaking specifically about their motivators right now but even in general, when you ask a teammate what it is that drives them and then find a way for them to articulate it instead of telling them what should drive them. Obviously sharing the vision of an organization is important but then the next step, in my opinion, would be connecting that person's individual drive to their piece of the puzzle in enacting that larger vision.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah. You know what else that does that I've learned is it helps you detect your own errors in framing or thinking or deduction. Versus going through it like a bull going through a China shop, and it very often makes you realize that your perspective is different from theirs or that you have fundamentally misread the situation.

By the way, that is another very powerful leadership moment where during a discussion a leader says, let me phrase what I think I've heard and correct me where I'm wrong. That's super powerful.

It's kind of a version of a question almost right. And very often the leader will say it and people go, “yeah that's it! You've just put into words what we're all thinking.“ Sometimes they'll go, “No, that's not exactly what we meant.“ That's aligning, which is by the way, alignment is one of our core values in my current organization and I'm learning what that means now, and that alignment can be extraordinarily valuable for decision-making.

Back to the aviation aspect of this, Leila, so when you fly a ‘crude aircraft’, (so an aircraft with more than one pilot, some we had 12 crew members on board) and you're facing one of these crisis moments and EP (emergency procedure). It's very important for the leader of that crew to periodically circle back and rephrase the problem that they're working on because of so many minds going in different directions.

I've been in situations before in EPs where a few minutes after commencing to work the problem, all of a sudden you have three different problems being worked on, none of which are the ones that you started with. Everybody's working on these very diligently and with the best of intentions and so it's up to us as leaders to resync them and bring it back together and say, okay remember this is the problem we're trying to solve very specifically. And they'll be like, oh, that's right. These are complex endeavors and it's very easy to get sidestepped. You think of NASA and some of the things that they have going on,or on the international space station, or on Mars with the Perseverance and the Opportunity and all these incredible space probes and what mission control looks like for that. The capability of leaders there to focus the team on the right problem and not just that [but] on the right steps to the problem at the right time. If you mess up there, you're losing a multi-billion dollar asset and the potential for incredible scientific discovery. So you gotta get it right the first time.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I'm always hearing these lessons and tying them back to our personal resilience. You said, mission control which is a really cool term if you actually think about it in regards to yourself. If you think about your own ability to persevere as the voice of mission control, the one who is trying to navigate through all of the storms and all of the pieces in the millions of switches on the computers in front of them, but in terms of relating that metaphor back to when we feel like it's a freaking tornado swirling around us, of all of the things. And then tying back into where would mission control have me go here?

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
One of the most clever things about mission control is, traditionally there's been someone designated as the 'cap comm' or  capsule commander, I think, is what it stands for. The one person who speaks to the crew. Mission control can have a hundred people depending on the type of mission and what you consider mission control, not necessarily what's just in the one room you see on TV. But can you imagine if all 100 people had a line to the astronaut, that would be absolutely insane, right? 

So you need just one person with a very calm voice who can get that across. I sometimes, by the way, think of the 911 dispatchers and what their lives are like, and would love to know more about the training they receive on listening and on calmness and projecting calm, and taking complex situations and making them actionable.  I don't think we pay those people enough, by the way, that's another conversation.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Oh, I would 100% agree. Tony, this has been fascinating. As always, we could talk forever. I enjoy it. As we wrap up here, I wanted to ask you to share something that not many people know about you.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Okay. So for public settings, I'll share this. I sometimes read about our inner child, if you will, and how much our experiences as a child impact us as adults. And very few people know what I'm about to tell you because I only figured it out myself recently that's why I'm pretty sure nobody else knows. That is, I had the most beautiful summers growing up as a child. Many of us do, many do not but for me, growing up with part of my life in Spain [and] part of my life in the United States. I was born in Spain and we had, and still have a house on the beach in Spain. My summers growing up were all spent snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing out there on a beautiful beach, windsurfing and going home after those activities to a gourmet Mediterranean meal. 

And what a way to grow up, huh. And dirt biking in the afternoons and evenings. I'm starting to realize that the older I get, the more I have this unconscious tendency to make choices that try to return me to that life. Maybe that's why I ended up living on a beach down in Florida, or maybe that's why I'm trying to find a retirement situation where I can kind of return and reclaim that type of gourmet food / beautiful sun beach life.

I will leave our listeners with the question to ponder: what happened during your childhood that you are unconsciously steered by in terms of your decisions? Maybe it's deep down there and you didn't even know, because I didn't for many decades until I figured it out.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Wow. That is quite the question to leave us on there. So much value there, whether it's negative or positive. It's interesting. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah. I've shared some stories from either side. Some were pretty darn dark and others were brighter stories, but that's life, isn't it? It's that mixture of sunshine and shade.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Yeah, absolutely. Tony, it's been a pleasure, an absolute pleasure having you on today. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they want to reach out, say hello, ask more questions.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Oh yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn, if you want. The first name's Antonio and then middle initial is I and then last name is Cortes. You can search for me on LinkedIn and I should just come up right there. If you guess what the I is for my middle name, then I will smile.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Okay. Now I have to guess! I don't know why —-I'm thinking Ignatius.

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
You nailed it!

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Oh my goodness. Did I really? 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Well, it's the Spanish version. It's Ignacio, after the founder of the Jesuit order but yeah, St. Ignatius is the reason for my middle name. I cannot believe Leila, that you just nailed that. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
I'm wondering, have I seen it somewhere to have planted it subconsciously in my mind, because that is not a name that I think of on the regular. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah, truly I can't believe you just bulls-eyed that. That is crazy.

Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
That was hilarious. Oh man. Tony, this was awesome. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to chatting more. 

Dr. Tony Cortes, Podcast Guest
Yeah. Thank you for having me. What a delightful experience. Have a great rest of your day.
Leila Ansart, Podcast Host
Thanks, you as well.