The first female fast jet pilot in the Royal Air Force, Jo Salter outlined the qualities needed by business leaders at the Bathroom Manufacturer Association (BMA) Conference, using her service experience.

In her presentation, The Growth Mindset, at the conference themed Building Growth, she explained her Air Force career enabled her in decision making and “to get stuff done” in business.

“Just imagine yourselves in control of 25 tons of screaming metal flying at 600 miles an hour at tree top level… you’ve got one or two junior pilots on your wing and you’ve got to think am I going to be able to get out of the valley? What about my wingmen?

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“You’re always making decisions, and the wrong one could be catastrophic”, she said.

Salter outlined her career journey, including interrogation training, asking the audience: “Why wouldn’t we want to learn more about ourselves? Why wouldn’t we want to learn about how we respond under pressure?”

She said unpleasant situations or ones that stretch and create discomfort enable growth, adding: “My view on leadership is it needs to be 100% of daring and 100% caring because the point of maximum learning is right on the edge of panic.

“What I say is you have to learn to be comfortable in discomfort.”

Having faced life and death situations, including missile launch failure with a live bomb on board her jet, she said: “Specifically thinking about the growth mindset, when I knew we could die, it’s a really interesting time.

“I’ve had a number of different points where that could happen, so maybe I start to let things go a bit more because I think that the hardest thing we have in life is actually being able to get over ourselves – that’s the battle that we should be really fighting.”

Salter said ignore the voice inside and rather than fear a gut feel, learn to exercise it like a muscle and similarly do the same for the brain creating neurons and pathways.

Speaking about facing sexism on her journey, Salter also acknowledges male advocacy in helping her become a jet pilot and instructor.

Salter stated: “We need to find a way to allow people to use the talent that they have, giving them the opportunity to stretch and nurture and grow into something more than they are today.”

She highlighted the need for her to “put bold boots on”, to appear on BBC Breakfast talking about the Tornado for the launch of film Top Gun Maverick and highlighted the opportunities it brought.

“I just thought how many people are watching this? So I looked down the camera and said ‘such a shame that I don’t have tickets for the premiere for Top Gun Maverick’. Three O’Clock that afternoon I’ve got a phone call saying ‘Jo you’ve been offered two tickets for the premiere’.”

Not only offered tickets for the premiere, she met Tom Cruise and from a follow-up BBC Breakfast interviewee, when she outined her disappointment at not having flown a Eurofighter Typhoon, she was offered the chance, before hosting the actor at another event.

In the commercial world, Salter encourages others to be brave and “put bold boots on”, perhaps moving forward with pilot projects “It’s my favourite word after all” and debriefs, similarly to the Red Arrows who relentlessly seek improvement.

“We need to be thinking about what we could do that’s a little bit different and the marginal gains and what are you each as individuals doing this to become a bit better”, she concluded.