I almost skipped this chapter.

We're continuing through Success Is a Choice — John Maxwell's framework applied to becoming an air traffic controller — and when I got to the chapter on courage, I sat with it for a while and thought, this doesn't fit us.

Courage as an air traffic controller? 

That felt like a strange concept. 

We're not running into burning buildings. 

We're sitting at a sector.

But the more I worked through it, the more I realized I had it completely backwards. 

So we're not skipping it.

Think about where you are right now.

Maybe you're at CTI school. 

Maybe Advanced ATC. 

Maybe you're at the Academy. 

Maybe you just decided to apply and you're starting the process. 

Maybe you're in the military working traffic right now.

At every one of those moments, when you made the decision to go after this career — that took courage.

I've told this story before. 

When I first decided I wanted to take the test, my wife and I were dating. I called her up specifically to tell her what I wanted to do, and I knew she was going to be against it. I just knew it. 

I knew she'd hate the stress. I knew she'd hate all of it.

So we're talking, and I say, "Hey, I've got an idea. I want to go take the test to become an air traffic controller."

She didn't even hesitate. She said, "Oh, I think you'd be great at it."

And I thought, you have got to be kidding me. You really have got to be kidding me.

But she meant it. 

And it was in that moment that I realized this was what I needed to do. 

That this was what I was going to be called to do.

Some of you have that. 

You have friends and family backing you all the way. 

And some of you are going to have to make this journey largely on your own.

If that's you, understand that's exactly one of the reasons I'm here. 

I don't want any of you feeling like you have to go through this alone — because every single one of us, at some point in this journey, is going to need help.

But make no mistake: deciding to do something this outlandish takes courage.

C.S. Lewis said,"Courage isn't simply one of the virtues — it's the form of every virtue at its testing point."

Here's what that means for us. 

It takes courage to apply. 

It takes courage to take the test. 

It takes courage to travel to Oklahoma City, a place you may have never been. 

It takes courage to walk into a room full of people you've never seen before, knowing you don't know it all.

That may sound simple. 

It isn't. 

It takes courage to commit to something bigger than what you started out as.

You can do nothing worthwhile without courage.

To discover and develop your talent, you're going to need courage. 

And once you display courage, it's going to get tested — continually. 

Here's where.

Your courage will be tested when you seek a truth you know may be painful. For us, the truth you're seeking is the dream. It's the goal. And I'll tell you right now, especially if you're headed to the Academy: there is going to be some pain in it.

It'll be tested when change is needed but inactivity is more comfortable. People resist change. That's just human nature. The moment you decide to step out of the ordinary, you're going to be challenged.

There's a line in the book worth sitting with: 

our situation doesn't make us — we make our situation. 

Our circumstances don't have to define us; we can redefine our circumstances through our actions.

And then this one: we must be willing to give up all we have in order to become all we can be.

How great is that? Read it again.

It'll be tested when learning and growing expose your weaknesses. And they will get exposed — especially at the Academy. It's easy to be brave in an area of strength. It's much harder in an area of weakness.

That's exactly why you need a support system in place before you start finding out what your weaknesses are. Family. Friends. A coach. Your classmates. Your instructors. Somebody. Because you're going to have to get past those weaknesses, and doing it alone is brutal.

It'll be tested when you take the high road while others treat you badly. This one may not come up as much at the Academy, but keep it in mind. If a situation comes up — a classmate, or an instructor — take the high road.

That said, I'll be straight with you: don't assume that everything an instructor tells you, or how they tell you, is proper. If an instructor does something you feel is genuinely improper, by all means let someone in the FAA know. There were several instructors during my time who had no business being instructors. Unfortunately.

It'll be tested when being out front makes you an easy target. When you decide to be a leader — and I want all of you to be leaders — part of the deal is that you take some flak, because you're out front.

But here's the beautiful thing about it. A leader is willing to take that, so the people behind them don't have to. Sometimes you're going to be out front and you're going to absorb the barrage. That's just what it is.

And it'll be tested every time you hit an obstacle to your progress. Adversity is always the partner of progress. Anytime we want to move forward, obstacles, difficulties, problems, and predicaments show up. We should expect nothing less — and if you're at the Academy, you already know all about that.

But we should almost welcome those things. Because what they mean is that we're progressing. We're growing. Every one of them is something we can learn from.

Inside. Not outside.

There is no one who can make the decision for you to have courage in the face of adversity. 

People can try. 

If I'm your coach, I will try. 

But it is an internal decision and it always will be.

You'll face internal decisions to follow the rules in all walks of life, and especially in ATC. 

Internal decision. 

You'll face the choice to push past adversity or let it stop you. 

Internal decision.

And let me be specific about what I mean by "the right thing," because I'm not talking about the rules, or the SOPs, or the LOAs. That's not it.

The right thing — the thing that actually takes courage — is the practice. 

The studying. 

The work outside the classroom and outside the lab that you have to do to be successful.

Doing that continually. 

Making it a habit.

I want y'all to really hear this: it takes courage to do that day in and day out. Especially when you're not seeing results yet.

And I'll say this plainly, because somebody needs to hear it: we all progress at different speeds and different rates. 

Some faster, some slower. 

If you're progressing slower than you think you should be, it takes courage to keep going anyway.

Keep practicing. 

Keep studying. 

Be courageous in those exact moments, and you will see growth. 

You will see yourself get better. 

It will happen.

But if you decide not to — it won't. 

It's pretty simple. 

Decide to stop practicing, and you stop growing, and that dream gets further and further away.

That is not what we want for you.

One thing I noticed about the classes that were most successful at the Academy — they weren't just close-knit. 

They had leaders. 

And usually not just one. They had several people who, because of who they were and the decisions they made day in and day out, got looked at as leaders by the whole class.

Every class needs that. 

Every class needs somebody who, at the right moment, stands up and says: hey, we've got this. Let's get through it.

Here's the payoff. 

Act courageously, get past adversity, and watch your horizon expand — every single time.

If you want success, you have to show courage. There's no other way to reach your potential.

And it's your potential you're chasing. 

Not somebody else in the class. 

Not somebody else at school. 

Your potential as a person and your potential as a controller. 

That's the target, and reaching it takes courage.

It may not seem like being an air traffic controller is a courageous career. But there are going to be so many times in your career when you face adversity. 

I've been there. 

And how you face it is going to say a great deal about the person you become.

I'm not the same man who decided to take that test about 37 years ago. 

I'm not the same guy who walked into the tower in Brownsville, Texas. 

Not the same guy who walked into the tower in Dallas. 

Not the same guy who walked in the door the first time at Fort Worth Center. 

And not the same guy who walked into the Academy to become an instructor.

Every day I try to grow. 

A better me. 

A better dad. 

A better husband. 

A better controller. 

A better podcaster. 

A better coach.

A better mentor.

Because if I ever stop — if I ever feel like I've attained what I needed to attain — that's when I start going backward.

So every day for me is about becoming better, stronger, more resilient. 

More perseverance. 

More courage.

I'm in the middle of that process right now. 

So are you. 

I don't care who you are, where you are, or how old you are. 

We're all in it.

That's exactly why this company is called Side by Side ATC.

Whether it's this blog, the podcast,  the coaching/mentoring program, whatever it is — we're going to do it together. 

We're going to get through the process of becoming a controller, or becoming a better controller, side by side.

And honestly, that's what I wish I could have given more students when I was in Oklahoma City. I really believe there were quite a few who would have made it if they'd had somebody there with them — more than I could be as an instructor standing at the front of the room.

So if you've got a question, email me at tom.hanes@sidebysideatc.com. 

Questions about the website? I'm an air traffic controller, not a website builder. Send them anyway — I'm happy to answer.

And wherever you are in your journey, we'll get through it. Together. Side by side.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."- John Maxwell

This is exactly where we're headed this week, because Level Four really is about becoming a leader.

We've walked the whole road now. 

Level One was pre-Academy — building the foundation. 

Level Two was the Academy, or CTI, or the military — where all that preparation meets performance. 

Level Three was your first facility, where learning becomes reality and you start working real traffic.

This week we finish it. 

Level Four. You're a CPC.

And this is the one everybody's chasing.

Here's the trap a lot of people in those first three levels fall into: All I have to do is get certified. Then I can coast. Nice career, punch the clock, ride it out.

If you think about certification as a finish line, you are going to miss out on an awful lot.

And understand — certification itself is a process, not a moment. 

In the en route environment you'll certify on being area rated first. 

That lets you rip strips. 

Then you get your D-sides, which lets you work a position while you're still training on others. 

Then radar school, and you start certifying on your radars. 

Every specialty at every center has its own progression for which sectors you work first. Generally it's the easier sectors first — though there are specialties and there are centers that don't have any easy sectors, and you just get thrown in.

That whole progression is a process. 

Becoming a CPC is a process. 

And it should never, ever be the finish line. 

It's a goal along the way.

You've had a purpose and a plan at every one of these levels, and I've said before that they have to be fluid — they have to change as you move up. 

That doesn't stop at Level Four. If anything, that's where it matters most.

Every CPC will tell you about this day.

You're sitting on the last sector you're training on. Your supervisor's been plugged in. Your trainer's been plugged in. 

And then both of them unplug and walk away.

Now it's your sector.

Now they're all your sectors. 

You're the one responsible. 

And a lot of the time, you're the only one on that sector.

That's the moment everything changes.

You're not worried about surviving anymore. 

You survived. 

You survived the Academy. 

You survived training. 

That weight comes off your shoulders and it's an incredible feeling.

Now — that doesn't mean you'll never train again. You will.

Even if you never change facilities, I guarantee you they're going to change what sectors your specialty owns, and you'll be training again. 

When I was at Fort Worth Center we had four sectors in my specialty. I certified on all four. Then they gave us two more, so I trained on those — now I'm certified on six. Then they took those two away, and I'm back to four. Then they decided to give us two other sectors — three, really, but two were being combined into one.

So now I'm certified on six again.

That's what happens over the course of a year. 

Over the course of a career. 

And I never even changed specialties. 

Some people do change specialties and go through the whole thing again with different sectors, starting back on D-sides — it goes much faster the second or third time, but you're still doing it. 

I stayed put and still had to train on new sectors. That's just a fact of life.

If you change facilities, you are starting over. 

But you won't be starting as an Academy graduate. 

You'll be starting as a CPC transfer, and they treat you differently.

In a terminal, hopefully there's movement — though right now, unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot. 

And there's only so much a tower can do as far as giving you new sectors. So you may not train much again, and if you never change facilities, you may never train again at all.

But even without training, you still have to have goals.

Becoming a CPC doesn't make you immune to any of this. 

The drivers don't go away. 

They evolve.

Your purpose used to be get through training. 

That was the whole thing.

Now your purpose has to expand beyond yourself. 

How can I contribute? 

How can I make this operation better? 

Do I have ideas that might actually improve it? 

And how can I help the newer controllers succeed?

And here's something important: these drivers aren't just for work.

Now that you're a CPC, you can expand your horizons. 

You can have a purpose outside of work. 

Up until now your main purpose had to be succeeding in training. That was correct. But now you get to look wider.

One caution, and I've seen this go wrong. 

I have watched new trainees come into the center and immediately get hyper-involved in the union — to the point that they're not training, and it's actively costing them. 

I'm sorry, but that's not your purpose. 

Your purpose is to train and certify. 

Then you expand. 

Get certified first.

Give yourself time after certification, too. 

It doesn't have to happen the day after you certify. 

Get comfortable. But start thinking about it.

You'll notice something at the centers, and in the towers too — and the busier the tower, the more likely it is: controllers are great at side hustles. 

Side businesses. 

Side things.

And to a certain extent, you need that. You need something more than work.

I've known people — I still know people — who don't really have anything outside of work. 

They're not the happiest people at work. 

And they'll keep working for years and years past the point where the FAA forces them out, because that's what they have. That's who they feel they are.

So have a plan. 

Continuing education. 

Career goals inside the FAA. 

Facility involvement. 

Leadership opportunities — there will be plenty available. 

Look into them.

And if your plan is focused on something outside of work entirely? More power to you.

For a lot of my career, my focus was outside of work. 

My family. 

Traveling with my wife before we had a family. 

Somehow I always knew I needed something out there to point at. It's what allowed me to come in, work the traffic, do what I needed to do day in and day out, and have something else I was building.

Education, becoming a pilot, starting a business, whatever it is. 

Have a purpose. Have a plan.

You're right in the middle of it now — but now you're modeling it.

Others are watching the details of how you work. 

How you see things. 

How you process them. 

Your professionalism. 

Your communication habits. 

Your consistency, being there day in and day out. 

They see all of it.

And the newer controllers at your facility are going to reproduce what you show them.

That's a lot of responsibility. 

But that's part of this amazing career.

You're not practicing to get through training anymore. 

You're practicing to get better at the profession you chose.

And the FAA will make sure you get practice — always. 

There will always be things they want you drilling on, and most of them revolve around those unusual situations that just don't come up. Hopefully once in a career, if that. You practice them so you're ready when they do.

There's traffic management within your sector, within your specialty, within the building — and if you go that direction, outside the building. 

Those things take practice.

And if you decide to become an instructor, you really need to practice at that. 

It does not always come naturally. 

The good instructors hone their craft continually, exactly like the good controllers do. 

You refine your techniques not just as a controller, but as a teacher.

I've always said it's not one big picture — it's a lot of small pictures.

Well, once you're a CPC, those small pictures start to grow. 

You can scope out, so to speak. 

You start seeing not just your sector but the sectors around you. 

How you can help them. 

How you can ease the load in their airspace when you're able to.

You become aware of the total operation — the flow, the needs of the sectors in your specialty and in the facilities next to you. And you can do that now because you have the experience. That's why it expands.

It's no longer just about seeing five, six, seven moves ahead to get through a rush. 

It's about seeing the sectors and facilities around you and asking how you can help.

And then something else gets added to your picture: trainees.

That's a whole different picture. 

Because now you have to figure out who this person is. 

How do they learn? 

How do they process things? 

It's not about you anymore. 

It's about somebody else's career.

It's always going to be about performance. 

This is a performance profession.

You are still going to have bad days. 

Bad sessions. 

And you're going to have great ones.

I've said this before: there will be days you walk out of that control room, or out of the tower cab, absolutely certain you're the best controller in the world — because what you just did with those airplanes was amazing.

Then you'll go on break, come back half an hour later, sit down, and nothing will work. And you'll walk out of that session expecting the chief to call you into his office and fire you.

Both of those are extremes. 

Both of them will happen to you. 

Be ready.

And neither one of them is real. 

It was real traffic, I understand that. 

But you're not the world's greatest controller, and you're not about to be fired. 

The truth is you live somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

That's where all of us live.

Now, you may need a long conversation — possibly spanning several years — to convince some controllers that they are not, in fact, the world's best. 

But I guarantee you somebody somewhere is better. 

Doesn't matter who you are or where you are. 

Someone's always better. 

And someone's always worse.

So aside from the over-the-shoulder once or twice a year where your supervisor plugs in to make sure you haven't deteriorated, performance now means something different. 

It means being there. 

Shift after shift, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Being consistent. 

Being the professional that puts the P in CPC.

Every trainee's goal is to become a CPC. 

You watched experienced controllers. 

You learned from them. 

You imitated them.

Believe it or not, somebody's watching you now. 

Somebody's learning from you. 

And somebody is going to imitate you — whether you like it or not, and whether you realize it or not.

You can absolutely say, "I just want to be a CPC. I don't want to train. I just want to work traffic." 

That's fine. That's a legitimate choice.

Just understand that the new controllers coming in are watching you anyway, and they'll copy what they see.

Good or bad.

Oh, now this is where the fun starts.

You get to be an OJTI — on-the-job training instructor. 

You get to mentor new controllers, and it is a fascinating experience. 

You get to hand down the lessons you learned when you were the one sweating it out.

You'll hand down what your trainer told you. 

And unfortunately for some people, you'll also hand down how they trained you. 

How you were trained tends to become how you train.

Hopefully you had some great ones. 

I was blessed over my career — I owe it to some of the best trainers out there. 

They had to be the best in the world. 

They were dealing with me, and they got me through.

Training is not for everyone. 

Being a trainer is not for everyone. 

But if you take it on, understand that it's a huge responsibility. You can't just say "this is how you do it, now do it." 

You have to instruct. 

That's why we call you an instructor. 

That person comes in with no experience — especially an Academy graduate — and you have to pass along the experience you earned. 

To do that, you have to understand them.

And again: I wouldn't suggest this for at least a couple of years after you certify. 

Get settled. 

Become the controller you want to be. 

Then start helping other people become theirs.

So it comes down to this at Level Four: What kind of controller do you want to be remembered as?

It's never going to be how many airplanes you worked. 

It's going to be how you treated people. 

How you contributed. 

Who you helped.

I've seen it. I've had trainees go on to do amazing things. I've had trainees who didn't. 

At Level Four it becomes bigger than you. 

You get to decide not just what kind of controller you'll be, but what kind of person. 

And if you decide to become a leader in some way, shape, or form — and you don't need the union or management to do that, you can lead just by how you work — you get to decide what kind of leader you become.

That's when this job becomes even more special than it already was.

So there they are. 

The four levels. 

Level One, building the foundation. 

Level Two, where preparation meets performance. 

Level Three, where learning becomes reality with live traffic. 

Level Four, where you go from developing yourself to developing others.

And here's the biggest lesson in all of it: success in ATC is not a destination. 

At every level you have purpose, plan, phraseology, practice, picture, and performance. 

Those six drivers never disappear. 

They never go away. 

They evolve, they change, they grow as you grow — and hopefully you keep growing.

So two questions for you:

I'll leave you with Martin Luther King Jr.: "The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy."

Level Four is a level worthy of your desire to get there. 

And it carries a dichotomy: it's where the fun starts, because you're no longer training — and at the same time, it's where you take on more responsibility than you've ever had, including responsibility for other people. 

A whole new journey starts.

Everybody wants to get to Level Four. 

It's a worthy goal.

Thank you for reading this series, and thank you for continuing to come back. 

My purpose — the reason I plan, the reason I keep trying to get better and better at this — is so I can help you. That's it. That's the whole thing.

So please remember: you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone. Find someone to help you. Find people to go through it with you.

If you need someone, let me know. Head to sidebysideatc.com and set up a call, or text me at 817-233-8199. No pressure, no clock.

We can do this together. And we can do it side by side.

Have a great week.

Over the last couple of weeks we've been building out your tool belt. 

We started with the basics — that's your foundation — and this week we add another one: the phraseology tool.

But here's the thing right up front. 

This isn't really about phraseology. 

Not in the narrow sense, anyway. 

When I say phraseology, I mean the details that make up being an air traffic controller.

I want to open with a quote from Pat Riley, the basketball coach: "Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better."

Great air traffic controllers aren't great because they know one big secret. 

There isn't one. 

Great controllers are great because they consistently pay attention to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small details.

That's what this tool is about.

We started with the learning tool — how to become an ATC learner, which is different from just being a good student. Last week was the listening tool — how you receive information. 

This week's tool is about something bigger than how you say things. 

Most people, when they think of phraseology, think about talking. 

I think phraseology is really about learning to think precisely, with details in mind. 

And that's something you can start doing before you ever set foot in Oklahoma City.

Standard phraseology is standardized communication. 

That's exactly why it exists — it's why the FAA has an inch-and-a-half thick book full of it.

But I want to go beyond that, because it's bigger than the book.

When you dig into phraseology and the details underneath it, you start focusing on precision. 

You start focusing on consistency. 

There's a discipline to saying it right every time, doing things right every time, paying attention to the details every time. That attention to detail — that's what this whole profession is built on.

Every word has a purpose. 

Everything you do has a purpose. 

Every detail has a purpose. 

And every omission, every deviation from those details, has consequences.

Let's walk through this tool across the four levels.

I've talked before about things you can start doing before you get to Oklahoma City, and one of them is getting into a "details matter" mindset.

There's plenty you can actually learn ahead of time. 

Learn the ICAO phonetic alphabet. 

Learn how to say your numbers. 

You don't have to say "five" as "fife" — I've genuinely never heard anyone do that. I've heard controllers say "tree" instead of "three." But the one that'll actually get you at the Academy: there is no "nine." It's niner. There is no "oh." There's zero.

Those are details about numbers, and they're free to learn right now.

I've also said on other episodes: if you can, memorize your map before you get to Oklahoma City. Doesn't matter if it's the en route non-radar map, the tower airport diagram, or a terminal radar map. You can find them. Learn them. It will give you a massive head start.

One more habit worth building early: everything in ATC gets written in capital letters. There are no lowercase letters in this job. Get comfortable with that now.

Those are the things you can control before you ever arrive.

Once you're at the Academy, all of those details suddenly matter in a way they didn't before. 

You have to pay attention to them. 

You have to practice them, and practice them correctly. 

This is where focused, intense practice comes in — and it's not the same thing as memorizing.

You cannot memorize ATC. 

You can memorize for your written tests, and you'll do fine on those. 

But to perform in the labs, you have to practice, and you have to try to put yourself under real pressure. That's where your classmates come in — they have to push you. A stopwatch, a timer, or just holding you accountable to doing it correctly every single time. You need pressure while you practice, and you need to practice consistently.

Here are a few things I want you to hold onto as you go through this.

Accuracy is more important than speed. 

Always. 

At every stage of your career, but especially at the Academy, because you're still learning the job. Accuracy before speed.

You have to say the things they need you to say, correctly, in the correct order — and the only way to build that is practicing with your classmates. 

You cannot do this alone. I know, because I tried. 

When I went through the Academy, I tried to do almost everything on my own — that's just who I was. I found out fast that it wasn't going to work. Fortunately, I found out soon enough that I could change, and I changed enough to pass.

I'm telling you now: you cannot do ATC on your own. 

You cannot get through the Academy on your own. 

Not without a lot of prior experience, and even then, there's no guarantee.

Part of accuracy is finding the right cadence — not rushed. Your goal in the lab, whatever you're working — tower, terminal, radar, en route, doesn't matter — is to be boring. You want to put your evaluator to sleep. Because you're doing the job well. You're talking at a rate close to how I'm talking right now. That's the rate you need.

If you're talking fast, your evaluator can't relax. They have to stay alert and hang on every word because you're rattling through it. Your goal is the opposite — put them to sleep, because when they're relaxed, it means you're not giving them anything to catch.

The habits you build in Oklahoma City — giving clearances, your rate of speech, your clarity — those become incredibly good habits going forward. You want to be understood every single time you key the mic. Because if you're not understood, you're going to hear "say again" — and just like that, you've gone from busy to super busy.

This is where LOAs — letters of agreement between facilities — become even more detailed and, because it's live traffic, far more important than they ever were at the Academy.

You've got LOAs. 

You've got SOPs — standard operating procedures — and every facility is different. 

Pilots have different accents; you won't always understand every transmission clearly. Frequencies don't always work as well as they should. 

That's real life. 

Your first facility is the real world, and you have to work through those details as they actually exist, not as they appeared in a scripted lab.

Some of those details are things like timing — when to make calls, when to coordinate, when to issue clearances. 

Priorities, which were already huge at the Academy, get even bigger with live traffic. And now you're not just working with pilots — you're working with other controllers too.

One thing you need to master at your first facility: your phraseology has to get to the point where you cannot say something incorrectly.

My first trainer in the tower told me that directly. He said, "You have to get to the point where you cannot say it wrong." You need to sound like you know exactly what you're doing. And if you do — if you sound like it and use correct phraseology — a pilot will fly into a mountain if you tell him to. 

Because they trust you.

When pilots trust you, especially on a busy sector, it changes everything. 

When the controllers around you trust you, it changes everything, and you can actually work together as a team.

The Academy isn't where that trust gets built — there just isn't time. 

Your first facility is where you start developing those habits: the way you talk on the radio, the way you listen, like we talked about last week. Communication runs both directions. You have to listen well, and you have to speak clearly. It's all in the details — the details of listening, the details of talking. That's what the phraseology tool is really about at this foundational stage.

Once you're certified, I've heard people say they still listen to live ATC for reference. You can — just understand that CPCs tend to have looser phraseology than they did in training.

Part of that is legitimate — they're trying to get the point across quickly, and sometimes 7110.65 phraseology is a little clunky. So some controllers slide into plain English to communicate faster.

Try not to do that.

Again, my first trainer told me exactly why book phraseology matters. He said: if something ever happens and you end up in court, and they play the tape, and you were sloppy with how you said things — some attorney is going to ask you what the 7110.65 says the correct phraseology should have been. And then they're going to ask why you knew that and didn't say it that way anyway.

That is not a situation you want to be in. 

Keep your phraseology standard.

Once you're a CPC, you're actually refining it further — and then comes the fun part. You're going to teach a new controller. And you had better want them to say things correctly.

I was blessed — my first instructors in the tower and at the center were all phraseology nuts. Obsessive about the details of the job. That's exactly what you need to become too, because at some point you'll be the one instructing someone else, and you'll have to help them understand why the details matter.

They do matter.

One: Learn the language. 

When you're talking to pilots, you are not speaking English. You're speaking ATC. It's a different language, with its own written form, even though we don't write on strips as much as we used to. You have to put in the effort to become genuinely fluent in it.

Two: Build the transmission before you key the mic. 

Know what you're going to say before you push the button. This matters at the Academy, matters at your first facility while you're training, and eventually becomes second nature as a CPC — though that doesn't always happen right away. You don't want to key up and then start figuring out what to say. It leads to dead air, and it leads to corrections. That's not good ATC. Know what you're saying before you key the mic, so when you do, you say it with authority — knowing it's the right thing to say.

Three: Every word matters. 

Phraseology exists to reduce what you have to say, the same way technology tries to reduce frequency congestion. You key up wanting to say something, someone else keys up at the same time, you block each other, and all anyone hears is a loud squeal. It's going to happen sometimes — but you want to minimize it as much as possible.

Listen to the best controllers work traffic. They're not talking fast — they're talking in a rhythm. The whole sector falls into that rhythm. New pilots checking on hear it: clearance, readback, clearance, readback. They learn to wait for their opening. It's amazing how much traffic you can work once you're in a rhythm.

I know some really good controllers who just talk, and talk, and talk — friendly with the pilots, know them by name. I've had those conversations too, but never when I'm busy. When I'm busy, it's all business. My job is to get every airplane I'm talking to where it needs to go, safely. That's the only job. No extra words. No missing words. No incorrect words — because any of those can change the meaning of what you just said.

Four: Standardization. 

This is what the FAA is asking for. If you standardize your phraseology and follow all the details the FAA gives you for the job, you should never have a problem with management, and hopefully you never end up in a courtroom dealing with attorneys. Pilots are expecting that standardization. When you give it to them, they know exactly what to do. You're reducing surprises.

Five: Practice until the precision becomes the habit. 

Don't practice until you get it right — practice until you can't get it wrong.

Watch how athletes train. Tennis players practicing a serve will put a can in the corner they're aiming for and won't stop until they've hit it five, ten, fifteen times in a row. Golfers won't stop practicing putts until they've sunk three, five, seven, ten in a row — miss one, and they start the count over. Soccer players practicing shots do the same thing, over and over, until they can't miss.

ATC is exactly the same. Practice until you can't do it wrong. Commit to that kind of intense, focused practice, and you will have a long career — and you'll actually enjoy it.

Across all four levels, this tool — what I call phraseology — is so much bigger than the word suggests. 

It shows up most obviously in how we talk, but it's really about the details behind every single clearance. 

You have to know the letter of agreement to know what altitude or speed to give a pilot. 

You have to know what the next sector or the next facility expects from you. 

All of that lives underneath the clearance you actually transmit.

Let me tell you a quick story. 

When I was moving from Love Field tower to Fort Worth Center, people at the tower told me, "Oh, you'll do great over there, they're so laid-back at the center, way more laid-back than we are." I got to Fort Worth Center and thought, say what? These guys were obsessive about the details — getting everything exactly right, every time. I went back to the tower and told them, "You guys are crazy, that place is a nuthouse."

But they have to be. 

Airplanes are closing on each other at 400, 500 knots — closure rates approaching a thousand miles an hour.

There's no time to get it wrong. 

You have to be aware of every single detail.

That's what this tool is about. 

Not just learning the language. 

Not just planning before you transmit. 

Not just respecting every word. 

Not just standardization. 

Not just practicing until it becomes habit. 

It's all of those things together, because this job is about details, and it will always be about details.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: phraseology is so much more than talking on the radio. 

It's one of the first places you'll discover what real greatness in ATC looks like, whichever option you're in.

Greatness in this profession comes from respecting the details. 

Learn to care about the little things, and you'll become the kind of controller who cares about everything happening at your airport, at your sector.

I'll close with Robert Collier again: "Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out."

That's exactly what these details are. 

You can't get through the Academy without them. 

You can't get through training without them. 

And you can't train someone else without them either.

Every great controller becomes a great controller one detail at a time. 

Every transmission you learn, 

every word you choose carefully, 

every habit you build adds another tool to your belt.

Keep building it, one tool at a time.

We're just scratching the surface of this tool belt series — clearances and a lot more are still ahead. 

Remember, you don't have to navigate your ATC journey alone. 

If it's not me, find someone. 

But let's do it side by side.

For Help: Set up a free consultation call at sidebysideatc.com. Text me at 817-233-8199 with any questions.

Talent will get you to the door. 

Perseverance is what walks you through it.

We're continuing our series on success in air traffic control being a choice — built on John Maxwell's book Success Is a Choice — and this week we're dealing with what may honestly be the single most important topic for anyone headed to Oklahoma City.

Perseverance.

If you're at the Academy right now, you already know exactly what I'm talking about. And having been there as an instructor for five years, I can tell you this with total confidence: the Academy is going to hit you. 

It will hit you when you least expect it. 

And then it's going to sit back and watch how you react.

That reaction is the whole ballgame.

Talent is important. 

I'm not going to tell you otherwise. 

But talent gets beaten up. 

Talent has bad days. 

Talent shows up to a non-radar problem and gets absolutely dismantled.

As John Maxwell puts it: "Talent provides hope for accomplishment, but perseverance guarantees it."

And the World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said it about as plainly as it can be said: "Think things through, then follow through."

If you're at the Academy already, I guarantee you've heard some version of that from your instructors. 

Probably from every instructor, depending on how far in you are.

"Follow through."

"It's not finished until you are finished." 

"Finish the task."

And here's why that matters so much: if you finish the task, it won't come back around and haunt you.

Every scenario you run — non-radar lab, en route radar lab, tower labs, doesn't matter which — is nothing but a series of individual tasks. 

That's all it is. 

I used to tell my students that if you don't finish a task and you go off to do something else instead, you've just turned that task into a boomerang. And a boomerang whips around, and whips around, and because of the way it's built, it completes the circle. If you don't turn around, it is going to smack you upside the back of the head.

That's what an unfinished task does at the Academy. 

It comes back. 

And most of the time it comes back as a separation error — one of the worst errors you can take.

So follow through. 

Finish each task.

Vince Lombardi said the difference between a successful person and others is a lack of determination.

You are going to have to decide that you will persevere through whatever the Academy throws at you. 

And here's the key — you have to decide that before you get there. 

You have to make the decision that there is nothing that will come up that will deter me from reaching my goal.

I see it in the chats. 

I see it on Discord all the time. 

A student gets smacked upside the face for the first time, and in the en route program it usually happens in non-radar. It can happen on any of the problems. 

The first few are simpler, then it starts to ratchet up — and it has to ratchet up fast, because they only get 27 of them before you sit down with an evaluator.

So a student posts, "I made this many separation errors on this problem." And everybody responds, it happens, you're going to have a bad run.

They're right. 

And when it happens, you have to decide right there to keep going. 

You have to have already decided that this will not deter you.

One bad run. 

Two bad runs. 

Three in a row. 

Remember something important: those are not graded. 

They are practice scenarios. 

Practice is where you're supposed to make mistakes so you can learn from them.

I told my students the same thing I told my players when I coached soccer: practice is where we make mistakes.

But I want you to try. 

Try something new. 

Try something you haven't tried before — try it in practice. 

What I don't want is you trying something brand new for the first time in the non-radar evals. That is not the moment.

Try it in practice. 

And decide ahead of time that no matter what happens, you're reaching your goal. 

With that mindset, you can get through.

Your non-radar scenarios are 30 minutes. 

Radar is 40 to 45.

But it isn't a 45-minute problem. 

It isn't a 30-minute problem. 

It's a series of short tasks you have to complete — step by step by step, in the order the FAA wants you to do them.

That's a great habit to build, and it's exactly why practicing correctly matters so much.

Life isn't one very long race. 

It's a long series of shorter races, one after another. 

Each task has its own challenges. 

Each day is its own event. 

To be successful, you just have to keep plugging away.

And hear me on this: it is not speed that gets you through the Academy. 

It's perseverance, and completing each task.

You will develop speed as you practice. 

I guarantee it. 

I have seen it over and over and over again. 

You don't have to have speed at the beginning. Speed arrives as you get better at all the little details.

Thomas Edison said it's the last step in the race that counts the most. That's where the winner is determined. That's where the rewards come.

So if you're at the Academy — non-radar problem 8, or 10, or 13 is not the one that matters. 

The evals matter. 

The last day of non-radar is what actually counts.

How you get there doesn't matter, as long as you excel on the day.

But — and this is the part people skip — you can only finish well if you've been doing the small things every single day along the way. 

Commit to those, and you will succeed.

Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. 

Persevering through adversity can make you better.

Don't become bitter.

Look at adversity, look at being forced to push through something you weren't prepared for, as an opportunity to get better. 

Every scenario, every setback. I don't care which program you're in — N90, TRACON, terminal, en route, CTI, Advanced ATC. 

It does not matter. 

You are going to face adversity. 

I guarantee it. 

That's life.

But get the sweetness out of it. 

Push through and you come out the other side, and it is sweet over there. 

And you come out better.

Do the right thing every day, day after day. 

Every day you do the right things, you're investing in yourself.

That takes perseverance. 

But the payoff isn't addition — it's compounding. 

Over time it starts multiplying.

To get that, you have to do the right things. 

Have a plan. 

Practice. 

Practice well. 

Be in class listening to the instructors as they drone on through two or three lessons a day.

And understand this: that is your job. 

If you're at the Academy, you are getting paid to be a student. 

That's the job. 

Your job is to be there, to learn, and to do it every single day you're there.

It's only when you're tired that you really need perseverance. 

It's only when you face adversity that you need the strength to get through it.

Anybody can get through easy things. Anybody.

If air traffic control were easy, everybody would be doing it — because it's got to be the best job out there. 

But it's not easy. 

It's difficult. 

Sometimes it's crazy difficult.

I've had moments recently where a situation came up and my mind just said, there's no solution here. So my solution was to get everybody in the pattern on the ground and go from there. Was it the best solution? Maybe not. But it was a solution.

You're going to face times like that. 

You just persevere through them.

There's a quote in the book from Frank Tyger that I love: "Perseverance means more than trying and more than working hard. Perseverance is an investment. It's a willingness to bind yourself emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually to an idea or a task until it's completed."

That demands a lot.

Here's the good news: everything you give is an investment in yourself. 

Everything you do at the Academy, at CTI, at Advanced ATC — all of it is an investment in you.

Each day, keep investing.

Now let's talk about what's coming for you.

A lifestyle of giving up. That one speaks for itself.

A wrong belief that life should be easy. Expectations will keep you from persevering faster than almost anything.

A wrong belief that success is a destination. This one is critical at the Academy. 

If you think you've arrived — if you think you've got non-radar figured out, or radar, or tower, or TRACON, or N90 — that is when you're in trouble. 

The second you think you no longer need to work to make progress, you start losing ground.

Every Academy program is designed so that you cannot stop progressing. 

If you feel like you've conquered this thing before the last day, you'll start going backward. 

And once you're going backward while the Academy keeps moving forward, catching up is incredibly difficult.

Success is not a destination. It's a process.

A lack of resiliency. You have to bounce back no matter how you feel. And again, that's a decision you make before you get to Oklahoma City. Decide now that there's nothing this program can throw at you — and it will throw everything it has — that will stop you from reaching your goal.

A lack of vision. No goal in front of you, no dream in front of you, and there's nothing pulling you forward. That's why companies have vision statements: it keeps everybody moving the same direction. 

We need the same thing as people.

Find a purpose. You have to have a vision. You have to have a goal.

Here's the line I want you to write down: "Persistence is stubbornness with a purpose."

Post it in your room. 

Put it on the bathroom mirror where you see it every morning. 

When you have a passionate sense of purpose, your energy rises, obstacles become incidental, and perseverance wins out.

Eliminate excuses. That one speaks for itself too.

Develop stamina. Everyone who achieves and maintains success has it. Stamina is the key to perseverance, and perseverance is a key to becoming successful. And all stamina really means is this: being able to work through it when you don't feel like it. 

Being able to push when you'd rather not.

That's it. 

That's the whole secret.

Perseverance is one of the main things you're going to need at the Academy to get through it. 

Not the only thing — but if I had to pick one, this is close to the top.

Think things through. 

Then follow through.

Don't leave boomerangs behind you. 

Don't let one bad practice run decide anything. 

Don't confuse the middle of the race with the end of it.

Do the small right things every day and let them compound.

You'll finish.

Wherever you are in this journey, you don't have to do it alone. If you've got a question, email me at tom.hanes@sidebysideatc.com, or head to sidebysideatc.com and let's set up a call.

We'll get through it. We'll get through it together, and we'll get through it Side by Side.

"The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning." - Pele

That's from Pelé — soccer legend, and one of my all-time favorite athletes. I actually got to meet him once. I shook his hand. That was it. To be clear: I got to meet him. He did not get to meet me.

But that quote has stuck with me for a long time, and it fits exactly where we are in this series.

We've walked through Level One — everything before the Academy. 

We've walked through Level Two — the Academy itself, and I know a lot of you came through CTI, Advanced ATC, or the military instead, and I hope you pulled something out of that one anyway, because there's a lot in there that carries over.

This week we're at Level Three. 

Your first facility. This is where learning becomes reality.

And here's the part nobody wants to hear on graduation day: the Academy is difficult, and passing it feels amazing precisely because it's so difficult — but passing it doesn't make you an air traffic controller.

A lot of students carry around the idea that if they can just get through the Academy, they'll finally be a controller. The reality is that passing the Academy earns you one thing. It earns you the right and the opportunity to go to the next level. You did something hard, and your reward is the chance to try something even harder.

Doesn't matter which option you went through. Doesn't matter which facility you're headed to. Here's what's different.

The Academy is about concepts. Procedures. Phraseology. Running scenario after scenario and squeezing as much learning out of each one as you can until you pass and you graduate.

Your first facility is not simulated.

Yes, you'll get simulator time. 

You'll get training scenarios. 

But when you plug in and start OJT — on-the-job training — that is live traffic. 

Real airplanes. 

Flown by real pilots. 

Carrying real people.

And that changes everything.

What your facility is going to teach you is that you have to adapt to the traffic. You have to be able to change your plan midstream when the traffic tells you to. 

And you're going to discover something that the Academy only hinted at: you cannot memorize ATC. You cannot memorize your way through training. You couldn't really do it at the Academy either, but at your first facility it's flat-out impossible.

You have to be able to take what your trainers are telling you and apply it. 

That's the whole game.

On top of that, you've got local procedures. Local airspace. And every facility has its own culture — its own way of doing things, its own personality. Every facility is different. You have to learn all of it and adapt to all of it at the same time you're trying to become a CPC.

Your first facility is where all of it comes together for the first time.

This is the one I see hit Academy graduates hardest.

You're starting over. 

Day one. 

Again.

In a lot of ways it feels exactly like your first day at the Academy. 

New building you've never been in. 

New faces. 

Nobody knows you. 

And here's the thing — that's just how it is, and that's how it's going to be every single time you change facilities for the rest of your career. You're going to be the new guy or the new girl. That's the deal.

A lot of graduates walk in thinking, I passed the Academy, the hard part's over. 

Then day two arrives with new maps, new procedures, new expectations — sometimes enormous expectations — new instructors, new supervisors, new management.

It is a lot to take in.

This isn't usually a problem with Academy graduates, but I'm going to say it anyway because it matters that much.

Go into your first facility incredibly humble.

I don't care what you scored at the Academy. And I can guarantee you they don't care either. 

They see Academy graduates come through all the time, and as far as they're concerned every single one of you scored about a 71.

So if you were one of the people who scored a 95 or a 98 — I think 98 is the highest anyone's ever put up going through the En Route Academy — it doesn't matter. And if you scraped through at 70.01, it doesn't matter either.

You all start over. You all start at the same point.

Go in as a sponge. 

Go in wanting to take in everything, learn everything. 

You're not going to learn everything in your first few months — nobody does — but that has to be the attitude. And make sure everybody who comes in contact with you can see it. 

Not because you're saying it. Because you're doing it.

At your first facility, it's all about what you do, how you carry yourself, and how much effort you put in. That's what determines how your coworkers see you and how they respond to you.

Driver One: Purpose. 

This matters even more here than it did at the Academy. 

You are going to have highs and you are going to have lows, and when you hit those lows you need your purpose solid and in front of you. 

Write it down. 

Why are you willing to keep pushing? 

Training is long. It gets frustrating. It gets emotional. 

Your purpose is what keeps you moving forward on the days when you can't seem to do anything right.

Driver Two: Plan. 

Your facility will have a training plan for you. Early on it'll feel like they're just dumping things on you — here are the maps, learn them, draw them. And believe me, they're a lot harder than the Academy maps. 

That goes for towers and TRACONs. You're learning approach plates on top of it.

They have a plan. 

But you need a plan too. 

How many hours are you studying? When are you reading through the SOPs and the LOAs? 

I'm at a contract tower and I think we have seven LOAs. 

A decently busy tower will have eight to ten. 

A TRACON has one with every Podunk tower in the airspace. 

At a center — oh my. LOAs everywhere. 

And you can't just know they exist, you have to understand them.

That takes a plan. 

Daily goals. 

Weekly goals. 

Monthly goals.

But here's the good news: this is not the Academy. 

It is not twelve weeks of pure terror. 

You do not have to give up your family or your entire social life to get through your first facility. 

You do have to manage your time well, because you have to keep moving forward — but you have time.

Driver Three: Phraseology. 

Every facility has its own phraseology. 

Honestly, every controller does — all of it inside the 7110.65, but everybody's got their own read on what's real phraseology, what you can get away with, and what you can't.

When I say phraseology at this level, I really mean all the details. 

Facility-specific techniques. 

How they want you to work traffic. 

How they want you to communicate with each other, on the line and off. 

You will not be left hanging in the wind trying to come up with your own interpretation of the .65. 

Your trainers will tell you. They'll give you more than a few tips on exactly what they want.

Just expect there to be a ton of it. 

You thought the Academy was a lot of information — and it was. 

Your first facility is more. Don't let that surprise you.

Driver Four: Practice. 

Repetition becomes critical here, and so does observation. 

You're going to have a lot of opportunity to watch your coworkers work traffic. Find the ones who are obviously at the top of their game — usually the ones with fifteen, twenty-plus years in. 

Sit down. 

Listen to how they work. 

Watch how they work. 

You won't understand a lot of it at first. 

You're new. 

That's fine. 

Keep watching, keep listening, keep learning — and your willingness to do that will show.

You'll get simulator time too. 

Bigger facilities have them; smaller ones might not. 

When I got to Love Field in Dallas there was no simulator, and when I finally got to the radar position my trainer took me over to the TRACON so we could use theirs to practice. 

The opportunities are there if you want them.

And at the end of every training day, you and your trainer sit down and go over it. Sometimes you'll get to watch exactly what you did on a replay and talk through what you might have done differently. 

This is serious training. 

Driver Five: Picture. 

This is one of your biggest growth areas. 

You move from memorizing procedures to seeing traffic — and then from seeing traffic to anticipating conflicts. 

You scratched the surface of this at the Academy. 

At your first facility you take it to a much deeper level. 

You start to understand not just what they told you to do, but why. 

Because it works.

You become the chess master who can see four, five, six moves down the road. 

You begin to think like an air traffic controller.

Driver Six: Performance. 

It all comes down to this. 

It did at the Academy, and it does so much more here, because you're in a real operation, in a real building, talking to real pilots.

Your confidence is going to go up. 

Then it's going to take a hit. 

Then up, then another hit. 

At the beginning those are big waves.

Here's how you flatten them out: consistency. 

Put off leave. 

Put off big family events as much as you reasonably can — it doesn't have to be a hundred percent, but as much as you can — so you can train day in and day out, as many days a week as they'll let you. 

Three, four, five, whatever it is. 

Be there.

Do that, and those waves start to level off. And when they do, two things happen. 

You start to trust yourself and your own decision-making. 

And your trainer starts to trust you too. 

They sits back. 

They let you take more of it.

Remember: in training it's still their position, on their ticket. 

They're responsible for the operation. 

You're responsible for learning and for showing them you've learned. 

The more consistent you get, the more you make the right decisions at the right time, the more he — or she — lets go. 

And that's when you really start to grow.

I failed a D-side evaluation once at Fort Worth Center. 

Then the computer went belly up and we had to run the problem again — and they only had one problem, so it was the exact same scenario. 

Now, I may not be the smartest man in the world, but I'm smart enough to know not to do the same thing twice when I already knew where I'd messed up. So I did it the right way. Everybody laughed, because it was pretty obvious.

You don't have to do the drivers. 

Nothing says you have to. 

Nothing says you have to listen to me at all. 

I've just been doing this since 1989 — that's when I started training at my first facility, after the Academy in 1988. Yes, back in the 1900s. 

I'm an old man. 

It'll be thirty-eight years in November since I hired on with the FAA.

You don't have to take my advice. 

I can pretty much guarantee you'll have an easier time if you do.

You're not a student anymore. 

You're a developmental. "Academy graduate" is just the pay band.

Your Academy scores? 

Throw them out. 

Nobody cares. 

Nobody has ever asked me mine. 

The only time it ever came up was when I was back at the Academy as an instructor and we sat around going, "hey, what'd you make?" — and I won't even tell you what most of the instructors scored when they went through.

What they care about is what you do at their facility.

It isn't intelligence. 

What they're watching for is:

Because you are going to make mistakes. 

That's not in question.

I've seen trainees who weren't coachable. I've seen trainees who weren't really willing to learn. They're hard to work with and hard to train, because they find it difficult to accept your observations and the way you want to train them.

And I've seen the complete opposite — trainees who came in every single day wanting to learn as much as possible. Those trainees were a joy to train. An absolute joy.

When you make a mistake, acknowledge it and learn from it. 

Learn from your mistakes and those mistakes are moving you forward. 

Don't learn from them and those same mistakes will stop you in your tracks.

You're going to have bad training days. 

Everybody does. 

CPCs have bad sessions. 

Your trainer is going to have a bad day training you. 

We're all people. It happens.

You're also going to plateau. 

You'll improve and improve and improve — and then you'll sit at one level and stay there. 

The good news is you're not regressing. The bad news is it doesn't feel like you're going anywhere, and your trainer and your supervisor feel it too. They just want a little more so they can certify you on that position, and you're stuck.

That's frustrating. 

And if it lasts a while, you start to doubt yourself. You start wondering if you'll ever get to where you need to be.

These are the emotions. 

This is exactly why you need a purpose and a plan.

Because there's only one way to crack through a plateau. 

One way through the bad training days, the frustration, the self-doubt that shows up in every single trainee.

Be consistent. 

Be there, day in and day out.

If you do that, you will get through it. 

You will certify.

And remember one more thing about your trainer, and about every controller in that control room, in that tower, in that TRACON: every single one of them was a trainee once. 

Every one. 

And the ones who volunteer to train — they're volunteers — they want you to succeed. They want you to get to CPC. 

They don't just want you to certify, either; they want you to become a great controller. And they'll help you get there.

So focus on daily improvement. 

Trust the process. 

Keep developing. 

You'll get through Level Three.

I'll leave you with this quote from Robert Collier:

That is what it is all about!

If you've got a question, or you need help, head over to sidebysideatc.com and set up a call. It's free, there's no pressure, and we'll just talk for as long as we need to. It says thirty minutes on the calendar — I'm not much for clocks.

Text me if that's easier: 817-233-8199. (I love that I've got two niners in my phone number. Perfect.) Questions, concerns, or something you just want feedback on — I'm happy to help. That's why I'm here. My mission is to help as many people become great controllers as I can.

And whether it's me or somebody else, just remember: don't try to navigate your ATC journey on your own.