Fighter Pilot Parent: Leading Your Kids with Lessons from the Cockpit

Lead your most important team (your kids) with integrity, honor, and love.

There are no bad teams (i.e., kids). There are only less-than-perfect leaders (i.e., parents). So says former fighter pilot and parent of four, retired US Navy Captain Brick Conners. Conners believes good leadership drives every successful outcome, and good parenting is no different. As a Navy Strike Fighter Pilot, Brick amassed over 4500 hours and over 1000 carrier landings during multiple combat deployments. So he understands all too well the critical importance of leadership in enabling those under his command to take off and return safely. Every parent wants the same: to have our children take off into the world and its adventures, but to return home safely at the end of the day.

Conners links thrilling life-and-death experiences in leadership, adversity, and performance to practices and takeaways that will guide parents, grandparents, coaches, military personnel, and anyone else who wants to raise, develop, and lead children and young people. Through tools gleaned from his own experience as a pilot, parent, and coach, Conners shows how we can redefine our own leadership skills and develop the same in children, so that they are equipped to deal with the unavoidable hazards of growing up. As parents, if we’re not happy with how we’ve handled parenting challenges in the past, we will find ways to reevaluate and alter our course; if we have acted on values and beliefs that were not always ideal, we will learn how to take a different approach: one that can lead our children to extraordinary trajectories, increased success, and lifelong happiness.