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Chapter 1: What challenges did Michelle Huntington face in pursuing her aviation dreams?
This is Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takaro from the corporate office to the cab of a truck. They're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy.
Welcome. We're an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show. We power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I'm Shelley. And I'm Kathy.
Have you ever had to make a decision so critical that waiting, even for a moment, could make things worse? Imagine doing that at 35,000 feet, responsible for hundreds of lives, with no luxury of perfect information. Our guest today lived that reality every day. Michelle Huntington is a former airline captain. She was told at the beginning she could not become a pilot.
She did anyway and became one of fewer than 500 female captains worldwide who spent over two decades navigating storms, system failures, and high-stakes decisions where hesitation simply wasn't an option. And what she learned in the cockpit might surprise you. The greatest risk isn't being wrong. It's not deciding.
Today, Michelle brings those same principles into the business world, helping leaders cut through chaos, make confident decisions under pressure and lead with clarity when it matters most. Michelle is a TEDx speaker, corporate trainer and author of Lady MacGyver, Unbelievable Stories with Altitude. I love that title, by the way.
If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed or waiting for perfect timing, this conversation is going to shift the way you think. Michelle, welcome to our show. We're so glad to have you with us. We can't wait to hear your insight. Thanks, Shelley. Yes, welcome, welcome, welcome, Lady MacGyver. Oh, I love that.
I love it. I call myself that, but now I'm me, the actual MacGyver.
So were you as good with paperclips as MacGyver was? It seemed like he could do stuff with anything you'd find around the house.
Absolutely. What is it? Chewing gum, belly button, lint? Yeah, it's a paper plate.
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Chapter 2: How did Michelle overcome societal barriers in the aviation industry?
I did for quite some time. So it was only the fact that I met somebody, a female who was studying to become a pilot years later, that it was kind of like, oh, it is possible. And her guts hadn't fallen out.
Or her tampons.
Yeah.
I've never even heard of that. Like, wow.
No, I know. I know. It's embarrassing actually, because it's like, no, I wasn't, I wasn't silly. And my kids have read my book and, and they say, mom, like, seriously, you didn't question that. And, and, I, you know, I have berated myself since, but it was just that thing of an elder, you know, you brought up to respect your elders and to be a good girl and to comply. And I did that.
And yeah, it was, look, nothing's, everything's at the right timing is my belief. So it meant that for 15 years, I didn't realize that dream to become a pilot. But I learned some other life skills and met some interesting people along the way to that.
Which helped. So then did you automatically just go into flight school? How did that all work?
Well, I, so I was 27 when I met, so I had a divorce. I had a two-year-old son and I moved to a small country town and joined a mixed Oz tag, which I'm not sure if you've got it. It's like a league, like our rugby league that we have here. And, but it's with a, you have to tip people sometimes.
and it was a mixed mixed team men and women and there was one other woman on the team and I went to her and asked her what she did you know introduced myself and she was learning to fly and she she basically said like nothing dramatic she just said um All you do is, you know, do the interview, pay the money and learn to fly.
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Chapter 3: What critical decision-making skills did Michelle develop as a pilot?
It's that easy. And so then I was like, oh my goodness, okay, this is possible. And I started researching how I'm going to do this. And it was as simple as you, you know, pay the money to a flying school. So I needed to sell my home in order to do that. And my son and I moved it back in with my mum in Sydney. And then I needed a bank loan because I didn't have quite enough money.
So I went to the bank and asked them for a loan to learn to fly. And they said to me, no, you know, we're not going to loan you money for that because women can't be pilots. This was in a small country town. And I thought, here we go again.
Chapter 4: How does Michelle apply aviation principles to business leadership?
Yes. But this time I wasn't so compliant. I was kind of a bit feisty by then. And so I just went home, put on some lippy, went to a different bank and just totally faked it and said I needed to borrow money to decorate my house. And they said, okay, here's some money. So I knew I could pay it back.
And I've since spoken to banking people and they said, well, you might have been done for fraud back then. But, you know, I got the money and I did go to a flying school, paid for the whole amount up front and then started my flying lessons when I was 28. Wow.
That's amazing. Yes, it is. You know, I think what it boils down to is mindset. Once you tell yourself that you can do it, no, nothing's going to stop you, right? It's like I left nursing and I didn't know what I wanted to be. So I went to a career planning workshop at 42 and the lady, the facilitator after three days said, you know, I had the aptitudes of being a heavy equipment operator.
You know, I'm like, you're kidding. Like, there's no way. Right. I'm 42. I'm a woman like that. I'm not mechanic. Like, there's no possible way. And she said, if only you believe in yourself, you know, you could see you could do this. And she put on this video where it's possible, this YouTube video and sitting there.
listening to this person say, just change, you know, if you believe it's possible, you can do it. So then all of a sudden something clicked in my brain and I started thinking, well, instead of thinking, well, you know, this BS and, you know, there's no way I'm going to be a heavy equipment operator. I started thinking, well, I'm a good driver. I could drive a truck.
And, you know, all of a sudden I opened myself to the possibility and, Had I chosen to remain fixated on that I couldn't do it, I wouldn't be here today. So it's all about mindset. So you doing the same thing, you know, you're going to do whatever it takes to do it. And you did. And that's awesome. Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And good on you for, you know, being open to the heavy machinery operator as well.
Oh yeah, that was a massive change. Like massive. I'm like, huh? What?
That's it. And our conditioning, you know, and the whole societal thing about what women should do. And this isn't, you know, doing the whole gender dissing on men. It's just what we've been conditioned to. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What lessons can we learn from Michelle's experiences in high-pressure situations?
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Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Takaro.
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We've been talking with Michelle Huntington, former airline captain, TEDx speaker and author of Lady MacGyver, Unbelievable Stories with Altitude. Michelle spent years navigating storms, system failures and rapidly changing conditions in the cockpit, even when she was told women should never fly.
She learned to be able to weather the storm and make critical decisions when hesitation was not an option. It was her experience in the cockpit when she discovered that many organizations face the same kind of turbulence every day. Meetings that go in circles, delayed decisions, unclear ownership, and leaders waiting for certainty that never arrives.
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Chapter 6: How can effective communication impact decision-making?
I was reading an article and they were talking about how there's such a lack of communication today. Whether you're texting somebody, whether you're emailing somebody, you really, you don't always hear back from them. It's kind of like, hello, are you there? There, there, there. You feel like there's an echo and there's no one there. Are you in a cavern somewhere? Nobody's communicating.
We have some of the best technology today so we can all communicate. In the article, they called it communication paralysis. And that seems like that plays in real well with the messaging you have. People aren't doing anything. They're just paralyzed.
Yeah. If you think about it, how many forms of communication... I was talking to somebody... And we were discussing the forms of communication and it's, it's the fact that you get WhatsApp messages, you get, you know, Teams messages, you get other forms of, and there's emails and people CC people in, and then there's that thing of CCing back.
And you don't, you've given a piece of information that's so diluted and so spread out that you do become overwhelmed. And Then you're just like, where was that, Pete? Where did I receive that? What did you send that to me on? And it just becomes noise and you just want to stop, you know. So we have an acronym, again, in aviation, NITS, which is Nature, Intent, Time and Special Circumstances.
And in aviation, that would look like, you know, and we would actually say to the cabin crew, come in for a NITS briefing. So they knew as soon as they came into the flight deck, they were going to get information in a certain format, which meant that it needed to be acted on in a certain way.
So they would come in and, for example, I might say, okay, we have had an engine failure on the left-hand side, which is the captain's side of the aeroplane. We're going to turn around and land back in Sydney. It's going to take me 20 minutes and I will then do the double ding for you to be seated. And when we land, there's going to be a ā
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Chapter 7: What strategies does Michelle recommend for making decisions under uncertainty?
fire engine following us back to the bay just as a precaution. And then they repeat that back to ensure, so I can ensure they've understood and the pertinent points of information are there.
Now, if we can actually communicate like that, even in business and to our spouses and friends, et cetera, if there's something that needs to cut through that noise of all the WhatsApp and Zoom and iMessage and everything, then
If we could say something like, look, I really need you to hear this, or this is important, this one, and do it in that format of, you know, I'm feeling this, this is what I'm thinking of doing, I'm going to do it within this time, and there may be this and this. It's such an easy way to, one, convey it because sometimes it's hard to actually say what you feel or you want to get across.
And then to be able to listen because so many times we don't listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to answer. So set in that sort of format, you can take in the information that they need you to hear. Yeah.
But there still seems to be a problem in business with certain generations anyway, where they don't respond. And you can say, yes, please respond to me. And then there's still the radio silence. And it's like, is my daughter does that? It is so massively frustrating. It is. Respond. Say something. Yeah, it's like, are you out there?
There was actually a study done that, I want to say the GenZennials and even Millennials, three out of five of them don't like to use business email, so they ignore it. Wow. Yeah. And I think part of it too, if they respond, they're afraid of maybe being wrong. And like you say, the greatest risk isn't being wrong. It's not deciding.
So that's a lack of decisiveness when you have communication paralysis and you just ignore someone and nothing goes anywhere. Yeah.
I can definitely, like, that is frustrating. And yes, I have a teenage daughter. He also does that to me. But I suppose the way I was getting extremely frustrated and I realized it was my expectation that was the problem. So I'm used to people responding, which I would call consideration and being, you know, the opposite of rude.
Whereas, yeah, they are not, even to each other, they do not, if they see it as read on their messaging, but they're not responded to, that in itself is an answer. So if it's gone unread, you know, it doesn't have the two blue ticks, then they haven't seen it. So they don't worry about it. Whereas if it's been read, it's got the two blue ticks.
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Chapter 8: How can we apply Michelle's insights to improve our own decision-making processes?
It wasn't considered appropriate or respectful to do that in my generation. And I'm loving the fact that my kids do feel comfortable pushing back. And I wish I had had that for myself when I was younger. But yeah, so I suppose that and if like, again, my daughter has said that doesn't deserve an answer.
When you're working for someone, though, I don't think you can say that to your boss.
No, I don't think so. All right. But then do businesses, I'm wondering, do businesses need to change their style of communication rather than how it used to be?
Maybe, because what you talk about, you know, leaders struggle with atmospheric turbulence, which is an aviation term, but it makes sense. It means that when circles, decisions delayed while waiting for perfect data, unclear ownership. If you don't communicate, you don't have any of that defined.
No, that's right. And that's why there needs to be parameters. So again, making the decision. So part of the decision making, you can only make whatever decision you make at the time has to be a good one based on the information you have in the time that you have it. So if you're not getting information from your coworkers, you can only base your decision on the information you have.
So therefore, if it's a team, and if it turns out to be not the best decision, the person who owns that decision is generally the upline manager. So that manager needs to, or leader, needs to then make the decision, well, am I going to own this myself, as in do all of the research myself? Or can I rely on my team? And if they can't rely on their team, then does the team change?
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Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country, and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for?
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