We are starting back to work soon and there’s some anxiety around our “New Normal” and exactly what that means, but first a question we must ask and answer for ourselves. A question that holds the answer to how we plan to live the rest of lives, it’s simply this -  How has this crisis changed us?  We explore this topic from a man who has lived his life in 2 distinct parts – BEFORE the plane went down on January 15th, 2009, and AFTER.

In this episode, you’ll meet Dave Sanderson, the last passenger on US Airways flight 1549 that ditched into the Hudson River.  Dave made many interesting personal leadership choices during that experience but perhaps, more importantly, he made a personal choice on HOW to live his LIFE after the incident. Dave is an inspirational survivor, speaker, and author of the book “Moments Matter”. His thoughts on leadership have made him an internationally sought-out speaker. The last passenger off the back of the plane on that fateful day, he was largely responsible for the well-being and safety of others, risking his own life in frigid water to help other passengers off the plane. Despite the hazards to himself, Sanderson thought only of helping others and emerged from the wreckage with a mission: to encourage others to do the right thing. Today, he travels the globe sharing his inspirational and motivational leadership messages to help people make a difference in how they do business and live their lives.

https://davesandersonspeaks.com/

You can reach Dave on LinkedIn at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiredavesanderson/

03:00   Dave’s story

11:45   Throw the baby! / when people freeze

14:33   It’s not always the person with the title

17:12   You asked General Norman Schwarzkopf - what?

21:42   Life Before and after January 15

36:19 No one dies today

42:17   Challenging bureaucracy

51:31   The morning routine

1:00:03  I made a choice

[Transcript]

[00:00:39] As she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for gravitas

[00:01:15] At the same time, we've learned to work from home. We've learned many different ways of doing things because of our lives have been turned inside out and upside down. But what have we really learned about how we lead our own lives and how we lead others moving forward? I could think of no better person to help us explore this topic than a man who has lived his life in two parts before a crisis.

[00:02:16] And what that has done to him, how that has changed him, we'll explore the leadership experiences that he went through on the plane that day. And then after. Dave was the director of security for Tony Robbins. And he now runs his own business. Dave Sanderson enterprises. He is a global well-known leadership speaker, a true inspiration and definitely a survivor.

[00:02:51] Dave: [00:02:51] Well, thank you so much for having me

[00:03:22] Dave: [00:03:22] Well, there are definitely two different versions of what happened for me in my life. So before January 15, 2009, I had a 25 year career in sales, top producer wise for kids trying to do the right thing. I actually was modeling my dad, right. I'd go out, earn the income, bring it home. And my family have a better life for themselves.

[00:04:10] And that was pretty much my Mo since about 1986. So in 2009, um, you know, got married, right. And did the whole thing that was for kids, but then January 15, 2009, that sort of flipping a lot of things were coming to light that generally, um, I should have seen earlier in my life, but I think sometimes you need some sort of give you a perspective when I survived the plane crash and I wasn't supposed to be on, I was scheduled to be on the farm.

[00:05:09] so I can even negotiate my way up on that flight. Seeds, because basically

[00:05:45] That was the second. And the actual moment when things started to shift, because that's when you heard the explosion, they knew something had happened, but

[00:06:12] And all of a sudden you see something happened, no big deal, but I think don't be you. I think that was one of the most extraordinary parts of the story that doesn't get torn along because both engines got hit simultaneously. And I think I truly believe Jack and I send this on many, many interviews. I'll take, if we want to hurt bang, bang,

[00:06:58] the New York skyline [00:07:00] and all of a sudden you're seeing a bridge, never seen it and it's getting big. It's getting big in the window. Rising things are getting big. All of a sudden things that things have to take place. And all of a sudden they get over the bridge without your heading straight for the water, because there was no other option.

[00:08:02] [00:08:00] or just the opposite toppling into Newark in Russia. Now you have something that's bigger than anything that's ever really happened like that. But fortunately, that didn't happen. But now you're in the water. We talked about two parts, there's two parts we got down and we survived. But now you're in a stinking plate in 36 degree water.

[00:08:48] So that's when your leadership really starts stepping up because now you have to think of your personal leadership skills. Now you mean on the way down, generally control anything, but now you can control yourself. Right? So now [00:09:00] I tell people, this is one personal leadership comes to the forefront because now you have to make decisions to take action quickly, but you don't have that many resources to make decisions on.

[00:09:17] That day was changing every minute. So I had to make the decisions on basically a minute to minute basis. Do I do this? Do I do this such as you know, when I got to the aisle, my decision initially was just to get out of the plane, get out. But then I heard my mom start talking to me in my head. What she said to me is if you do the right thing, God will take care of you, which made you make another decision.

[00:10:01] [00:10:00] So I had to make decisions. So that's when I decided to go towards the back of the plane to see if anybody needed help, because that one jet, my thought process was okay, I'm alive. I'm alive. Does anybody else need help? Josh with, towards the back of the plane, he got behind everybody else and back in the plane.

[00:10:46] So what decision do you make now? Do you force yourself out or do you sort of hang back? And the reason I hang back with two different reasons, number one, the second thing was Lisa, the plane I had leverage [00:11:00] because there was a picture taken of me. I had the leverage to hold on to that inside the plane.

[00:11:27] I gotta do it at 36 degree water for seven minutes.

[00:11:53] And that's what happened. I saw a lady who didn't know what to do. If she was standing in the middle, the way she didn't know what to do. And I [00:12:00] tell people, one of the things you realize and learn is sometimes you do nothing. It's a very dangerous situation because now you've got people trying to get around you.

[00:12:29] And all of a sudden, somebody else took her hand and got her off. So that was intentional.

[00:13:04] Sometimes you just got to go. And that was a golden moment for me that got done. But now I'm still in the plane. So, what

[00:13:46] because I realized later on all those moments in my life.

[00:14:05] in across a river and we swim and that was a river in the hot. That's a, maybe that was the moment that gave me the certainty to be able to do this go because I made the decision to go and I probably would have made that decision unless I had certainty in myself that I could do it. There's one thing you worry about leadership.

[00:14:41] If you get people certainty, you become a leader. And right now people who are in social uncertainty. So the people who are leaders now they're gonna be holding new, proper leaders are gonna be able to get certainty to people will step up and rise to the leaders because we will look to them for certainty.

[00:15:17] And there was a guy on the other side, he was a Marine.

[00:15:30] That's probably exactly what people need. If it was a total, total fear, that's what's going on right now because people right now, people who are getting leadership right now, or people stepping up doing the zoom calls, giving people the positivity that we aren't going to get through this. This is how we're going to get through it.

[00:15:50] Jan: [00:15:50] that it's not always the person with the big title and that's a misconception and this is [00:16:00] very much an opportunity. Whereas some people may sit back and wait for the people with the titles to step up and lead. But that's not always the case and your situation, albeit a more extreme version, but there's a classic situation.

[00:16:31] Dave: [00:16:31] Most definitely

[00:17:02] This is six minute flight, seven to 10 minutes out. I mean, we're still in the 15 to 30 minutes. And that's when all of a sudden leaders have to step up. Because one of the things that I learned years ago when I had the option that I had, when I was with Tony and had a security, I had the opportunity.

[00:17:45] And I asked him, if I ask you a question, he goes, Oh, you just ask him. You really want to know, like, he was just cut to the chase. Right. I said, I really want to just go ahead and ask him, how did you win the war in Iraq? So quick, as you said, [00:18:00] gave me this Pat answer. I've heard that before. Right? So may I ask you another question because no one ever asked a general second question got really intense.

[00:18:28] They had to pray five times a day. I kept reminding the troops. How does this contribute to kicking Saddam? I had to remind people of the mission. It wasn't going to Baghdad. It wasn't Joni is keeping them as

[00:19:10] strike out.

[00:19:21] Jan: [00:19:21] and it you're right. It's about painting this picture of call it the mission, the future, the vision, whatever you want to say, right. It's it's and it's delivering it with this bone deep commitment and certainty that it's going to happen. And knowing that you don't have all the information at that point, but you just know that you're going in a certain direction and it's going to happen.

[00:20:13] Because we've all gone through different variations of the grief cycle. And we've all had those moments where we've been sitting in front of the TV and watching the death counter and CNN and being gripped by fear. I think anybody who hasn't had at least a moment of that probably doesn't have a pulse, but how do you, how do you push through that?

[00:20:40] Dave: [00:20:40] Well, one of the things I learned years ago, and I tried it, I do every single day is focused on gratitude. Because when you have gratitude, there is no fear because you're giving it to yourself. A few minutes ago, we were talking about something.

[00:21:18] You can still go out and give blood and give gratitude to somebody else. You can still give out a different way. Right. But this was all about, I'm just going to give today. Right. And somebody is going to get my surviving cancer because of me. So how can I ask fear when I'm giving gratitude?

[00:21:45] The guy that I see sitting before me today is not the guy that lived in that corporate mold prior to January 15th. We've all lived that corporate [00:22:00] life. And there are many people out there today living that corporate life that you described. Prior to the incident, we'll call it the incident right there.

[00:22:31] And we're doing, doing, doing, and we're doing more. There's an ego part of that with this corporate mold where we want to get more responsibility and maybe a bigger and better title. And I can relate to this because that was the person that I was, uh, several years ago. So, but that's not the guy that's sitting here today.

[00:22:59] Dave: [00:22:59] Um, there are [00:23:00] a lot of little things that happen. There's lost small miracles. And I think I know the one thing has sort of shifted my mindset. There's a lot of things have shifted, but I think there's one thing that sort of got my mindset and I need to start thinking a different way.

[00:23:31] now being around Tony. I've seen this happen. I've seen the pattern. I've seen it play out. Right. Where's the thing I never want to see you all over again. Now what's wrong with this guy, right? I mean, we survived national TV and I started thinking like, that's interesting. I asked a different question, but what I did is I found out something about it.

[00:24:14] And I started thinking, Jason, how many times in my life, if I thought made a judgment on somebody, maybe cost me a relationship, a job, a love relationship money I made so quickly. So I understood the back story of how it got there. And I said, if I could change that one worldview. Mark has become less judgmental.

[00:24:53] I mean, I've survived something. That's very few people in the world have ever survived, but now it's like, you know, [00:25:00] if I, I start driving, judge my company all the time, stuff's up, right? I mean, I'll say start back and say, you know what, maybe I don't know the whole story. And all of a sudden I now speak against the Supreme court, justice Kennedy.

[00:25:18] become less judgmental. And that's I tell people when you, when you start making that shift and you start getting that burn, that you're in the corporate world for your license, you're not adding a value. You need to add, know how to do it. Maybe I start thinking that

[00:25:52] some things in your job, and yes, it's, it's tough enough to report to somebody every day,

[00:26:13] That's going to shift those people now realize, you know what? I can do this. I can do this. And it's all about giving first, before you add value to yourself. That's okay.

[00:26:41] We're fighting over toilet paper at Costco, right? Where we're afraid that we're not going to have enough food. The, some of our very basic needs that we've taken for granted all this time. Now there's a question Mark and add on top of that, the fear of unemployment or reduced [00:27:00] income, and then the pressure of perhaps two spouses working at home with small children, everybody's in a confined space.

[00:27:44] And it is the leader that will take their teams through this crisis. And beyond that will really take a moment to understand that and connect with people on a deeply human level, which I think is, is an opportunity for a lot of leaders to [00:28:00] learn. If they have not connected at a human level before that are going to now, what are your thoughts around, around that in terms of an opportunity for a leader now during this pandemic?

[00:28:35] I just take it to a term of aviation sort of metaphor. And if you can navigate me to communicate, I say, great leaders can do those three things. And he said, what do you mean? You're a great leader. Focused execution means keep your plane up in the year. As long as you possibly can. Right now, what people's perceptions, lousy questions are asking themselves, [00:29:00] but I don't have enough money.

[00:29:18] The second thing is navigate. You've kept your personal planes in the air now. Right. You kept it up. We're fine. We got it over the bridge and how he got navigate. You got to get to a place

[00:29:57] so there's one resource that I always have is my head. [00:30:00] If I can manage that and not lose it, I can get so great news of how to navigate

[00:30:24] So the first thing that I do,

[00:30:57] All right. And there's a lot of, and [00:31:00] female, male, male, male, female. It doesn't matter. So once I started playing, because I knew it, but I wasn't doing it. All of a sudden our relationship grew to a different level because now I'm communicating more the business all the time. Jane, I go, no, this has meaning identified visual arts work and stuff.

[00:31:33] Jan: [00:31:33] point. Communication starts with how we. Communicate with ourselves.

[00:31:47] Dave: [00:31:47] It's a story over their heads,

[00:32:01] And that's probably one of the biggest breakthroughs for me too, is this, it's the meaning that you associate to things. So you can look at this situation, this pandemic and think this is the worst thing ever that's ever going to happen in my lifetime. And you can tell yourself it's awful. And you can validate that with a whole bunch of things and activities that are happening or not happening, or you can say this is happening.

[00:32:44] Dave: [00:32:44] Well, you hit a very key point because I did a Ted talk about how to grow from traumatic loss experiences, TGS post-traumatic growth,

[00:33:18] Shortly after the play, I was doing a mock interviews and some people were saying, I don't know why this happened to me. I've never been a plane crash. Things happen like this all the time to me,

[00:33:59] A blueprint, [00:34:00] right? I mean, you're given the opportunity to be with our families.

[00:34:15] Sort of connect with my daughter. Who's now in college right

[00:34:32] Jan: [00:34:32] Yes. And then once you have, once you've got that thing straight, you got the story straight in your head and you know how you're going to look at this pandemic and you're going to see a way out and you're going to inspire others, the energy that you bring to that engagement.

[00:35:12] They can, they can see the authenticity. You know, you'll get tells you when you're talking to somebody who's authentic or not. And I have to believe that. In that plane. I don't know whether people were thinking about whether you were authentic or not, but they were, you know, they, they were, they were doing it.

[00:35:33] Dave: [00:35:33] Yeah. I think you see the wrong when you're going through something like that. You see it, that you seen the bare bones of people

[00:36:04] there's probably a lot more certainly significance, but that contribution. It connection because if you watch the movies and I tell people the salt, that's it, there's one part in that movie that resonates with stories that no one dies. And that was like an unspoken mantra. So it's all about contribution.

[00:36:42] Jan: [00:36:42] when you say, when you say that, you know that somebody actually verbalized it, somebody said with certainty, nobody's going to die today.

[00:37:02] Dave: [00:37:02] it's all about safety. So I had that question the other day, Jan, and I said, you know what?

[00:37:28] So if you believe you believe what's I do, there's a greater being. The same one was there is the same one is here and there's a reason behind this. And he will, if you believe and have faith in something, you don't see, you will get through this, but you gotta be smart because I had a kid the other day. I, one of the things I'm doing today, everyday, just checking on five feet.

[00:38:11] Now's the time to get intelligent,

[00:38:38] Jan: [00:38:38] me? Yeah. And people can see that you can, you can sense that.

[00:38:52] Dave: [00:38:52] And now's not the time to be selling this, put yourself with now's the time to go into that mode.

[00:39:30] You gotta pull that intelligence resource out right. In everything you do is like, is this a smart move? And how am I gonna invest my money? I just went out of style.

[00:39:55] Jan: [00:39:55] let's talk about control. We all thought that we had control over our [00:40:00] lives before the pandemic hit and then it hit. And then we all thought that we had lost control, but in reality, we never really had control to begin with.

[00:40:15] Dave: [00:40:15] I would say that you give the example back on the plane because when you're in a plane, uh, you think you've got control, but you realize there's you have no control whatsoever. I mean, you know, you're not flying the plane controls your mind. So learn, especially when he goes, he goes on a plane in a challenging situation.

[00:40:51] It gets flustered because I always thought they had control, but reality, there's so many other forces. [00:41:00] So you better go with the mindset of variety right now because you know, this is, this is a great learning experience. You know, I, to learn things and I'd never thought that I learned. So I would say my coaching to people, especially leaders, leaders will be able to shift.

[00:41:35] Jan: [00:41:35] Yeah. You know where I see this playing out, Dave is, uh, perhaps micromanagers, right?

[00:42:02] And there's so many, so many issues behind that, but now they have no choice. So they have to deal with this. So they have to deal with that fear, whether they like it or not. And I'd kind of like that.

[00:42:30] So I put myself out there to just make the connections for helping hospitals get masks. That's great. They all need masks, right? And because an average hospital may have 10,000 nurses saying three shifts. That's 10,000 masks a day, seven days a week of 70,000 masters for nurses a week. That's a lot of mass.

[00:43:12] You can have them, but you got to you the paperwork. Right. So all of a sudden you got this, you can make it happen. And they want control of the supply chain people, and they won't control the process. It's a process. It's a wild, wild West, the process and the play right now, which is a really uncertain for a lot of people in business.

[00:43:36] so right now, one of the things you're learning, because if you have a need and hospitals have a need for people, but if you need five, 10 layers of love, sign off, we're all going to the government or by the way, give you an example. So you have a celebrity over here, somebody who says, you know what I want to buy mastering the children's hospitals, all write a [00:44:00] check for $500,000 and we'll get them 250,000 masks kind of like how they do it because they made it happen.

[00:44:30] Jan: [00:44:30] And that's why this is again, an opportunity. So to your 15 levels of paperwork, when it's a life and death situation, which it really is, and you decide to lead and step up and make a decision to either, to either say, you know what, no more 15 layers of paperwork.

[00:45:08] This could be an enormous opportunity to reduce a lot of the waste in corporate America today. It's, it's very important what we do today during the crisis. Of course it is, but it's equally important what we do with the information that we learn and how we apply it after the crisis.

[00:45:30] Right? All of a sudden New York, these 14,000 family, they didn't, but they did. So what happens? People re-engineer their soft processes, right? And when it's a Ford and GM and some of these other plants, and now they're making ventilators or the government process, right. Process break broken right now, process is important.

[00:46:17] Jan: [00:46:17] those processes were put in place because somebody had a problem way back when, so they put a bandaid fix in there and then it became the way of life and the way of doing business and everybody adopted it.

[00:46:35] Dave: [00:46:35] And entrepreneur who's got the mask is okay, you got a problem.

[00:46:56] Well, I can't do it that way. It's like, [00:47:00] you're sitting there going, you're pulling your hair and it's like, you're going, I fixed your problem for you. I got you. The product that you've got total coverage that you're not, you don't have any, any risk at all. You put it in escrow. I'm not going to touch it.

[00:47:19] Jan: [00:47:19] Yeah. That's a different way of thinking,

[00:47:35] I never thought I could fix it

[00:47:49] Good. They really figured out the problem. Now

[00:48:11] And she was receiving all kinds of accolades from other people on the team, because in this time of crisis, she stepped up and you saw what this woman had in terms of leadership ability. And that might not have come out or might've taken years to come out. So that's why my message has been over the last several weeks.

[00:48:50] Dave: [00:48:50] I think

[00:49:03] [00:49:00] thing about millennials I'm learning,

[00:49:32] you know, when I grew up, you know, 40 years ago, you would never ever think about calling maybe a vice-president and now these kids are calling. I need two weeks off. Why don't you talk to him? Talk to you. They just cut through all the crap, right? They

[00:49:58] And at the beginning of our [00:50:00] relationship, it was not a reverse mentoring relationship. It was a traditional mentoring relationship where the more senior person, you know, is supposed to impart wisdom to the younger person. Well, that's, that's not, that's not an equal relationship. Right? So we, we flattened that out and we made it an equal relationship where I opened up the communication channels.

[00:50:43] Have done that. And I love, love, love that about this generation. That's in the workplace right now.

[00:51:20] Some kid is 25 years old, figured it out. So I agree. It's the wild, wild West. Now it's different. If you don't open in your mind, you're going to be left way

[00:51:45] Every morning? What are some of the thoughts that go through your head and how do you start your day? And I really want to take this into the, how do you lead yourself? Because you and I both know that you can't lead [00:52:00] others until you know how to lead yourself. So how does Dave Sanderson lead himself?

[00:52:12] Dave: [00:52:12] Thank you for the next day. I mean, once you go through something like this, you just realize you're just lucky to wake up the next day. But you know, one thing that happened to me, which I actually wrote this book and I talked about this, um, it's, I've never really revealed before, but one of the things that came out of this situation, and this is going to answer your question is I had high blood pressure.

[00:53:05] The long answers. I did go on blood pressure meds, but I had stopped taking my body, my mindset. I gotta start taking care of me first. So first thing in the morning is I always work out first and it feels for me every morning because I got, gotta get my money's right. I got to get my body, right. If I don't, if I'm not right.

[00:53:53] First thing in the morning, even more was pre-supposes. [00:54:00] So that's why I sort of go in the morning. That's what I say myself. So I got to value myself first. I do that for a second, whether it's money wise, physically emotional relationships. And that's how I start my day every day. And my wife thinks I'm crazy, right?

[00:54:40] So I've got to be ready to go for those functions. I'll show you

[00:54:50] Jan: [00:54:50] that a change Dave, from how you would start your day before the incident, what was, how would you normally start your day before the incident, your normal in your corporate job?

[00:55:29] I'm healthy, I'm shit. I got my finances, which is now so suspect. So I want to show people when I go on stage, whenever I say I'm living right now, you, you can go for it.

[00:56:15] He said, you've never seen him on stage with notes. I don't go on stage with notes. I come from the heart and if I'm not, I have knocked and grown. I can't come from the heart.

[00:56:48] Oh, how awful is that right? I mean, that's terrible. We think about that now we cringe at my daughter. Isn't listening to that, but, um, that's, that's what I did. And I worked in manufacturing and I would go [00:57:00] straight to the plant and off you go, right? And you'd work 12, 14 hours, whatever you needed to do. And it took a while for me to understand the magic in the morning that early morning, And prior to the pandemic, I get up at four 30 and I like a 5:00 AM workout class.

[00:57:43] Everybody's got a slightly different version of how they do that with a mix of exercise. And, uh, one thing that I learned that I enjoyed from Tony was the priming exercise, because I think that, you know, that does a lot of things, right? Because you cover gratitude, you cover intention, you get your [00:58:00] body moving, you get the blood flow going.

[00:58:26] It takes 66 days, right. To form a new habit. So start, start it. Now, this is a great opportunity to do something like that.

[00:58:44] it's discipline? Right. I, I believe in discipline. If you got a discipline and you're serving you as serving the greater good stay with the discipline, mine is getting up and getting myself in that mode because you know, when this thing starts coming back,

[00:59:19] how you handle problems and people give you a story. It happened exactly where I'm sitting right here. I got a phone call from some neighbors down the street that needed help working. And you know what? You older ladies. And, you know, I grew up in here and we took care of neighbors, especially when they're.

[00:59:52] And especially from two older ladies, you could probably get

[01:00:16] and they were, they survived the concentration camp. They survived, their family died. And the next door neighbor, miss Joanne, I had this discussion after he passed on. And

[01:00:48] I said, they survive well, the most horrific situations in the history of the world and survive and thrive. They lived young, the rest of the lot and realized

[01:01:28] Tell me about your day.

[01:01:55] That was your mindset. I said, I told her, I said, listen, [01:02:00] one of the first interviews I had after I got home was a TV station in Montreal. There was other people, Buffalo died. I said, well,

[01:02:34] If I was in the leadership position,

[01:02:47] right?

[01:03:00] [01:03:00] this

[01:03:16] Dave: [01:03:16] Exactly. Right? Some of the passengers came to me later and said, why are you doing this? Why are you not speaking opportunities? Tony teaches at all.

[01:03:54] all

[01:04:16] Dave: [01:04:16] Thank you very much. I'm honored to be here and

[01:04:24] Jan: [01:04:24] Excellent. Thank you very much, Dave,