Predictable to yourself
The fighter pilots were extraordinary in the air. Some of them died on the way home.
The best fighter pilots in the world kept dying on the way home.
Kevin Dutton told me about this. He studies psychopaths — not just the criminal kind, the functional kind. The people who can switch off emotion (if they ever have empathy switched on) and zoom in with terrifying precision. And he described research on combat pilots who were extraordinary in the air. Ruthless. Cold. Relentless. They racked up kills.
Then they ran out of fuel.
They’d zoned in so much on the fight that they forgot to check the gauge. The thing that made them lethal, total, absolute focus, was the same thing that killed them. Not the enemy. Their own intensity.
I’ve been thinking about that story ever since my conversation with Kevin. Because I keep seeing a version of it everywhere I look.
The athlete who obsesses over split times, but has no focus on diet. The coach that copies the gurus, but doesn’t reflect on their own plan. Climbers who die on the way down not on the way up.
The executive who spends tens of thousands on a first class seat, but isn’t prepared to take breaks in meetings. Good in places, not in others. Able to perform, but not able to survive. Critical and discerning in some aspects of life but unprepared for change in others.
This is a strange entity that has baffled me over the years. A contradictory kind of performer. Stiffer. Flatter. Mono-dimensional.
These aren’t random failures. They’re signatures. Personal, repeatable, predictable — to everyone except the person doing them.
Tess Morris-Patterson left a career in sport science to train as an astronaut. Early in the process, she noticed a pattern in selection. The candidates who’d done the deep self-awareness work — who’d looked at their insecurities, their triggers, their blind-spot, things they instinctively avoid — stayed functional when everything went sideways. The ones who hadn’t? They had a strong tendency to freeze or fire off under pressure, sleep deprivation or simple disagreement.
What does this look like for you as a coach coaching an athlete? As a leader leading teams? Or as you, being you, each day under different conditions? Do you want to be the one who coaches for four years only to under-prepare your athlete for the big moment? The leader who points the finger of blame at behaviours but hasn’t been able to coach people to improve ? Or do you want to be the one who performs heroics but then royally messes up?
There’s a phrase I keep coming back to: predictable to yourself.
I'm not talking about being calm, resilient, omnicompetent. Predictable. “Know yourself” is a well-worn trope so much so it sounds like a fridge magnet. Socrates said it. Every leadership book says it. Your therapist probably says it. It’s so familiar it’s become invisible.
But here’s what I’ve noticed after 30 years and 169 podcast conversations: the people who actually do the work to reflect and reflect well, are rare. And the gap between them and everyone else isn’t talent, or effort, or luck. It’s information. They have data on themselves that other people don’t — not because the data doesn’t exist, but because most people would rather not look.
Jenny Rogers is an executive coach. She told me the self-aware leaders she works with don’t ask “what do people think of me?” They ask “what am I avoiding?” Different question. Much harder to answer. Much more useful.
Because we’ve all got something we’re not looking at. A conversation we keep postponing. A pattern we keep repeating. A reaction we keep explaining away. And until you name it, it runs you. You’re not managing your performance. You’re managing around the thing you won’t face.
The people who stay calm when it counts aren’t tougher than you. They’ve just done something you probably haven’t.
They’ve become predictable to themselves.
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*Tess Morris-Patterson, Kevin Dutton, Jenny Rogers, have all appeared on the Supporting Champions podcast. If “know yourself” has always sounded soft to you, their work might change your mind.*
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