What I thought would simply be a difficult conversation unexpectedly became an important leadership lesson — I learned more about trust than I had ever anticipated.

Leaders don’t get to choose when a crisis hits—but we do get to choose how we respond. In my career, one incident pushed Open Sky to the edge and exposed something as worrisome as the crisis itself. What happened next taught me critical lessons about trust, culture, and the hidden cost of the blame trap.

If you lead in a high-stakes environment, this is a story—and a shift in mindset—you won’t want to miss.

Real resilience isn’t built from laminated reminders or slapping a sign (or bracelet, in my case) on something — it comes from how leaders empower staff, create redundancy, and design systems that catch mistakes before they cause harm.