More than once during my career as a Marine FA-18 fighter pilot, I was “killed.”

It didn’t happen in a spectacular, cinematic dogfight where I was outmaneuvered by a superior pilot. It happened because of a silent, insidious enemy: distraction. I would become so utterly fixated on a simulated bogey on my radar screen or a target on the ground in front of me that my situational awareness would shrink to the size of a pinhole. While I was busy managing what I could see, an undetected adversary would slip into my six o’clock position – directly behind me, completely invisible to my line of sight – and call a lethal shot over the radio.

Worse still were the times I got my wingman “killed.” In fighter aviation, your primary responsibility isn’t just to shoot down the enemy; it is also to protect the person flying next to you. But more than once, I failed to do my job of “checking his six.” Why? Because I was overwhelmed by my own cockpit tasks, sorting through data, or trying to solve an immediate problem. I allowed myself to become isolated, and in doing so, I left my wingman entirely vulnerable.

This lesson from the skies is brutal but universal: We are all busy, and we all have blind spots. In the corporate world, the stakes may not involve pulling 7Gs or avoiding surface-to-air missiles, but the psychological and operational dynamics are similar. As a leader, you are constantly bombarded with data, crises, and strategic demands. The question you must ask yourself today is: Who is checking your six?

The Danger of Cognitive Saturation and Target Fixation

In aviation, we use the term “cognitive capacity” to describe the maximum amount of information a human brain can process at one time. When you exceed that capacity, you experience cognitive saturation. Your brain simply stops processing new inputs. You might look right at a warning light and not see it; you might hear a radio call and not comprehend it. Recognizing this threshold is critical because reaching saturation can mean losing situational awareness when you need it most.

For executive leaders, cognitive saturation is a daily hazard. When you are saturated with information – market volatility, supply chain disruptions, personnel issues, and shifting board expectations – your peripheral vision disappears. You develop “target fixation,” focusing intensely on the fire burning directly in front of you while remaining completely oblivious to the smoke rising behind you.

This is precisely when you are most vulnerable. Unseen threats – cultural toxicity within your team, an emerging competitor, a shift in client sentiment, or your own burnout – can emerge in the blind spots you are too busy to monitor. No matter how talented, experienced, or intelligent you are, you cannot look forward and backward at the same time. You need a system of mutual support – a wingman culture.

To create an effective mutual support system, consider these four steps:

Step 1: Unmask Your Personal Blind Spots

You cannot defend against a threat you do not know exists. The first step in countering blind spots is acknowledging that you have them and identifying what they look like in a corporate environment. Blind spots generally fall into a few common categories:

• The Visionary’s Blind Spot: Leaders who excel at high-level strategy often overlook operational execution. They assume that because a vision is compelling, the infrastructure to support it will magically appear. Their blind spot is the administrative and operational strain put on their teams.
• The Harmonizer’s Blind Spot: Leaders who value consensus and team harmony often have a blind spot regarding performance deficiencies and conflict. By avoiding difficult conversations to keep the peace, they allow toxic behaviors or underperformance to fester, damaging team morale.
• The Expert’s Blind Spot: Leaders who rose through the ranks as a result of their technical expertise often struggle with micromanagement. Their blind spot is an inability to trust others to execute, which suffocates innovation and disempowers their direct reports.
• The Pace-Setter’s Blind Spot: High-achieving, high-energy leaders often assume everyone possesses their same level of stamina. Their blind spot is employee burnout, missing the subtle signs of exhaustion until key talent suddenly resigns.

To uncover these blind spots, look at past failures or patterns of friction in your career. Where do things consistently go wrong? What issues catch you by surprise? Recognizing these patterns is the beginning of tactical vigilance.

Step 2: Build a Wingman Culture (Ask for Help)

In a fighter squadron, a wingman isn’t your subordinate; they are your partner in survival. To protect your six, you must intentionally invite people you trust to monitor your blind spots with you.

This requires a high degree of vulnerability and psychological safety. You must approach a trusted peer, a mentor, or even a direct report and give them explicit permission to speak truth to power. You might say: “I know that when I get stressed, I tend to stop listening and push my own agenda. I need you to be my wingman. If you see me doing that in our executive meetings, give me a signal or call me out privately afterward.”

For this to work, you must establish a strict “no-penalty” rule for feedback. In aviation debriefs, we leave our rank at the door. A captain (O-3) can tell a colonel (O-6) that they made a mistake, because the aircraft doesn’t care about rank, and neither does the enemy. If a trusted colleague checks your six and points out a flaw in your blind spot, your immediate response must be gratitude, not defensiveness.

Step 3: Practice Mutual Support

Checking your six is not a one-way street; it is a culture of mutual support. Just as you need others to watch your back, you must actively monitor the blind spots of those around you.

When leaders operate in silos, the entire organization becomes vulnerable. Mutual support means looking across functions at your fellow executives or down at your management team and recognizing when they are hitting cognitive saturation.

Are they fixated on a single problem to the detriment of their department? Are they exhibiting signs of stress that impair their judgment? By stepping in and offering perspective – “Hey, I notice you’ve been completely consumed by the Q3 rollout. Let me handle the cross-departmental alignment this week so you can focus” – you protect them, their team, and the organization from a catastrophic misstep.

When mutual support becomes an organizational norm, teams become incredibly resilient. Ultimately, this shared vigilance ensures that collective mission success is never compromised by a single point of failure, leading to sustained high performance even under intense pressure.

Step 4: Engage an External Wingman (An Executive Coach)

While internal peers and team members are vital wingmen, they are still embedded in the day-to-day politics and culture of your organization. They have skin in the game, which can sometimes limit their perspective or affect their willingness to be entirely candid. This is why many successful leaders engage an external wingman: an executive coach.

An executive coach occupies a unique position. They have no internal political agenda, no desire for your job, and no fear of organizational hierarchy. Their sole objective is your growth, clarity, and effectiveness. A skilled coach acts as a high-definition rearview mirror, reflecting back the behaviors, biases, and blind spots that you are fundamentally incapable of seeing yourself.

A good coach won’t just tell you what you want to hear. They will challenge your assumptions, interrupt your target fixations, and force you to look at the angles you’ve been ignoring. They provide a safe, confidential space to unpack cognitive overload, allowing you to regain the situational awareness required to lead effectively.

The Debrief: Regaining Your Situational Awareness

In aviation, the mission isn’t over when the wheels touch the tarmac; it’s over after the debrief. The debrief is where we analyze our mistakes, look at what snuck up on us, and adjust our tactics for the next flight.

If you feel overwhelmed, reactive, or constantly surprised by crises within your organization, it is a clear indicator that your situational awareness is compromised. You are flying solo in a high-threat environment, and your six is wide open.

Take a tactical pause today. Look at your calendar, your team, and your current challenges. Identify your blind spots, empower a wingman to call them out, watch the backs of those you lead, and consider bringing in an executive coach to provide a vital, unbiased external perspective.

Don’t wait until you hear the metaphorical call that you’ve been hit. Create a wingman culture and make sure someone is always checking your six.

And if you need an external wingman, that’s my specialty. Let’s connect.