Absolute faith in one another is imperative among members of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels precision flying team, where soaring canopy-to-canopy at 500 mph is all part of a day’s work.
Building Radical Trust
Trust is so baked into Blue Angels culture that it transcends personal consideration. Armatas doesn’t simply trust his specific crew to prepare his plane for a safe and successful flight. Instead, he trusts in the process that has guided every crew member who ever worked with the Blue Angels. He trusts a culture that values attention to detail and delivering on commitments with absolute commitment and discipline.
Such next-level trust rests on a belief that “nothing is too minute” to deserve attention. If you handle the details to an extreme extent, says Armatas, the big stuff falls into place. “As a leader, when you have that level of trust, it allows you to keep your mind on what’s most important,” he says. “The expectations here are extremely high that everybody does their job not only well and correctly but also independently, so that teammates don’t need to keep going back and checking on them.”
The Blue Angels are also devoted to continuous improvement. After every demo, the flight crew and pilots meet for a debrief. “
‘Glad to Be Here’
The Blue Angels’ top core value is gratitude—and they live up to it in every conversation. Armatas says the Blue Angels’ single strongest tradition is the greeting/affirmation, “Glad to be here,” delivered by team members in casual conversation as well as before briefings and other more formal gatherings.
“The phrase is intended as a constant reminder that those chosen for the Blue Angels team are not special, but rather lucky to have been pulled from a submarine or aircraft carrier of the Navy fleet and given the opportunity to do difficult but ultimately rewarding and even fun and exciting work,” says Armatas. “It reminds each and every team member that what got them there was earned, not given to them, and that keeping your spot should never be taken for granted.”
Ship, Shipmates and Self
The power of a great culture comes from transcending the individual yet linking individuals to a mission and set of values bigger and longer-lasting than themselves.
A 2023 article in the Harvard Business Review assigned leaders of purpose-driven cultures the responsibility “to clearly communicate and authentically embody the company’s purpose and values” while also drawing “clear connections between purpose, values and performance, acknowledging the inevitabilities of short-term trade-offs in favor of a grander mission.”
The Blue Angels have always put their grander mission at the heart of their values and performance. “In the Navy, leaders learn to do what is best for the ship, one’s shipmates and yourself, in that order,” #leadership #trust
Congrats to an incredible group of winners!