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How to Lead During a Crisis (with Sully Sullenberger)

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Description

Dr. Bob talks about the importance of leadership, whether it’s during a pandemic or a flight that’s lost all engine power, with Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. The parallels between the two might not seem obvious, but Sully points out that the basic elements of good leadership can be applied in any situation. He also talks about how he and the crew landed Flight 1549 safely in the Hudson River, what lessons he took from that famous flight, and what caused him to speak out against what he calls a “vacuum of leadership” during the pandemic. Plus, what it’s like to have Tom Hanks play you in a movie.

 

Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @Bob_Wachter and check out In the Bubble’s new Twitter account @inthebubblepod.

 

Follow Sully Sullenberger on Twitter @Captsully.

 

Keep up with Andy in D.C. on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.

 

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Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

 

 

To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/in-the-bubble shortly after the air date.

 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Dr. Bob Wachter, Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Dr. Bob Wachter  01:29

Welcome to IN THE BUBBLE from the frontlines. I’m Dr. Bob Wachter.

Dr. Bob Wachter

Unless you’re under 12 years old, and also haven’t seen the Tom Hanks movie. You’re probably familiar with what you just heard. That’s the clip of Captain Sully Sullenberger. The pilot of US Air Flight 1549. on that fateful day, January 15th 2009, speaking to the air traffic controllers, soon after both of his engines went out from a bird strike. As he navigated his way to the Hudson River, something we now call the Miracle on the Hudson. We have the honor today of talking with Captain Sullenberger about some of the lessons from that flight and the rest of his life. We’ll get to it in a few minutes.

Dr. Bob Wachter  02:25

Where are we in the pandemic? Well, it’s really a confusing time where a lot of the things that we can control are going in the right direction. We’re now doing about 2 million vaccine injections a day, which is pretty great. It looks like we’re gonna have at least one more vaccine option available in the next couple of weeks with the J&J vaccine, which has the advantage of being easier, doesn’t have the same freezer requirements, cheaper, and importantly, a single dose, and there’s even a tantalizing preliminary finding one that’s not quite ready for primetime, that a single dose might be good enough in patients with prior documented COVID.

Dr. Bob Wachter

I think for now, the recommendation is still to get two doses blew up to see how that plays out. But as usual, our split screen in COVID is here, and there’s almost never a time where there’s good news without the flip side of some either bad news or at least potentially bad news and that is the variants. The UK variant is taking off in the United States at the pace that we feared the CDC reported a couple of weeks ago, that it would become the dominant strain in the United States in about four to six weeks. And a study that just came out last couple days says that it is on pace to do that. And as is now quite familiar, it’s 30% to 50% more infectious and might even be a little bit more serious as well.

Dr. Bob Wachter

Luckily, at this point, that variant appears to be responsive to the vaccines, but some of the other variants, particularly the South African one, have picked up this other nasty mutation, one that seems to make it less responsive to the vaccines. And we now have some reported cases of that and the variant first report in Brazil, in the United States. So there are challenges. But what has been impressive is the good news is really pretty good. The cases are coming down rapidly. The vaccines are getting out there. And very importantly, leadership has changed. Just this morning watched this morning’s press conference being led by our old friend Andy Slavitt, with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Wollensky and it’s just a model of clear, transparent truth telling conversation with a plan.

Dr. Bob Wachter  04:36

When they’re doing something. It’s clear why they’re doing it when they’re considering something. It’s clear how they are considering it. They tell us what they know. They tell us what they don’t know and what we need to learn more about. It is so refreshing to see leadership. And that brings us to the conversation with Captain Sullenberger because I think there’s really no one who understands the role of leadership in a crisis. More than Captain Sully Sullenberger, of course, you know him for the Miracle on the Hudson landing US Airways Flight 1549. In the Hudson River after both engines were disabled by a bird strike on January 15th 2009, saving the lives of all 155 people on board that flight.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Since that time, Sally has used this pulpit to be an internationally known speaker and writer on issues of safety. From my world in medicine, he’s spoken a lot about patient safety and made a lot of useful contributions there. He’s spoken about the role of leadership, how to manage in a crisis, the importance of culture, and how to think about preventing bad things from happening, which is something we’ll all have to confront, hopefully, when this crisis is over, but we think about preparing for the next crisis. As I talked to Sully, you’ll get the sense of his remarkable integrity. And just what an amazing person he is.

Dr. Bob Wachter  06:05

And I’ve had a chance to get to know him personally over the years. And he is exactly the person that you hear someone who is committed to doing the right thing. And you’ll see how that has influenced his politics as well over the last several years where he felt like he needed to make a hard choice. And there was no question what that choice would be, because he always makes a choice of doing the right thing. So I think you’ll enjoy this interview. I know I did. I think he’s a remarkable person. And we are lucky to have him. So let’s call up Captain Sully Sullenberger.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Sully, it’s great to see you. It’s been a while and really thrilled that you could be on with us on the show.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Thank you, Bob, good to be with you.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Tell us a little bit about what the last year has been like for you and your family.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

It’s been alone, we took this seriously, from the very beginning, my family and I, we have two adult daughters who fortunately are able to work remotely or work in professions where they’re protected. But we’ve chosen to be safe, and to really limit our contact with them, and to limit our contact with anybody else for the most part. So we’ve done a lot of things virtually hope you’ve had fun with it, too. I mean, for Christmas, we did a virtual game night and virtual present opening. And so we’ve made the best of what for many people, it’s obviously a very difficult situation. And you know what, I think that is the least that we could have done.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

I think that if there’s one thing that we’ve learned, and I should tell you a quick story first. I have a great friend, that I’ve known for a dozen years, who has spent his life in service to this country. And like me, he’s not done yet. And he told me, in 2016, right after the election, he said, you know, the American people are about to get the biggest civics lesson of their lives. And of course, he’s been right. And so I think in spite of how often many people in this society seem to think of life is a zero-sum game, and how it seems like, you know, it’s a winner take all world.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  08:25

That there really are things that we owe to each other, you know, the concept of citizenship is a really important one. It originated in ancient Greece and Rome, and then includes not just rights, but responsibilities, civic duties. And if we did not occasionally at least, put our own immediate needs aside and give each other these little gifts of civic behavior, civilization wouldn’t be possible. And so that’s the lens through which I’m viewing this whole experience.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

So did you and your family sit down at the very beginning and map out sort of, you know, how are you going to draw boundaries around your bubble? Or did it kind of evolve over time? how did you think this through once you started understanding the nature of the threat?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

You know, if I equate it to that famous flight of ours a dozen years ago, of course, we didn’t have any idea at the outset exactly what it entailed. But we knew it was serious. And I think that’s one thing that we did is we took it seriously. We listened to the experts, we understood the science, we knew that this was going to be like our famous flight, a life changing event for everyone in their families. And so we began to take appropriate steps.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

You know, we didn’t know at the outset what it was going to be like, but we made important decisions at each juncture, which I think helped us to get to the outcome, like on our famous flight. While I didn’t know every step of the way, what we would have to do, I was confident that if we Follow the science. If we took this seriously, we could find a way to solve all these complex problems until we get to solve them all resolved enough to survive.

Dr. Bob Wachter  10:09

It’s interesting that you framed it right from the get go about citizenship and about the obligation that we have to others. Not sure everybody would have done that, I think most people would have said, here’s what I need to do to keep myself and my family safe. But it sounds like you were processing that but also layering in a separate issue of the safety of others. Tell us how you think that through?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Well, I don’t think it is a separate issue. I think it’s part and […] to the same process, that just as I could not have done that flight alone, that it required the efforts of many people, it required the efforts of strangers, rising to the occasion, and choosing to work together to make sure that every life was saved. I think this is exactly the same. I can’t save our lives, we’re dependent upon others to do certain things to keep putting us at undue risk. So that was clear to me from the outset.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah. So way to come back a little bit later to issues of the political response and the what we owe to one another. Let’s spend a little bit of time on the airplane industry and, and flying, do I take from your response around what you’ve done that you have not flown for the past year?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Correct. My last flight was in early March of 2020. Coming back from an in-person event in Florida. I have not flown since.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

How much do you miss it?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Well, I miss being able to work in my profession as I had to be a professional keynote speaker, traveling around the world to talk to groups as diverse as nuclear power to medical audiences, and everything in between a lot of business audiences, we adapted to be able to do many of them virtually. And we’ve gotten much better that out of necessity. But it’s not the same as you can imagine this like a performer in a certain sense, without a live audience.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

It’s really hard to be able to do it to that level. So I certainly miss not being able to do the new profession that I love as I love my flying profession. But I don’t have a real need to travel until we can do in person events again, and I can speak to the 5000 people or 15,000 people in a packed auditorium. And that’s going to be for a while. And I understand that I miss most of all, of course, being able to spend time in person with people I care about.

Dr. Bob Wachter  12:29

It’s an interesting part of the pandemic visa v fly, there were commercials on the Superbowl recently about, you know, our airline is safe for you to fly because of we’re doing this and that, on the other hand, at every conference that Andy Slavitt runs and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky, they discourage people from traveling. Do you think people are hearing mixed messages? And then what would it take for you to feel comfortable getting on an airplane again?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Oh, absolutely. I think that’s, that’s part of the problem gain. Until just recently, there’s been a huge failure in leadership, a huge leadership vacuum, that many levels, national and state, and in some cases, local, but others have risen to the occasion, and then began to show leadership at whatever level they could. So I’m very gratified that now we have effective national leadership that’s beginning to take effective actions. But, you know, there have been way too many mixed messages. And there have been failures of important national leaders to model the kind of attitudes and behaviors that we all need to see. And that’s been a huge failure.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Also, again, let me equate that to my 54-year flying experience, especially as an airline captain, where I would be responsible for passengers and crew. In every way for every aspect of every flight, an obligation I felt deeply a professional obligation that all of us in aviation have to do everything we can to keep those in our charge, safe, to plan and anticipate and to detail hard truths, to communicate to others do explain not just what must be done, but why it must be done, why it’s important, what happens if we don’t. And that’s important to treat, when I make a PA to treat the passengers with respect and trust, to share difficult truths with them.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  14:24

Knowing that I can bring them along and make them part of our team. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my life, I think, as a society we have learned, whether it’s winning a World War, or sending humans to the moon and returning them safely to the earth or overcoming a global pandemic, is that when we remember our common humanity and work together, there’s little we cannot accomplish. And so that’s again, the lens through which I view this, tell the truth, share information, tell them not just what but why. And by working together, solve all these problems one at a time until we’ve solved them all and saved every light we can. And by having failures and leadership and not modeling behavior, it has literally cost lives, people have died unnecessarily because of these failures over the last year plus.

Dr. Bob Wachter

Yeah, now you could argue 10s of or hundreds of 1000s of people. It’s really remarkable.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Yes. And now, we’ve lost more lives, not just in the combat deaths in World War II, but of deaths in all causes. And World War II, including disease and training in nearly a half million, it’s unconscionable.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Until you just said that I had not thought through the analogy of being a pilot on a plane and being a leader of a society that’s facing a pandemic. Imagine there were times even prior to the Hudson landing that something was going wrong, but you didn’t think it was terrible. And you had to balance What do I tell the passengers? And probably what do I tell the flight attendants, try not to get them overly scared, but also to make sure that they know what they need to know to act safely. So is that a legitimate analogy to find you to as you were watching the federal government’s early response here, that was clearly tilted, to not telling the truth and giving the illusion that things weren’t as bad as they, as they were? Did that feel like a familiar dilemma to you?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  16:18

Oh, my goodness, yes, in every way, that professional responsibility is so deeply internalized in me and in my colleagues, you know, and not just as an airline pilot and a captain. But as a former professional military officer in the United States Air Force and fighter pilot. It’s something that we, we live and breathe, it’s the essence of leadership. And so those things are important to me. And so every time that the previous administration, the previous occupant of the Oval Office, minimized it, and blatantly lied about it and said, “Oh, it’s going to disappear like a miracle.” It just tore up my soul to hear that and know how much damage was being done.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

And when so many Republican governors, with few exceptions went along with it and even when local communities and cities were trying to do the right thing and save lives, they would actively work against them to try to prevent them from doing so. It just shocked me to my core. There’s one thing I’ve learned and safety critical domain like yours, medicine, or mine in air travel. It’s that denying reality and wishful thinking is absolutely never an effective strategy. But being a leader, and realizing that one of the most fundamental responsibilities of leadership is to give those in one’s care, a very clear vision of a possible future, to convince them why we must go there, how we’re going to get there, what part they must play in us getting there. And what’s in it for them.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  18:04

That’s a power, I’d use powerful, you know, I’m literate, I’m thoughtful, I lived a thoughtful life. And before the famous flight, that’s been a lifetime, valuing education, knowing that ideas were important. And figuring out what I thought about the world, you know, coming up with my own philosophy of life. That’s reality based. And I think that is the framework that helped me to frame even this global pandemic. And it gave me the life experience to be able to put it in perspective. I think that kind of knowledge, education, experience, judgment and perspective, are what were so lacking in this whole episode until just recently.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Sully, I noticed when you were referring to the last president, you said the previous occupant, or are you making a point not to say his name?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Absolutely, I think he has used his named more than all the rest of us need to for eternity. So I’m not going to add to the problem.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

You’ve had relationships with prior presidents. I think your landing was five days before the end of the Bush administration, if I recall. And then obviously, most of the kind of the early discussion of it and then at political level as well as happened during the Obama administration. What was your relationship like with prior presidents? I don’t know if you ever had a chance to meet President Bush, but I’m pretty sure you spent some time with President Obama.

Dr. Bob Wachter

Well, for the first 85% or so of my life, I was Republican as my parents were, and as often happens in this country, after a remarkable event, the day after the famous flight I received a phone call from then President George W. Bush and It was a very friendly, very casual conversation as if we were all buddies. And I talked about it in my first book, and it was a wonderful experience to hear from the president of the United States. Who does that happen, too? And he started out by saying, well, Captain Sullenberger, I said, Yes, Mr. President, he said, Well, Laura, and the staff and I were having some lunch and talking about your flight yesterday. And he said, I’m just in awe of your flying ability.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  20:26

And I said, Well, thank you, Mr. President. And he said, and by the way, aren’t you from Texas? I said, Yes, Mr. President Denison, Texas. He said, Well, that explains it. I, it was sort of a Texas centric conversation, but it was very nice. And then about 90 minutes later, that same day, the day after the flight, I received a call from then president elect Obama. And it was a more formal a bit longer conversation, but a very friendly one. And he said nice things about me for which I thank, and then he said, that he wanted to invite me, and me alone, to the inauguration, five days hence. And even though I was still in shock, from the trauma of the day before and feeling the throes of post-traumatic stress.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Somehow in that moment, I had the presence of mind to know exactly what my response had to be. I said, Mr. President Elect, I would be honored. But may I presume to ask that, should I be able to attend it be on the condition that my crew and their families accompany an he said, Yes. And so we were all off to their inauguration. And, and that was true of all the invitations that we received early on, including the invitation to go to the Super Bowl in Tampa. The next month, they were initially for me alone. But I knew that as the captain of my crew, we had all done this together. And we all deserved to have that experience.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  22:05

And so we actually had a chance to meet the President, First Lady, backstage at the inaugural balls, and he it was an inaugural ball, one of the biggest ones that night of the election, it was his first day in office, not even his first full day in office. And he was very generous, very gracious with his time, he spent 15 or 20 minutes talking to my crew and their families. So it was a wonderful experience. And I had a chance to, to meet him a few times subsequently. But he used the class act, as you can imagine.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah. Yeah. So as you began to watch the pandemic unfurl, I imagine there must have been some reluctance on your part, to be too critical of the president and to be too political. And you managed over the last decade or so to be a hero to everyone, and actually one of the few nonpartisan heroes in American life. So, and obviously, you reached some point where you said, I can’t be silent about what I see going on as a failure of leadership. So how did you come to that decision?

Dr. Bob Wachter

Oh, I came to that decision well before the pandemic, certainly in November of 2016. And I began to, for the first time in my life, be overly critical politically, of national leaders in 2016, and especially in 2018, before the midterms, I wrote an op ed in the Washington Post, appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s last word on MSNBC. And then, of course, even more so leading up to the 2020 general election, where I again wrote op eds, did an ad for vote vest in the Lincoln Project and in a tweet thread about it right before the 2020 general election. So it was important to me also, that I speak out about the terrible catastrophe of this vacuum of leadership during the pandemic.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  24:09

And I did it for the same reasons, I’ve been an advocate of the safety of the traveling public since the famous flight, that the cause of circumstance, I had become recognizable around the world because of what we were able to achieve on that famous flight. And I like our first officer, Jeff Skiles, a great colleague. He and I both felt that we couldn’t just walk away and ride off into the sunset that we had an obligation to not only our airline colleagues still working and facing all these daily challenges to be an advocate for them in their profession. That not to use this bully pulpit, this greater voice we’d been given for good would be a dereliction of duty, especially with my military background. And so I felt an obligation not to remain silent. And now for me personally, it’s important that I go on record publicly, as having been on the right side of important issues on the right side of evidence on the right side of history, on the right side of humanity.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

It strikes me as I was thinking back to the days of your landing, I can’t think of that many other events that really brought everyone together that way, maybe 9/11 did that. But not only brought people together, but it didn’t seem like there was a partisan divide. And I don’t remember craziness. I don’t remember, you know, sort of man on the moon, like that didn’t really happen that was staged on a lot, you know, at Universal. Is that your memory as well? And if so, what was, what do you think was responsible for the lack of partisanship around the way people reacted to the landing on the Hudson?

Dr. Bob Wachter

I think you’re right; I think the world has changed in the last dozen years, and not for the better in that way. You know, as we have all seen, information has become more balkanized. You know, we’re not watching Walter Cronkite, or the Huntley Brinkley report, as people did decades ago. It’s possible to get one’s information from a variety of sources into to choose to listen to on to things to see only thing is that which we already agree. And so we’re not sharing the same information. But I keep saying to everyone, that while we can have our own opinions, we can’t have our own facts, we must share the same data.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  26:35

And I think also that, you know, this famous flight of ours in January 2009 was doing the 08′-09′ financial meltdown, when it seemed like everything was going wrong, and no one could do anything, right. Many people were being harmed in many ways; the entire economy was being irreparably damaged for a while. And I think for some people, they had begun to doubt human nature, wondering if human nature was really mostly about self-interest and greed. That seemed to be a part of what a big part of what led to this financial upheaval. And then on January 15th, 2009, this group of people work together to save every life in New York City in a very public way that was noticed in in the internet age was sent around the globe instantly.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

And I think at a time when we all needed it, it gave us hope. It renewed our faith in humanity about what was possible when we do work together. And I think that’s a big part of, of how people reacted to this event. And then, by extension about me, since I happened to be in spite of my best efforts to remind everyone, this is a group effort, I’ve gotten most of the attention. And I think also, this is something I’ve noticed, speaking to, you know, thousands audiences in the last dozen years around the world, from Australia to Switzerland, that people think they see me traits and qualities that they admire. And that they assume because of that, that I must have a belief system that’s similar to theirs.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  28:09

And that’s not always the case. But that seems to be the assumption that people make about a lot of people. And so I think that’s, they kind of assume I’m like them, so they like me. They like but they see. So I think that’s probably too. And I think it’s only upon deeper discussions when we talk about religion or politics, or the thing is that they begin to see differences. But until then, we’re pretty much the same. And I think that’s also another interesting thing is that changed a lot since 2015, or 16′. Is for most of my life, and I’m 70 years old now. I never really knew much about the political point of view of a lot of our friends or neighbors. It just was never a subject that would come up in most conversations.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

But now, it seemed like we have to pick a side. And I think in some ways, that’s appropriate, because, you know, when things get to a certain point, and I had to keep going back to World War II, but I mean, in World War II, I think that the choice was very clear. And being neutral was not a moral choice. And I think now, it’s a similar situation, I think, where people feel like both sides have their own point of view. But I think there is a clear right and wrong about many of the things that we’re facing right now.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah, it sounds like in 2016, you were faced with a choice, which is to be your authentic self and say what you thought was right and wrong, probably knowing that you might give up some of that sort of universal approval that you had where people could project onto you whatever politics, they wanted to you could be Democrat, you could be Republican. You’re just Sully and you’re a hero. Were you intentional about that? Did you understand that you would potentially be giving up 35% of your, you know, I hate to use the word base, but that that there would be people now who would no longer admire you because you’re now on a different side.

Dr. Bob Wachter  30:09

Absolutely, yes. Absolutely. And I did it anyway. Because I had to I needed to it was the only way to live with myself. But I think gave me great pause. Because I have a wife. I have two daughters; I’ve received a death threat. That’s the country we live in. And so I couldn’t do it blindly without, like I said, in aviation, without having a full and accurate appreciation of the risks. And so we’ve been very careful, we moved we’ve taken great precautions, because of it. But not doing these things was not an option.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah. I mean, it seems like one of the things that you have projected and I know you well enough to know it’s not a projection it is you is your integrity, and the respect for truth and what’s right dominates your thinking that had to be your first priorities you thought these issues through?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Well, my first priority is the safety and security of my family. Close behind that is saving our democracy. And so, that has literally become a mission. And imperative that I feel, is using my bully pulpit to do what I can to move the needle to save our democracy, because, you know, back to the civics lesson part of it. And I think that’s something that’s changed in our education system. In most states, since I went to school over a half century ago, is that we don’t get as much civic education about our system of government, the checks and balances, why we have them how they work. And I think getting back to my friend’s comment about the greatest civics lessons of our lives.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

I think most people and myself included did not fully appreciate how much our checks and balances depend upon people acting in good faith. And when they don’t, our checks and balances are either disregarded or they fail us. And so that’s something else that we’re learning right now is all of these norms and standards and things that we have that are not codified in law, and sometimes, even when they are coded by the law, they aren’t sufficient to withstand the attack the onslaught.

Dr. Bob Wachter  32:24

Yeah. One of the things that’s colored the past year has been this existential fear that people have had that I could get sick, I could die, my family members could get sick and die. As I went back and listen to the audio tape of, of after the bird strike, one of the most remarkable things as your sense of calm in the face of what you had known was potentially a threat, not only to the people sitting behind you, but to your own life. Tell us about how you maintain calm in crisis. And are there lessons from that, that we should we should take for how we’re responding to this crisis?

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Well, you have to understand, first of all, what a shock this event was, because it was something that we had never specifically trained for never specifically anticipated this confluence of events leading to thrust off on both engines at such a low altitude over a month and the most intensely developed areas on the planet, with so few options. And so little time, we had 208 seconds, a little less than three and a half minutes from the time we hit the birds until we had landed. So I knew that using gravity to glide downhill, to provide the forward motion of the airplane. It was a matter of mere moments before our flight path intersected the surface of the earth, I had to find the best possible place for that to happen in the best possible way for that to happen. And we never trained for water landing.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Our flight simulators at the time didn’t allow us to replicate that the only training we’d ever got for a water landing was a classroom discussion. And so we had to do something we never done before get right the first time or right enough, their batting practice did so. And you also have to realize that aviation has become ultra-safe in the events world. And things hardly ever go wrong that often anymore. And so we don’t get as much real-world practice in dealing with emergencies as we did 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. And so when we work so hard to maintain this routine, the safe environment in which we operate, in which everything almost always goes right, even if we plan and anticipate and have options for every alternative.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  34:32

Having this suddenly happened is a startling effect and we our bodies reacted immediately to this sudden starting to crack or I could feel my blood pressure shoot up my pulse by. I felt the stress the tunnel vision because of it. So it wasn’t that we were called we really couldn’t be calm. It wasn’t possible with our bodies responding the way they were but we had the mental discipline based upon decades. professionalism and knowing how to, to calm ourselves enough that we could do our jobs, to compartmentalize our minds and focus clearly on the task at hand in spite of how debilitating the stress response was. And since I knew I didn’t have time to do everything I needed to do, but I could set clear priorities even in this novel event, I chose to do only the few things that would help us the most, but do them very, very well. not let the stress or not trying to do too much not well attempt at multitasking, degrade our performance.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

And then I had the middle discipline also to ignore and not do the things I know, I didn’t have time to do and if I tried to, but only be detriments and distractions. And so by forcing this kind of professional calm on ourselves, focusing on the task at hand, clearly setting priorities, and not trying to do too much by trying to control manage the workload, and tonic goal sacrifice. In other words, I early on was more than willing to sacrifice the airplane if it meant saving lives. So I didn’t try to return to an airport I couldn’t reach. And instead, I chose early on to land in a river knowing it would ruin the airplane, but that more people would survive. And so it was making all these choices very rapidly in succession that really framed this problem for me.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  36:25

So I had developed over 42 years of flying that point, a paradigm of how to solve any emergency by doing these critical things and doing them well. Even though I didn’t know at the outset exactly every step we would have to take. I solved the problem at a time until I solve enough to just survive. And Jeff Skiles, a first officer did the same thing. And because it was so high workload and so time critical, Jeff and I didn’t even have time to talk about what we should do. And what I had to rely upon him immediately and intuitively to understanding this developing crisis as I did and knowing what he should do to help me on his own initiative. And that’s what he did, we were able to collaborate wordlessly. And that was the other key here. Was him helping me without me having to direct his every action. Are there lessons in that

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Are there lessons in that? If we have listeners today who are just scared, they’re scared of the variants, they’re scared that they haven’t gotten their vaccine yet? Are there lessons in the way you trained and prepared for them in terms of how people can remain, as you said, not necessarily calm or unrealistic about the threat, but managed to make rational decisions in the face of these threats?

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah, you learn to, to make the best of a bad situation, you know that you’re not powerless, you know that there’s almost always some additional action that you can take, that will make it better, that will reduce the harm. While you’re not able to solve the whole problem, immediately, you can make it better. And I think that’s also a message that I talked to audiences about, you know, whether you have a big important job with a fancy title or not, even though it seems like given the complexity and the enormity of the problems in the world, it seems like we’re trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. When you think about it, no matter who you are, or what your span of control, there is some part of the world that you can affect that you can control. And when you choose to try to make a difference in that little part of the world.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  38:26

And it’s a choice we have to make almost on a daily basis. It can make a difference. And so I think we all need to even before we get to a crisis, try to make our own little part of the world safer or better. Or just, you know, pick a word, you know, and I think then then we realized that we’re not helpless, that we can affect the outcome, even if it’s in a marginal way. And in aggregate, when we all do that, then of course, it makes a huge difference when over 300 million people decide that we’re going to solve this, we’re going to work together, we’re going to mask up, we’re going to stay socially distance, we’re not going to travel if we don’t have any reason to, then we’re going to know that we’re going to save our fellow citizens lives and probably save our lives or  someone we love or care about.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Return for a second to preparedness and you know, this pandemic will end at some point. And then we will be in the situation where there is not the threat here today. But it will again be somewhere in the future. And it strikes me that your career has been in part about thinking about future threats, preparing for them. The threat of an airline, a modern airline crashing is a hell of a lot lower than the threat of another pandemic once COVID has gone away. And yet you folks train relentlessly for it and as you say it was what prepared you for that moment after the bird strike. So talk a little bit about preparedness and how you think we can prepare for the next one when this goes away.

Dr. Bob Wachter  40:13

Yeah, I mean, one of professional pilots biggest responsibilities is to be able to handle whatever may come, even if it’s something you’ve never seen before and trained for. And that’s hard. I was asked one time by journalists, what keeps you up at night, and I said, something and I haven’t thought of yet, you know, something I haven’t gained in my mind how I’d react to it. That’s why it’s so important to have that paradigm of how to solve any problem, you know how to begin to set priorities and take effective action until you solve them all. So I think that is something, that mindfulness, that awareness, constantly looking for, and becoming sensitized to risk. And seeing the links in a causal chain began to line up and then choosing to act intervene to break that chain before it can lead to building a robust, resilient system, like aviation in which we all operate.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Where we have already done the hard work much of the hard work, we’ve already attained the knowledge, the skill, we have well defined roles and responsibilities. We know how to work together as a team. And we’ve learned not just technical or your domain clinical skills, but the human skills, the leadership and team building skills that I used to teach when I was a pioneer in a black airline, changing airline culture from the old days when captains didn’t take the time to lead and build their teams well, to where now we that’s the first thing we do when we a crew. Sometimes people we’ve never met before, like our first officer that day. I hadn’t flown with him before that famous flight. So you do the homework before you need it.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

When the crisis hits, time is the enemy. And there’s not time to learn everything you should have learned before this started. So that’s why not only preparation is key. But learning training is a key. Having plans, you know, whether you’re a football team or some other organization, have plans already drawn up, and then operationally test and evaluate them in full on replica ways you can do reality to practice them, find out where the weaknesses are and make adjustments before the next crisis hits. So I think it all those things will make a great bit of difference.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  42:29

And that’s something else that the US military does really well, besides aviation. Empowering people at every level to take initiative, develop their leadership skills, because you know, when information is lacking, or imperfect or communication doesn’t, isn’t able to take place. And if the lowest level of the military knows the commander’s intent, they get their own initiative and begin trying to fulfill it.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Are you optimistic about the future in terms of this sort of braking of the Civic culture? Over the last four years, we’ve seen something we’ve never seen before, certainly during our lifetimes. And as you said, you know, we have received an amazing civics lesson. Do you think we’ve learned it? And do you think we can move back to a little bit less partisanship? Or are you afraid we’re on this path for a while?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

Wow, that’s a big question. Let me try to break it down into bytes that I can give you specific answers to. So first, I should say that, in the long term, I’m optimistic. It’s funny, I’m reminded about a famous quote, I think most people are familiar with it, because it’s something that the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased, but the original author was a 19th century, abolitionist minister named Theodore Parker, the quote is about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. My take on that my paraphrasing of that famous quote, would be this. The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, only when we make it. So we are learning important lessons right now. I just hope that we remember them.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  44:18

And that’s always the challenge is remembering these lessons and not having to constantly relearn them, whether it’s an aviation or other domains. I think also, this is something I’ve written about in both my books, is having a really fundamentally accurate understanding of what optimism is. And I have always tried to have what I call realistic optimism. It’s based upon having real concrete knowledge and skills having already done the hard work. And then once you’ve obtained that knowledge and those skills and that confidence, then it’s knowing with unshakable certainty, that if you use those skills and that knowledge well, and you work together, you will find a way to survive and you can succeed ultimately, though, it may take a long time.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

While at the same time, having the integrity and the honesty with yourself to have a full and accurate appreciation of the risks that you’re facing. And I think that’s what we must do. We must view the world in all its candor, realistically accurately, but knowing that like almost every other choices humanity has ever faced, that we can ultimately survive and succeed if we work together.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Well, that’s a great message. I certainly hope that we have learned some lessons from this as we get through it. Maybe last couple of questions. First of all, do you ever get mistaken for Tom Hanks these days? Is that been a problem for you?

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

No, not at all. So I will tell you that one of the it’s, gosh, how many people have Tom Hanks player in the movie, but actually, I know some of them that become friends with a man I admired him for a long time, Captain James Lovell of Apollo 13. And Rich Phillips of Captain Phillips. So once Clint Greenleaf, filmed the film, and once he had cast Tom, to play me, not only had Clint come to the house a few months before, but then Tom did. But we didn’t talk about him, crafting his performance. That’s his own craft.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  46:37

And he watched video of me to figure that out. But he told me that he wanted to reassure me. Like I said, he had played real people still living before. And he knew that while the film was in the theaters, and it was in people’s minds that he and I would be conflated in the minds of a conflict. But that once the film had run its course, I was going to have to go back to living the rest of my life. And he didn’t want to screw it up for me. So that was his goal. And he didn’t

Dr. Bob Wachter 

That’s great. Were you pleased with how he did?

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Oh, yeah. And you know, what I was especially pleased with was how he and Aaron Eckhart play Jeff Skiles, our first officer, replicated on screen using their artistic abilities, the professional relationship that Jeff and I have, you know, having gone through such a traumatic event, we’re very close, bonded like brothers. And we have a great deal of respect and admiration for each other. And I thought that really came across on screen. And I was grateful to see that.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Maybe last question. I know that you and your wife Lorrie have raised Guide Dogs for the Blind for many, many years. Why have you done that? And what have you learned from doing that?

Dr. Bob Wachter

Well, like many things in our lives, including our daughters, Lorrie was the one who initially got involved with Guide Dogs 30 plus years ago, and we’ve always had dogs and cats and liked pets and shelter animals and when we learned about Guide Dogs, it just seemed like one of those organizations that did so much good. Where we used to live, there was an older gentleman who lived near us who late in life, after very successful professional life lost his eyesight. And initially, he was learning to use a cane to navigate the neighborhood by himself when he was walking. And then Lorrie stopped him one day and talked to him and told him about Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger  48:31

And it was after that, that he went through the program and qualified and got his first guide dog. So I mean, it’s had real world consequences for involvement. And of course, we’ve raised guide dog puppies, especially our older daughter, who is now a veterinarian, she’s a newly graduated DVM and an emergency vet doctor professional she loves and so even our younger daughter who was not particularly interested in dog before, has her own dog a shelter animal now and just loves her. So you know, it’s been a wonderful association and even just recently appointed by social media toured them and helped raise more money for them because they, they do such important work.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger 

And if you ever have a chance to go up to the guide dog campus and say […] to graduation, I’m not sure they’re doing in person anymore when they used to, it was amazing to see the human partner and the guide dog after a month of intensive training, be mash together. And this is like an old married couple they seem to they look like they belong. They act like they belong together the human and the dog and how important it is to the human to regain their independence. And how important it is to dog to be that companion and serve them well. There’s never a dry eye in the house.

Dr. Bob Wachter 

Yeah, I’ll bet that is inspiring. Thank you for that and thank you for being with us today.

Cpt. Sully Sullenberger

Great to be with you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Dr. Bob Wachter  50:13

Wow, that was really a wonderful conversation with Captain Sullenberger. I’ve thought from the first time I had a chance to meet him and watching him over the years that there were two miracles on the Hudson. One was that he successfully landed that plane against all odds and saved the lives of 155 people. The second was that it was him. If you think about the number of people, the number of pilots or any from any profession, who would have come out of that plane into the limelight, that he came into the amount of public pressure, public scrutiny, everyone hanging on his every word, and the fact that he, you know, knew who he is in his comfortable in his skin, and has such obvious integrity and just such a remarkable human being. And he understood that he had an opportunity to use that visibility in that pulpit, to advance issues that he thought were very important.

Dr. Bob Wachter

Whether it was the importance of teamwork, you know, he will never say anything about what happened that day without pointing to the members of his team, including the passengers, whether it was the importance of leadership, or how to manage in a crisis, or how to deal with one’s fear. And importantly, as you heard, over the last several years, the importance of a civil and civic society, and caring about each other, and the importance of leadership and some of the problems that we’ve seen when leadership fails. I can’t think of almost anyone who could have come out of that plane that day, and taken advantage of the opportunity that he was given in a way that was so inspiring and extraordinary. So it was just a great privilege to talk to him. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Dr. Bob Wachter

We have a number of other great episodes coming up. We have Emily Oster, who is a professor of economics at Brown, but has emerged as perhaps the leading expert on the incredibly challenging issue of the schools and whether the school should be open or not. Emily has thought deeply about it collected real data on it and as applied the lens of science and evidence to help us make these really tough decisions about the schools. We have Don Berwick; Don is the world’s foremost authority on the issues of healthcare quality and patient safety. Don also ran the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services before and he did so as he understands the world of COVID through the lens of the government.

Dr. Bob Wachter

And finally, we have another episode of Safe or Not Safe? with our two guests, Caitlin rivers and Farzad Mostashari. And this will be the first safe or not safe that layers in something that’s made those questions even more complex, which is vaccinated or not certain things that might have not been safe before may now be safe. And as you heard from the conversation I had with my wife Katie, more and more families are finding themselves in that conversation Safe or Not Safe? when one person is vaccinated and one person isn’t. So that adds a new layer of complexity and to some extent, opportunity that we haven’t had before. And so I look forward to hearing from Caitlin and Farzad to keep us up to date on how we think about safer not safe today. So with that, thank you all for listening and please stay safe yourself and look forward to speaking with you soon.

CREDITS

We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen produced our show. Our mix is by Ivan Kuraev. Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs executive produced the show. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill and additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @InTheBubblePod. Until next time, stay safe and stay sane. Thanks so much for listening.

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