Leading 4 Life "Stories"

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text MessageWe kick off Season 3 of the show with a fascinating guest who has an amazing family story and who lives in a fabulous part of the world. Oh, and he has a lot of great perspectives on leadership too!!Doug Rattray is the Managing Director of Fugitives' Drift Lodge & Guest House in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. Set right between the famous Anglo-Zulu war battlefields of Isandlwana and Rouke's Drift, Doug and the team at Fugitives' Drift specialise in battlefield tours but also have a private game reserve on their property and offer wonderful walking in a spectacular landscape.My reasons for interviewing Doug on the podcast are somewhat broader though.  His family history is a story of tragedy to triumph and with serious amounts of resilience along the way.  Doug's father, David Rattray, was tragically murdered in 2007 and it would have been the easiest thing in the world for his wife Nicky to take the young Doug and his brothers and move away from Fugitives' Drift to start a new life elsewhere.  However, Nicky didn't do that!  She forged ahead with continuing David's legacy and expanded by creating the David Rattray Foundation to improve the educational prospects of local children in this very challenging area of South Africa.  The results are both fabulous and inspirational and I very much hope you enjoy this amazing story, and that it inspires you to visit the wonderful place that is Fugitives' Drift.You can find out more about Fugitives' Drift here: https://www.fugitivesdrift.com/Support the showThank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.You can find more about me here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBobWebsite: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text MessageI'm sure you have much better things to do over the holiday period than listen to lengthy podcasts from me!  Consequently, this is a short but hopefully sweet review of Leading 4 Life "Stories" across 2024.  I provide some personal thoughts about the journey so far and some detail of the number of personal stories, thematic episodes and guest interviews before giving just a few of my personal highlights from what has been a fabulous set of guests across the year.I'm extremely grateful to you for listening but also to all my guests for participating and helping to make the show what it has become!  Wishing you and all your families the very best for the new year and hoping that 2025 brings you all you hope for and more!  Happy New Year!Support the showThank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.You can find more about me here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBobWebsite: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text MessageFor this, my final personal stories episode of 2024, I thought I would continue the series of tales from my time as Station Commander of RAF Coningsby and cover the development of and the challenges we faced with the Typhoon Display.With a brand new, very high profile, and very high performance aircraft, it was obvious that we would need to put together an airshow display so that we could properly demonstrate the Typhoon's performance and potential to the British public and the wider world.  Given the already considerable demands of working up the Typhoon's operational capability, with fragile serviceability, limited numbers of aircraft, very limited on-aircraft pilot experience, and tight timelines, the creation of a safe but impressive display was a significant challenge.  However, it was a challenge that my team rose to magnificently and for the 2005 display season (the very first year we had the Typhoon properly in RAF service) we put on a great show and a range of air displays across the UK.  That was just the start of what has become an annual Typhoon display ever since then, and the aircraft continues to thrill huge numbers of the public as well as industry professionals at a very wide range of airshows and public events every year.It wasn't all plain sailing though and, as you will hear in the episode, we nearly had a disaster in that first season, and several other events occurred that certainly put my personal leadership skills to the test!I hope you enjoy the story and, as ever, I would love to hear what you think so please do let me have some feedback.Support the showThank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.You can find more about me here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBobWebsite: https://leading4life.co.uk/

I'd love to hear from you; feel free to send me a Text MessageOver the time I've been hosting this podcast, I've been very privileged to have a wide range of wonderful guests; however, this week's guest is an extremely special one even by those high standards.Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell DFC, is a World War 2 Mosquito bomber pilot who is rapidly approaching his 104th birthday!  He is one of only very few World War 2 veterans still alive today and is still incredibly fit and active for a man of his great age.During this conversation, Colin discusses his flying training and wartime experiences in great detail.  We also talk about his life post war and his perspectives on defence and security today, through the lens of current conflicts and geopolitical tensions facing the world as it now is.  Colin's ability to look at these modern challenges through the context of his own personal experience is immensely valuable and absolutely fascinating.This conversation with Colin was one of the great privileges of my life and I will never forget it.  Men of his generation and calibre are sadly fewer and fewer in number and it really was an absolute joy to have the chance to listen and learn from his experiences.  I really hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.You can find Colin here:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bellstuart21X: https://x.com/ColinBellsrtInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/colin.bell.dfc/Given the unique nature of this opportunity, I invited my friend and the host of the Plane Tales podcast, Nick Anderson, to join me in the interview.  Plane Tales is a standalone podcast but is also a featured segment on the excellent Airline Pilot Guy Show podcast. Nick will be releasing extracts of this full interview with some additional commentary and photographs in a 3 part podcast, which you can find on all the main podcast platforms and also via these links:https://airlinepilotguy.com/http://airlinepilotguy.com/planetales/Support the showThank you for listening! If you value the content I produce, please consider supporting the show financially by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/leading4life/ or clicking the "Support the Show" link above.You will have the choice of becoming a Supporter, a Champion or a Patron of the show and any contribution you feel able to make will be hugely appreciated.You can find more about me here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judsonbob/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudsonBobWebsite: https://leading4life.co.uk/