Ep22: Flying Out of Your Comfort Zone and Putting People Into Focus With Captain Emma Henderson
Discover how setting workplace boundaries and fostering genuine human connections can revolutionize your work-from-home life in the latest Human Wise Podcast episode. Former Easyjet airline captain Emma Henderson joins host Helen Wada to discuss her journey from aspiring lawyer to commercial pilot, and the transformative role empathy played in her career. With invaluable insights on creating work-life balance, the importance of peer support, and the challenges of remote work, Emma shares her experiences co-founding a support initiative for NHS staff during COVID-19, and how stepping out of her comfort zone led to new opportunities.
Tune in as Emma reveals her plans to run a half marathon for the first time in 20 years and climb Kilimanjaro for charity, reflecting on her career, workplace culture, and the importance of maintaining human connections in modern work environments. Learn why establishing boundaries, pursuing personal goals, and embracing humility and humor can make all the difference in your professional and personal life.
This episode offers inspiration and practical advice for anyone navigating the complexities of remote work, aiming for career growth, or striving for a better work-life balance in 2025 and beyond.
Topics Discussed:
Balancing work-life boundaries remotely
Initiatives supporting NHS workers
Human connection in remote workplaces
Stepping outside comfort zones
Grounded leadership principles in business
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:35 Emma Henderson's Journey to Becoming a Pilot
01:27 Life-Changing Move to New Zealand
01:58 Joining EasyJet and Career Highlights
03:08 Impact of COVID-19 and Peer Support Initiatives
04:20 Project Wingman: Supporting NHS Staff
08:11 The Importance of Human Connection at Work
14:45 Challenges and Benefits of Remote Work
23:15 Balancing Home and Work Life
24:16 Creating Boundaries in Remote Work
25:21 Managing Work Communication
26:32 Connecting with Customers
29:19 Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
34:09 The Importance of Humanity in Leadership
37:57 Trust and Transparency in the Workplace
38:56 Final Thoughts and Future Goals
Read the episode blog here
About the Emma Henderson:
Multi-award-winning Professional Speaker, Author, Airline Captain, Founder and CEO of Project Wingman Foundation Ltd.
Does.your leadership team know how to lead, and know what the difference is between Leading and Managing? Do you want to lead a diverse and inclusive team that feels empowered and understands what their purpose is in your workplace? Do you want to know how to manage "the Great Return" and build successful teams in these days of Hybrid and Remote working?
What do you do when something goes wrong? How do you manage it and how do you teach your teams to solve problems? Do you have a tried and tested way of making decisions that works for everyone in your company? And how do you and your personnel manage the stresses and strains of everyday life and keep a healthy balance in your workplace?
With over 30 years experience in the aviation industry as a pilot and working for a large European airline as one of fewer than 500 female airline captains in the world, I not only learned how to LEAD FROM THE FRONT, I was taught and assessed on essential LEADERSHIP SKILLS which I put into practice every day.
When I took Voluntary Redundancy in 2020 from the career I loved, I didn't even know I had these skills but I have learned that not only am I an expert, I use stories from behind the (locked and bulletproof) flight deck door to show you and your teams how to put these skills into practice.
I will GIVE YOU these Decision Making tools and frameworks and SHOW YOU how to use them to improve Decision Making in your professional AND personal life.
The tools I will give you - which have been developed over decades in the safety focussed aviation industry, practiced by me every day flying hundreds of passengers around Europe, and developed into skillsets which you can apply to your business - WILL improve Decision Making, Team Building, Communication and Performance, and create more effective Leadership throughout your entire organisation.
If you want to LEAD FROM THE FRONT and learn how to take your team with you, reach out to me.
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Ep22: Flying Out of Your Comfort Zone & Putting People Into Focus With Captain Emma Henderson
[00:00:00]
Helen Wada: Hello and welcome to the another episode of human wise. The first in 2025. I'm absolutely delighted to have captain Emma Henderson here with me this morning. Emma's going to tell us a little bit about herself at the moment, but I just want to say that we connected just earlier this year through a business and community group, and there was something about Emma that I was really drawn to and warm to.
Um, turns out actually we've got a fair bit in common having read her book. Um, but on that note, Emma, I think I'll hand over to you because actually you can probably do a lot better job about introducing yourself. Welcome to the podcast.
Emma Henderson: Well, it's great to be your first guest of 2025. I'm a bit shocked that it's 2025 already, but, um, yeah, so I'm the captain. Part of me is that I was an airline captain working for easy jet. So I flew for easy jet for 12 years. I actually started flying on a university air squadron back in [00:01:00] the mid nineties.
And having gone to university to be a lawyer, I then found out I could fly. And then
Helen Wada: Love it.
Emma Henderson: to carry a pilot and I didn't join the air force. I didn't become a lawyer. I didn't join the air force. I married the air force instead. And my husband of 30 years this year, um, was posted up here to RAF Kinloss at the time, which is now an army base, but we moved up here in 1995, fell in love with it, decided to settle, built a house, had three children, not in that order. And. Literally within a year of moving into our beautiful house, which I'm still in now, we found ourselves moving into a new house in Auckland, New Zealand in a life changing move that saw me arrive in New Zealand as a fat mother of three children who drank and smoked and didn't move. And I came back as a fully qualified commercial pilot and triathlete and still mother to three children.
So,
Helen Wada: What a fabulous story.
Emma Henderson: was life changing, absolutely [00:02:00] life changing. And there is, you can read about it in the book. But that led on then to three years of being a flying instructor, and then eventually I joined EasyJet, where I had always wanted to be, because in 1995, just as we got married, they launched their first route from Luton to Glasgow, and their second route was from Luton to Aberdeen.
And so suddenly, all of us living up here in the North East of Scotland Could get to London for a relatively cheap 60 quid, which was a lot of money in those days, but it wasn't 300 quid and it avoided a 14 hour drive. So I said to my husband, if I ever do fly again, I want to fly for this lot. And I found myself then in the right place in the right time to go fly for them.
And I did that for 12 years. Which was an amazing experience right up until 2020 when I made a massive life change, as you said,
Helen Wada: And, and that's kind of [00:03:00] where we are today. And I think that's the, where we clicked from a humanity perspective, Emma, because actually, you know, human wise, the podcast. It's all about, you know, being human at work. And I think listening to your story, reading the book Grounded and hearing what you did. Just tell us a little bit more about that shift when, quite frankly, the world all shut down in, in COVID.
Emma Henderson: well, yeah, I mean, I had become a captain after I had failed my initial attempt at becoming a captain. And I talk about that a lot because I think it's important to talk about failure and the lessons that it teaches us. And it made me a much better captain because it made me focus on what was actually important rather than the things that I thought were important. And so I was determined that I was going to be the sort of captain that everybody wanted to fly with. So I put people at the center of my job when I was flying as well. And then I was asked to be on a documentary, an [00:04:00] ITV documentary called Inside the Pocket, which I agreed to do. It gave me a platform that I didn't know I was going to need.
And I was also at EasyJet, I was a peer support mentor. So I had these two things that were going on that, you know, I had just done and I hadn't really had a plan for them. And then obviously 2020 happened and I came home and spoke to the clinical psychologist that oversaw the peer support program at my airline.
And said, we have to be able to help here because we're about to have thousands of grounded air crew who have an ability to go and help NHS staff and they're facing their biggest challenge yet. What do you think? And he said, yep, absolutely. You're so right. I'm going to introduce you to another guy who's been saying similar things.
So he introduced me to an, a BA captain who was thinking along the same lines and we had a very quick phone call and said, yeah, [00:05:00] we can do something here. And he said, well, I've his, his girlfriend at the time was working for the NHS, um, at the Whittington hospital in London. And he said, well, I've gotten into the NHS.
And I was like, well, I've got the platform. I can reach out to people. So he came up with a plan to get us into NHS trusts without them questioning everything. And of course, all the red tape was removed as well, because in a crisis situation like that, there's no planning meetings required. And I just put a message out on.
Social media, basically on workplace, Facebook, anywhere that I had a social media account, I just said, look, we're going to come together as a group of air crew to help support NHS staff. If anyone's interested in joining us, then here's a, I hastily set up a, a Gmail account called NHS air crew support or something like that. Three days later. 750 people had signed up to help and I was completely overwhelmed trying to, so every time [00:06:00] somebody, um, emailed in, I would then have to transfer their details into a spreadsheet, which I'm not very good at. And I contacted my friend,
Helen Wada: I'm not very good at spreadsheets either. I'm a
Emma Henderson: I hate
Helen Wada: reformed chartered accountant that tries to avoid spreadsheets at all costs.
Emma Henderson: that's all I use, spreadsheets for me are what I send to my accountant with my annual accounts on every year. And I definitely don't. My daughter has just on TikTok learned how to make amazing spreadsheets so she can budget and she can create graphs and stuff. And I'm like, that's brilliant darling, but absolutely not what I'm interested in doing at all. And I, but I, I had this influx of people, you know, suddenly we had all these people who wanted to help. And I got in touch with my friend Esther, who'd been made redundant from Flybe in, in the January and said, uh, You don't want to help with this, do you? I think she'd emailed in and said, what can I do?
We'd worked together as instructors years before. And I said, well, you're not any good with spreadsheets, are you? And she said, yeah, I love them. That's my absolute favorite [00:07:00] thing. So she then became in charge of the spreadsheet, which then became a database. And these 750 people, um, turned into six and a half thousand in, that was March, 2020 by August, 2020, about six and a half thousand people across the UK.
And three weeks after that initial quick phone call, we had opened our first lounge at the Whittington Hospital in London. And we basically just worked on the premise of providing tea and empathy. To NHS staff, so it's a listening ear, take the weight off your feet for five minutes. We're just here to talk to you about anything and everything.
And it doesn't have to be to do with flying. It doesn't have to be to do with what you're seeing at work or doing at work. It can be anything you like. And a lot of it was about travel. When are we going to fly again and specifically, you know, when are we going to fly again? Because my relative has just died and I want to get home to my family, am I going to be able to do that?
And of course we often have to say, [00:08:00] no, probably not. And then we'd sit down beside people as they walked through their grief, which didn't make it any less, but it meant they weren't alone.
Helen Wada: And listening to your story and hearing it and having read it, it's such a powerful demonstration of what can be really done when people really club together. And I think that's a reflection of many of us. When we, we look back at that time of the pandemic, but actually for me and coming back to the theme of, you know, human wise and where we're at, there's a couple of things there that you said, you know, a, in your work, it's all about putting people at the heart of flying, you know, and I'd love to understand a little bit more about that and, and what that really means.
And then hearing you there about the empathy, the humanity, the connection that you had with those people when you were working at the Whittington. And I think that is where the paths really cross to say, actually. What does being, what does being human at work mean to you? You [00:09:00] know, in all your flying experience, putting that amazing contribution that you all made together.
As I'm asking people, you know, what do you think, what, what does it really mean to be human at work in today's age?
Emma Henderson: It's funny that we're talking about this really, because I was thinking about this a lot recently and all the way through my life. I've talked to people and asked them, you know, I just struck up conversations with people and I think that that's, I mean, I just am genuinely interested in people and I look back on all the jobs I've done, you know, my, my career was in the airlines, but you know, my, I had lots of little jobs before that, you know, I worked on a potato farm when I was a student and I worked, I did a lot of work actually as a waitress in restaurants and you
Helen Wada: That that's where we don't have anything come. I'm so accident prone that I've never done the waitress thing and probably never will
Emma Henderson: Well, I worked out quite early on that it was quite lucrative if you would work things like New [00:10:00] Year and stuff, you'd get paid quadruple time and if you had a car, you got paid more and I got paid, um, a tip of a case of champagne from one party I worked, you know, so, um, and I've really enjoyed that. But you're talking to people all the time without necessarily needing to become their best friend.
Helen Wada: Mm.
Emma Henderson: And actually, when I look back, I think actually that's humanity. That is just showing an interest in the person behind the reception desk and the person behind the ticket to get on your plane and the person behind. The, the bank tell, you know, the teller who, you know, we go to work every day and we carry these bags of crap with us all the time.
So it might be a bag that, that might be something small, like the car's gone wrong or something. It might be something massive, like your mom's just been diagnosed with cancer, but we carry this stuff around with us all the time. And we do our jobs and the signs we see in shops all the time saying abuse towards [00:11:00] our staff won't be tolerated.
I'm like, why do we need those? Why are people rude to each other? I don't get it. And I think that as we have, I hate, hate to say it, but as we've descended into this world where we've, Become more reliant on automation and AI and phones in order to be able to communicate with each other, you know, not in a phone call, but we kind of dive into social media.
And we think that makes us popular. And, you know, we don't connect with people anymore. We've forgotten how to have that connection, that human connection and the bit that makes us, you know, different from other animals, um, and I think that's a terrible shame. And I think about my grandparents generation, and I'm not sort of harping back and say, oh, it was much better in the 1940s, clearly it wasn't.
Helen Wada: we, we haven't quite got to that in, in my day when it was, but you're right. It's,
Emma Henderson: Yeah, yeah, I'm heading towards that age where I'm going, oh yeah, when I was a child, you know, it was [00:12:00] so much better, and I But it wasn't, of course it wasn't better. There were loads of things about the 70s and 80s that weren't better. Although, the music was and always will be the best music that has ever been created in the 1980s.
And I'm not having any arguments on that.
Helen Wada: bet your daughters are disagreeing, right?
Emma Henderson: Well, no, because they're all, they're all dancing around to 1980s music and You know, I went to a club in Newcastle with my youngest daughter a few years ago. And she was like, yeah, this music's great. How do you know all the songs? And I was like, yeah,
Helen Wada: They were our songs.
Emma Henderson: exactly. They're not yours. So, but you know, even before the pandemic, actually, do you remember before the pandemic, we all used to pick up the phone and talk to each other for no reason.
Helen Wada: Yeah.
Emma Henderson: We stopped doing that.
Helen Wada: Do you know what my, my girlfriends and I, so I've got a, I'm really fortunate. I've got a wonderful, wonderful group of school friends that I've known some of them since I was four. Other since I was [00:13:00] 11. So it's incredible. And we were saying to each other, we don't. Pick up the phone to each, and actually we've restarted because we've had this conversation because I would come home, I'd be with my best friend at school, and I'd come home and then I remember getting on the phone and talking to her even though she was too streets away.
And, and we'd say, and actually I called her up a month or six weeks ago because we'd talked about this. And she said, oh, hi, what are you calling for? I said, I'm calling to see how you are. And you know, it was lunchtime. I thought you might be making a sandwich. And I'm on lunch too. So how are you doing?
It's. It's really love that the connection, I think, you know, me with my two boys as well, I think there's something about looking at teenagers, children coming through, um, what, what does it mean to be human at work? And I sometimes feel a little bit crazy going. I've set up this podcast. My business is the human advantage.
It's all about putting the human back into work. And then I got to, well, why am I doing [00:14:00] this? Because it matters because actually through my coaching experience, People I work with. I'm still saying that actually those conversations where you are just curious about the person and interested about what's going on, aren't happening because actually diaries are double booked, triple booked in some cases.
And so there's not the lack of time. I don't think there's a lack of desire. I think actually, if you were really honest and having conversations, people want to be doing more of it. But I think there is something in the, particularly the commercial world, and quite frankly, in other sectors as well, where the demands are pulling people in so many different directions that we're losing the art of humanity.
And that for me is super, super important. And I just don't think that businesses will be sustainable in the future. You know, there's ESG, there's all talks about, yeah. What are we doing from a sustainability perspective, but actually for me, the people element [00:15:00] is the sustainable piece. It's about how do we keep the workforce going and connection with our customers goes back to your airline experience. to keep businesses going and thriving.
Emma Henderson: well, I think a lot of it comes as well from, I accept that there are advantages from working from home, and I accept that there are advantages to being able to work on Zoom and, and, and studios like this, for example, where we're not in the same place and we can have a really great conversation and we can record it and we can put it out.
And I, from a sustainability point of view as well, I understand that it's better to have Zoom meetings than maybe to fly to America for one meeting, you know, so I understand all of that. But I think in, in the, Increasing reliance on remote working and all the flexibility that brings what that's actually done is removed that human connection.
And yeah, I work, I used to work in an environment where I'd [00:16:00] turn up to work every day. I'd be in a crew room of perhaps 200 people because I was working at Gatwick, a huge, huge base for EasyJet. And you'd walk into the, even just walking into work, you'd say hi to people that you knew. You might not know them very well, but you'd say hello to them.
Or you might stop and have a coffee with someone you haven't seen for a long time. But then you'd stand at a briefing table as a group of six, and the first thing that a good captain would say is, How are you all today? How is everybody? Is everybody fit to fly? So that wasn't just a, it was partly a, how are you?
And it was partly a, have I got any issues that I can foresee later on today when somebody says, Oh, well, my son's not very well, but as long as we run to time today, as long as we run on schedule, we'll be all right because my mom's looking after them, but she's got to be home by five kind of thing. And then you instantly think, okay, well, as soon as we pick up a delay, I've got to think about that person. I wouldn't, I didn't necessarily have to [00:17:00] do that as part of my job, but I had to do that as a human being, you know, for me, that was an essential part of leading my team and what's now happened is that because I chose to leave my job and work from home and the work I do now. I've isolated myself. So I now have to make much more of an effort to make sure I have that human connection.
And I do, you know, I go, I'm in London once a week at the moment, which I'm almost flying more than I was when I was flying for a job, you know, so I go out and find that human connection. But lots of people don't. And it's isolated people. So all the flexibility we've given ourselves has removed it. The water cooler chat and remove the ability to be in an office with other people and bat ideas around.
So actually just recently I've created a WhatsApp group for a few people that I know and we've called it the office. And we can just talk about all the stuff that, for example, [00:18:00] I really hope my husband doesn't listen to this. One of the
Helen Wada: going to send it on to
Emma Henderson: in the office the other day, I asked the office the other day, well, what am I going to get my husband for Christmas?
This is who he is. He's got everything he wants. Any ideas? And actually, they came up with some really great ideas and one of them I've done. But that's the sort of thing that we've removed ourselves from. And I think it's the COVID did a number of things for all of us that when, you know, some were good, some were bad.
But one of the things I think it removed was humanity from the workplace because it allowed people to have a reason to work from home. It gave people the ability to find out how they could do that. And now there's this expectation that people won't go into an office. And I think that's a mistake, personally.
I'm absolutely going to put that out there. So I think it's a mistake to have full working from home. Hybrid working can work, maybe. But I think you still need to go into an office if [00:19:00] you're working and have that human connection because it keeps you curious. It makes you interested in people.
Helen Wada: To your point, I think that bouncing things around, I mean, it's interesting, the work that I'm doing. So, you know, the group coaching programs that I've created, you know, post pandemic, it was a little seedling of an idea that, you know, the human advantage, I literally bought the website, started my blog pre pandemic, and then the pandemic hit.
And then quite frankly, We got overworked with 15 hour days, two children, husband who we literally just got out of Singapore, um, because he'd been working in Singapore for six months, so he came and did Singapore hours from the loft. Um, and so we just kept going through, but for me, the pandemic initially shone a light on who we are as humans.
So for me, there was something about all of a sudden, Seeing people at home, you know, there would be a, a child running over the lap, or the dog or the cattle, you know, it, it [00:20:00] initially brought that humanity behind the office soup, particularly in professional services, which is where I worked.
Emma Henderson: Yeah.
Helen Wada: But actually I do wholeheartedly agree with you that since we've moved back, that the more people I'm talking to, the more lonely people are, the less efficient people are.
Because I was having a conversation with a client the other day and she said, Oh, yes, I went into the office on a Monday. I don't normally do that. And actually I needed a presentation done and I gave some instructions. The person then was like, okay, fine. Went away an hour and a half later was like, Oh, what about this?
What about that? Building. Improving. She said that conversation would not have happened if we were sat. In different parts of the country and so this generating business, generating ideas, the innovation that we need to develop and grow to keep up with the technology that's around us, I think we're [00:21:00] slowing down business by not connecting as much.
And, and with that, you've got the loneliness you've got, how do people feel you it's much harder. We have to work much harder to have these conversations here. If I'm not picking up the phone to my best mate, cause I haven't got the time, then actually you need to equally make as much effort, if not more with your colleagues, with your teams to understand what's going on for them that
Emma Henderson: you know, so I do very little work online because I find it much harder to connect with an audience online, which is ironic because Project Wingman, the charity was set up and run, you know, I ran, I ran it from my desk, which was in front of the toilet on my landing to
Helen Wada: we were talking about before.
Emma Henderson: desk, you know, but pre pandemic we had built these two desks on our landing.
We've got a long, thin house. That's not, you know, one, it's one and a half [00:22:00] stories. So on the landing, there's a lot of wasted space that we basically put cupboards, a lot, a run of cupboards along and under each dormer window, we, we made a desk space. So we had a desk each and that was pre pandemic. So, and it was really fortuitous because suddenly we had two of us working from home and, you know, I was sharing, I was basically sharing a landing with the air force and.
And I, and I set up and ran that whole charity. I didn't leave Murray until July, 2021. So, you know, I didn't, I never went to the, I went to a local lounge in my local town, but I didn't go to any of the other lounges. And, um, I, so, so, so it had its place and I think it, it, it was brilliant to bring in this ability to connect with people without having to leave your house.
But now that the majority of people, certainly in my world. All my colleagues went back to work and I [00:23:00] didn't, you know, I did, I did, but in a different place, you know, so I've, that's isolated me, but it also hasn't because I'm not that person. I won't be isolated, you know, I, I go out and find connection, but I think we also, I think it's a really interesting point you made about setting boundaries around what we do as well, because I think we've all kind of, there is this thing about working from home where we have to almost justify the fact that we're not leaving the house.
By saying, Oh no, I've got a meeting or no, I'm really busy. And we tell people we're busy all the time. So it, I think almost to justify the fact that we're not sitting at a desk in an office. And the, and the lines around our working life have blurred. So we used to leave the house at a certain time and have some sort of commute, whether it was to walk down the garden to work in a shed, or whether it was to drive to the station, catch a train, or in my case, whether it was to drive to [00:24:00] an airport and catch a plane to work.
And, you know, we had that ability to switch from home life to work life. And when I was at work, my family knew that I wasn't contactable. You know, you could not phone me at any time of the day and just assume I was going to pick up the phone. And then if I didn't pick up the phone, find my iPhone me until I answered. You know, what was that all about? Everybody knew that they could send me a message and I would get it when I finished work. And if something went wrong, I wasn't the person who was going to sort it out for them unless I wasn't working. And now there's this kind of, I'm always saying, my husband will say, oh, well you could do that today, couldn't you?
And I'll say, no, I'm working. And he's like, but you're at home all day. Yeah, working at home. Yeah, absolutely. I can do that. But then I'm going to give you a task that's going to take two hours out of your day and you like it, you know, [00:25:00] so I think we have to be really careful about putting those boundaries back around our.
Working life and that's, you know, I was telling you at some point that I'd moved my desk downstairs from the toilet. Who, um, it wasn't quite as dramatic as that to another room in the house, um, that's become available now that my daughter's moved away and it's brilliant because I can shut the door and I can walk.
I don't walk past my desk on the way to bed. And when I finished work and I tried really hard to stick to a nine to five. Well, not even that really, I don't want to work nine to five. So, you know, nine to five with dog walks in the middle and coffees in the middle, you know, so I really hard to protect my, my sort of my own space.
Helen Wada: And I talked to a lot of my coaching clients about that is how do we create boundaries? Because I think that's where the stress element starts to go break through is that people are not switching [00:26:00] off anymore. And so actually that's,
Emma Henderson: through on our phones, doesn't it? So you can't look at your email or you can't open a WhatsApp from a mate without seeing 20 WhatsApps from potentially from workmates. And that's where I think personally, I think a work phone is brilliant because Then you've gotta work now. I mean, I, ironically, I don't have one at the moment,
Helen Wada: no, I don't,
Emma Henderson: as things get busier for me, a hundred percent I did, when I was running the charity, you know, I had, I had Wingman phone and a, and a personal phone, and I had to do that in the end because I, we had so many, we had a WhatsApp group for every single one of the 104 lounges that we had across the country, and I couldn't possibly manage 104.
What's that groups on my personal phone. So I just had an old iPhone that I managed to make work and I left it plugged in and did everything on that. So
Helen Wada: and that is a business in itself, right. In terms of that, keeping that WhatsApp group going and how do you connect with them? [00:27:00] I mean, that, that's a full time job.
Emma Henderson: it is, but I surrounded myself. I had, we had a back office of 45 people when I was at the height of wingman. And yeah, so there would be somebody to manage all of that. Also, there'd always be somebody on one of the groups. So actually, which allowed me to step back from it when I needed to and do the other bits that I needed to do to run the charity.
Helen Wada: And that kind of brings me on to point around, you know, thinking about customers. We talked a lot about teams. We talked a lot about the way of working and how that's important for humanity in business. Whatever you're doing, whether you're running a charity, whether you're, you know, a pilot on a commercial airline.
And I work a lot in professional services, but I'm really curious to understand and link in from people with different industry experience and backgrounds, because we only learn. I was talking to somebody actually, that's going to be on the podcast later in the year. We only learn by having different experiences and thinking outside of the box.[00:28:00]
And as we think about business, growing businesses, customers, That connection with customers, what have you seen from, we touched on it a little bit earlier as you're rolling the pilot, and there's some great stories in your book about how do we connect with people so that they remember who we are. And how do we go from creating a connection to an opportunity?
Why would people want to fly back with you with EasyJet? Um, that humanity piece, right?
Emma Henderson: you know, the documentary that I was in, um, sort of, I said before it gave me this platform, I didn't know I was going to need, but I used to, at the end of 2019, when we were still flying around everywhere, I used to be sitting in the flight deck as passengers were boarding, and I would hear people getting on saying, is Captain Emma flying us today?
And I'd go out of the flight deck and say, yeah, I am actually, hi. And people would burst into tears and say, oh, I really [00:29:00] wanted it to be you. And I think it's because in the program, I did show, show that I, I genuinely care about people that wasn't for the cameras. You know, they, they just filmed me for six months, which was brilliant.
I loved every second of it.
Helen Wada: And I know you didn't want to do that and you were sort of persuaded and then it was absolutely brilliant that you
Emma Henderson: Yeah, initially I didn't. Yeah, initially I didn't want to do that at all. I just, uh, my brother in law is a film producer and director, and he said, never be in a documentary, because you don't have any control over what they show. So I initially, when they asked me to do it, I said, no, uh, well, I said, I'll do it, as long as you will guarantee that you're not gonna, Bring into disrepute the company, the air force, me, my family.
Um, you know, I've got a responsibility to make sure I don't do that, but don't, don't cut it in a way that makes me look like an idiot. And, um, they said, well, we don't have to use you. I said, no, you don't. But if you do, they are my terms. I never heard anything from them. [00:30:00] And then a few days later I turned up to work and there was this film, this camera rig in the flight deck.
I was like, okay, it's filming me today. They're nicer than to ask, you know, and they followed me around for six, they came to my house and everything. They followed me around for six months and I loved it. It was absolutely brilliant.
Helen Wada: I'm just thinking about, again, one of the things we talk about is people just stepping out of their comfort zone. We all get comfortable. And I think that's another problem that I would add to that working from home piece. You know, people are very comfortable at home and some of our greatest learning opportunities.
You know, would you be here as a leadership speaker doing what you're doing now without having had that confidence to push yourself into a place where You might not have gone, you know, it wouldn't be in your life planned to say, I wanna be in a documentary, but actually pushing yourself to do something that was slightly out of the comfort zone has led you to a whole new place.[00:31:00]
Emma Henderson: the whole, the whole shebang was out of my comfort zone really, because When I first decided I wanted to be a pilot, I didn't know how to do it. Um, you know, it was a really big deal for me to go when I was at university to go up to, you know, to walk up to the desk that said, learn to fly for free and understand that that was basically me applying to join the voluntary arm of the air force as a Christian pacifist.
You know,
Helen Wada: Yeah,
Emma Henderson: that was kind of stepping out of my comfort zone a bit. And one of the questions I was asked actually in that interview was, If you go on to join the air force and I had put on my application form that I was an active Christian and they said, if you go on to join the air force, you could be in a situation where you are asked to drop bombs on people.
How do you feel about that? And I had to think about that and give an answer that, you know, I clearly gave the right answer because I got onto the squadron and the right answer was, firstly, I'll cross [00:32:00] that bridge if I come to it. And secondly, if I choose to serve my country, then I will. Do what is required of me to do that.
And I, you know, let me sort of let me battle with the, you know, wrestle with the moral dilemma kind of thing. Um, but that put me out of my comfort zone. I wasn't from a military background. Um, and actually, because I did that, that changed the course of my life because that's where I met my husband. And now I've been a military wife for 30 years.
So in our children and military children, and you know, the life that we've had is because of the RAF. So. You know, and then there are a couple of occasions where I haven't been brave enough to do that. And early on in our marriage, I had the opportunity to go and sail a leg of the Whitbread round the world race.
And I, I had a, came back to me and said, absolutely, this is what you need to do. It's going to cost this much money. And, and we agreed that we could afford to borrow the money to do it. And I just [00:33:00] banged out. I was too scared to do it. And I lost that opportunity. And the same with, um, a BA cadetship down in Prestwick, I had the opportunity to go and be trained to fly by British Airways and then pay for it.
And I was too scared to do it because I was a young wife living in the north of Scotland and I thought four hours away from my husband was too far. We didn't have phones and FaceTime. So, you know, putting yourself out of your comfort zone, I think it's absolutely how we learn. And we have got very, very comfortable staying at home and.
Everybody I speak to who's back in the office says how brilliant it is to be connected with people again. And they might not be back in the office every day. I'm not saying we've got to go back to Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. You've got to be really rigid about it. But actually, I think we do need to force ourselves back and get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Force ourselves back into those situations. So we remember. How brilliant it is to just [00:34:00] be around people all the time.
Helen Wada: Absolutely. How are you? I will absolutely kind of hold my hands up to that because that for me, and particularly working on, on Your rain, you know. A group of coaches that I work with and so forth, but it's, it's not the same. It's get back, get talking to people, the connections like you and I have had, right?
It's been amazing and I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversations and it's just great to bounce ideas with people and who knows where things go to, right? And I, I had a motto when I started up the human advantages. One conversation at a time. So just getting out there one conversation at a time. And I, when I'm coaching it, when we're talking about, you know, talking to potential customers, what does it, I don't know, but I'm curious.
I'm interested in you. I'm interested in you as a human being. And if there's something that there's an opportunity where we could work together. That creates good business for you and good business for me, surely that's got to be a good way of working and [00:35:00] bringing brings humanity to the heart of what we do, which is, you know, connection, community and business and it, it wraps all together.
And so that's, yeah, really, really passionate about it.
Emma Henderson: it is that ability to see people for who they are. So, you know, you see things all the time as you quite often see things outside coffee shops saying, be kind, you don't know what people are going through today.
Helen Wada: I think there was one on a bus stop. I was stopped in traffic the other day. And there was like a whole bus stop thing about, you know, just be kind.
Emma Henderson: That's humanity. Think about other people before you think about yourself. You know, when you want to, Um, shout at that person that's being slow. I, I was at the post office the other day and the lady at the post office was being really slow and making lots of mistakes and I was in a rush, and my temptation was to get frustrated with her, and I forced myself not to, because firstly, I don't think it's okay to be an idiot when somebody's not doing something the way you want them [00:36:00] to.
And secondly, because she was trying her best. You know, we're all just trying our best. With what
Helen Wada: we're all ultimately human, right? We are all ultimately human. Let's be human wise.
Emma Henderson: is at the center of grounded leadership, which is where I've kind of. Positioned myself because lots of people at leadership, but grounded leadership for me is, is it, you know, it's humanity, humility, and humor. And for me, that is, if that's at the center of everything we do, not just in business, actually, but in life, if we bring.
Humanity, humility, and humor back into the workplace, suddenly a whole host of problems go away because it means, you know, the humanity pieces. Seeing people, I see you, I understand you, how are you, how, how is your daughter's birthday at the weekend? Yeah. Did your cat survive? That kind of thing is humanity.
It's not being [00:37:00] lousy and it's not, and it takes five seconds to just ask somebody how they're doing. But then the humility, you know, without humility, everything we achieve is arrogance because we have to remember that everything we do involves a team of people. And even worse,
Helen Wada: ego. It's not about ego. It's about being it's, it's not. And I think
Emma Henderson: ideals.
Helen Wada: that's one of the troubles with, with some business today is, is, There's a lot of ego out there and actually we need to take stock and take a real look at that and said, is he go right for sustainable business success or to your point is, is humility a much better term,
Emma Henderson: recently a great phrase that said, um, a great leader, great leaders share the fame and take the blame with no exceptions. And [00:38:00] I thought that's absolutely where we need to be at and how many times have you or people listening to this been in a situation where something's gone wrong at work and the first thing that happens is the person who was managing that project or the person who's in charge saying, right, who's to blame for this? There's this whole thing, isn't there, about if you point the finger, there's three pointing back and you think, actually, it's probably down to something that you've not, you know, you've let slide and, and the way we ran the charity, the way we ran wingman is that, you know, when things went wrong, we'd look at it and go, okay, how do we solve this problem?
Not who's to blame. And, and that comes, I think, from the airline culture of having a just culture where we are expected to report on ourselves. And we are expected to hold our hands up and say, right, I got this wrong today. This is what led up to it. This is what happened. This is what I did about it. And this is what I would do differently next time.
And that learning gets absorbed by the company. [00:39:00] So the patterns can be created so they can see if a pattern is developing, that people are often doing this at a certain time, and then that can be trained out of you in the simulator.
Helen Wada: but it's trust and transparency is what you're talking about.
Emma Henderson: Yeah,
Helen Wada: It's having trust is creating transparency.
Emma Henderson: but
Helen Wada: That we are learning.
Emma Henderson: yeah, and having the confidence to be able to do that, because you're in an environment where you don't get sacked for saying you've made a mistake. It's seen as a learning experience, because actually if people don't. Learn aren't allowed to learn from their mistakes in the workplace. They will leave and take all of that valuable information with them to your competitors.
So actually we need to have a work, workplaces where people can confidently speak out and say, I've made this mistake. I'm taking responsibility for it. This is what I've learned from it, and this is what I'm going to do to [00:40:00] rectify it as much as possible. And it could be a massive mistake, but for me, that person is more valuable in my business than they are going to my competitor down the road and taking all that information with them.
Helen Wada: absolutely. Absolutely. I am conscious of time and we could talk about this for, for hours and probably will over the course of next year. And, you know, as we link more together, I really, I really hope so too. So it really links things together. As we close out thinking about, you know, the human humility, the humor, you know, having fun.
I asked people on the podcast at one tip and maybe one question for the listeners. As a coach, I always like people to have a question to reflect on. What would be your tip and what would be your question for listeners after hearing us today?
Emma Henderson: So my tip is that, something my dad said to me, um, after I got really sick in 2014 and I nearly died, and when I [00:41:00] got better my dad said to me, never let work become more important than the reason you're doing it in the first place. And I didn't really get what he meant at the time, but over time, I have completely understood what he was saying.
And I think that's a really important tip for anybody. Never let what you're doing become more important than the reason you're doing it in the first place. It's another way of saying family comes first, relationships more important than money, basically. And the question that I would put to people. Is why do you not go and just do that thing?
What's stopping you from doing that thing that you want to do, but you don't think you're capable of doing? Because I wager that the answer isn't a good enough reason not to do it.
Helen Wada: I think that that is an absolutely brilliant way to start off 2025. What is [00:42:00] it that you want to do in 2025? That having listened to this, you're going to go, do you know what, JFDI, I'm just going to go and do it and find a way.
Emma Henderson: Can I tell you what I'm doing in 25 and 26?
Helen Wada: Yes, please do. And tell us, tell the audience where they, we can find you as well, Emma,
Emma Henderson: So, you can find me at, I'm on LinkedIn, um, if you just put emma henderson speaker into LinkedIn, you will find me. Uh, my website is www. emma henderson. com and actually if you just Google Captain Emma or Captain Emma Henderson, you'll find me.
Helen Wada: there. You're at the top, top of the tree.
Emma Henderson: yeah, I've Googled myself. So I'm there.
Um, I'm on TikTok. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. Um, I always reply to messages, not necessarily within an hour, but I do always reply. Um, but in 2025, I am running my first half marathon for 20 [00:43:00] years. The last one I did was in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. So I've got three goals. One is to finish, two is to run all the way, and three is to finish one minute quicker than I did when I was 30.
Helen Wada: Amazing.
Emma Henderson: And, um, then in 2026, and this is why, partly why I'm doing The Raven, I'm going to climb Kilimanjaro. Of course I am.
Helen Wada: Amazing. I was talking to a friend about that literally last night, we were talking about Kilimanjaro.
Emma Henderson: Well, I've always wanted to do it because there is a backstory, and I'm going to probably write a book about it, but I've always wanted to do it, and then the opportunity came up for a great charity in St. Albans called Youth Talk. And so I'm going to join their team and go do it. So
Helen Wada: Amazing.
Emma Henderson: what is stopping you from doing the thing you want to do?
Because it's probably not a good enough reason not to do it. Welcome to 2025, the year that you're going to do the things that you've always stopped yourself from doing.
Helen Wada: I love it. [00:44:00] Brilliant. Thank you so much, Emma. It's been an absolute pleasure. Loved having you on the show and look forward to seeing what 2025 and 2026 has in store.
Emma Henderson: Yeah, me
Helen Wada: I'm going to get on my, on my goals. Part, part of next week's challenge is for me to, to get those out there. So
Emma Henderson: Well, good luck with that. I look forward to seeing how they go and it's been lovely chatting with you. Thanks so much.
Helen Wada: thank you. Take care. Bye bye.