Level Four: CPC — Where You Stop Developing Yourself and Start Developing Others
"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.
Certification Is a Goal, Not a Finish Line
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.
The Scariest Day of Your Career
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.
What's Great About Level Four
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.
The Six Drivers at Level Four
Becoming a CPC doesn't make you immune to any of this.
The drivers don't go away.
They evolve.
Driver One: Purpose
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.
Driver Two: Plan
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.
Driver Three: Phraseology
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.
Driver Four: Practice
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.
Driver Five: Picture
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.
Driver Six: Performance
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.
Somebody Is Watching You
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.
And If You Do Decide to Train
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.
The Question That Matters
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.
Two Questions Before You Go
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.
It's a continuous cycle of growth.
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:
Which level are you in right now? Where are you in your air traffic controller journey?
And which of the six drivers do you need to strengthen to get to the next one?
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.
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Pre-Academy
If you are heading to the Academy in the next few months, I put together a structured 90-day preparation blueprint that walks you through exactly what to focus on each month before you go. It's designed to help reduce shock and build confidence before day one. You can download it at: sidebysideatc.com/page/blueprint .
I also have a video where I explain the different things that are on the enroute Non-Radar Map. You can get that video at: sidebysideatc.com/page/map-video .
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If you are already in the enroute radar portion of the Academy and feeling a little behind or lost, I have a 72-Hour Radar Recovery Plan that will help you get past those feelings and start building confidence. You can download that at : sidebysideatc.com/page/72-hourplan .
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Questions
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