A Different Kind of Leadership Podcast - Part 1

Written By Todd Tuthill

SHOW NOTES:
The Rincon Horizons podcast is where we talk about what it means to reach the summit on your leadership journey. We want to help you lead better so your organization can climb higher. This is the inaugural Rincon Horizons podcast. The quote of the podcast: Todd Tuthill: "Great leaders should be decisive, but they should never assume they've cornered the market on wisdom."

Todd and Dylan discuss the following in this episode:

  • Who are the co-hosts Todd & Dylan?

  • What is the Rincon Horizons podcast mission and philosophy?

  • Where will aerospace fit in this podcast?

  • What does the name “Rincon Horizons” mean?

  • How did Dylan design the Rincon Horizons identity?

  • How has Todd Tuthill’s career turned a leadership corner?


Links and other items mentioned in the podcast:

Other items mentioned in the podcast:

Books recommend in the podcast:

  • The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick Lencioni: https://a.co/d/0hCIriN

  • Building a StoryBrand 2.0: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller: https://a.co/d/huitaVh

  • The Need to Lead: A TOPGUN Instructor's Lessons on How Leadership Solves Every Challenge by David Berke and Jocko Willink: https://a.co/d/7XHYSoP

 

Moderator and co-host Dylan Mitchell

Dylan is the Brand Strategist, Creative Director, and Founder of DM.supply. He’s passionate about helping churches, nonprofits, and businesses of all kinds build brands that are clear, meaningful, and built to last.

Find Dylan on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylnmtchll/


 



Primary contributor and co-host Todd Tuthill

Todd is the Managing Partner of Rincon Aerospace - A consulting company guiding aerospace companies to exceptional.

Todd is an aerospace executive and systems engineer with more than three decades of experience designing aircraft flight control systems

Find Todd on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddtuthill/

 

AI GENERATED TRANSCRIPT: Rincon Horizons S1E1 - A Different Kind of Leadership Podcast - Part 1

Dylan Mitchell (00:00)

Hey everyone, I am Dylan Mitchell, and this is the Rincon Horizons podcast where we talk about what it means to reach the summit on your leadership journey. We want to help you lead better so your organization can climb higher. Each episode, I'll be joined by my co-host and our main contributor, Todd Tuthill. Todd is the managing partner of Rincon Aerospace. Todd, welcome to the show. And for those who haven't met you yet, can you share a little bit about your background?


MEET OUR CO-HOSTS TODD TUTHILL AND DYLAN MITCHELL

Todd Tuthill (00:24)

Hey, thank you, Dylan. And wow, am I excited to be back in the podcasting seat? This is fun. Dylan, I have a lot prepared for you. can't wait to get started. Dylan, thank you for joining me as well. So as far as my background, again, it's an audio podcast, so our listeners can't see. But if you could, you could see I have a lot of grey hair. Been been around the industry for a while. I am an aerospace executive and engineer.

Dylan Mitchell (00:35)

Absolutely great to be here.


Todd Tuthill (00:51)

I really spent most of my career developing flight control systems for aircraft or really a lot of it leading teams to do that. I've worked for Boeing. I've worked for Raytheon. I worked for Moog aircraft and I've worked with nearly every major aerospace OEM in the Western world. You know, think about companies like Lockheed or Northup or Airbus or Bell or Embraer. I've worked with all of them. I've worked on several other major projects and, and I know from the.



Dylan Mitchell (01:18)

That is, that's quite the resume just right off the bat.


Todd Tuthill (01:21)

Well, thank you. It's been a privilege and an honor to work on so many cool things that fly. It's ⁓ I like to say there's nothing cooler than being in an air show and watching something you design flow over your head. I guess maybe the coolest thing would be flying that thing. I'm not a pilot. I don't do that. standing in an air show watching things flow over your head that you designed is cool. ⁓ And I've worked several major projects. I know from our pre-production meeting, Dylan, that you're a Top Gun fan.

So so and I don't know if you're tight if you're purist the original top gun if you're a Top Gun Maverick fan or if that makes a difference But but you think about that the jet in Top Gun Maverick that was an F &A 18 ENF Super Hornet and that was the very first Program I was part of designing And I said, I'm you know, I'm a flight control system designer So I spent a lot of years working about thinking about to helping take that airplane from a piece of paper To a to a real thing and I remember


Dylan Mitchell (01:48)

absolutely.

Todd Tuthill (02:17)

The first the first day we were trying to move the flight control systems. I got a call about two in the morning. They were having problems with the leading edge flap. They had some questions and I said, hey, I'm not going to answer it on the phone. I'm coming in so four in the morning that morning I was sitting there just outside the cockpit as we move the leading edge flaps the first time. So I love cool things about Super Hornets, so I had privilege to do that. And then for the past three years.

Dylan Mitchell (02:40)

Wow.

Todd Tuthill (02:43)

I was at Siemens Digital Industry Software and some of you may know if you hopefully some of you are listeners from my previous podcast. I was on a different podcast at Siemens called Talking Aerospace Today. So hopefully we've been we've inherited some listeners from that. And if you're interested in space or systems engineering or things like that, Patty Russo and I just finished a four port series on those two topics a few months ago.

So check them out wherever you get your podcasts. ⁓


Dylan Mitchell (03:12)

I'll say this if I can interject. I don't understand all of the technical aspects of the podcast with that four part series that you mentioned, but just as a passive listener, kind of doing my homework, getting ready to cohost this show with you. I got a chance to listen to those and they're great.

Todd Tuthill (03:27)

Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that, Dylan. So so that that was the previous podcast. And as Dylan said, I've kind of stepped out on my own and started my own business now doing executive consulting at a company called Rincon Aerospace, where I'm the managing partner. And I've had several leadership roles in my career. You I talked about the different companies. I've been a chief engineer, director of engineering, vice president for aerospace and defense, done lots of things with leadership and leadership in aerospace. That's kind of my background.



RINCON HORIZONS PODCAST MISSION AND PHILOSOPHY

Dylan Mitchell (03:56)

Right. And so, you know, with this podcast, you're launching a new aerospace consulting company and a new podcast all at the same time. And just logistically, I know that that's a lot of lift. No, no pun intended. So what what is this podcast really going to be about? Is it focused on aerospace leadership or is it something maybe a little bit bigger than that?


Todd Tuthill (04:17)

Well, first off, what am I thinking? A business and a podcast and we'll talk about a video cast too, but it's a journey, right? It's going to be fun. And you know, we'll see later. Dylan's helping me do some of that. but in terms of, of what this, this podcast is about, and in all this, you know, and, as I said, I'm an aerospace geek and you'll hear that and, over the podcast, I you'll find out Dylan is too. I love aerospace.


Todd Tuthill (04:40)

But some things, Dylan, some things transcend aerospace. And leadership is one of those things. And some of the lessons I've learned leading aerospace companies and many other organizations leading in churches and other aspects of my life, I've learned that leadership is larger than aerospace. And I really wanted this podcast to be broader than aerospace and really even broader than just business leadership because all of us are leaders in many aspects of our lives.

And the better we are at leading the better all of our organizations our businesses our cities our states our schools our churches our families the better all those organizations operate Any organization needs great leadership to thrive? and Yeah, and and thank you dylan and hopefully I listeners will too and you will hopefully that the things we talk about will will bear that out over the course of time in this this podcast, but


Dylan Mitchell (05:21)

I would totally agree with that wholeheartedly.


Todd Tuthill (05:38)

But Dylan, you said something really important. It's top of the podcast that I want to repeat described our mission on the podcast as we want to help you lead better. So your organization can climb higher. And those are very deliberate words because, know,

In any listener of the podcast, you listen to lots of podcasts, you read lots of books.

There's all kinds of leadership podcast and books and seminars out there about growing as a leader so you can get ahead for yourself. And while that's not, well, that's not necessarily bad. I've listened to a lot of those books and podcasts, too.


Dylan Mitchell (06:09)

That's right.

Todd Tuthill (06:16)

But that's not what this podcast is about. It's not about self help. It's about making better businesses and cities and schools and churches and families by building better leaders. We want to help you become a better leader so you can build something greater than yourself.


Dylan Mitchell (06:34)

I really love the thought process behind that, because I'm like you, there are so many leadership podcasts and books and so on and so forth. And it can be a little hard to navigate the sea of that conversation. And so what you're doing with Rincon Horizons specifically, I think is really gonna break through that noise in a special kind of way.

Todd Tuthill (06:56)

I hope so. again, we'll see and, you know, give us some feedback if you're listening, you know, interact with us. Leave us leave us some reviews. You know, follow me or Dylan on LinkedIn. Tell us what you think. We'd to know.



AEROSPACE CONNECTION

Dylan Mitchell (07:09)

So this podcast, it's not strictly about aerospace, but I've got to know for myself and maybe for the listener out there as well. Like you said, we are aerospace nerds. Some of us, hopefully most of us. Will there still be some aerospace related content kind of scattered in along the way?


Todd Tuthill (07:25)

In this podcast, yes, there will be a little but you know, I wanted to do something that focused on aerospace as well. And like we said, you know, a new business a new podcast, what am I thinking? Well, I'm doing a video podcast to you know, I could call me crazy, but I'm just just jumping in head first and the video podcast is going to be callhe Rincon AeroCast.

Todd Tuthill (07:48)

And it is all aerospace and defense all day long, Dylan. I'm very fortunate to live just a few miles away from one of the  world-class aerospace museums in the country. It's the Pimaeor and Space Museum. And I'm going to take my iPhone out and just walk around with the jets, know, taking pictures, shooting video of me walking among the jets, talking about the past, the present, and the future of aerospace and defense. I'll talk about news and trends and all sorts of stuff.


That's the Rincon Aerocast and we'll put more about that in the show notes. So didn't want my regular listeners of Talking Aerospace Today to think that ⁓ I was abandoning the discussion of aerospace. I'm not. I'm just adding something new. That's what this podcast is about.


Dylan Mitchell (08:31)

That's great. And you know, you said you just miles from Pima Air and Space. And I've got to say, ⁓ you know, as someone who worked for another air and space museum, I won't name names, but the Pima Air and Space Museum is one of the best in the country. One of my favorites. And I can't wait to see what content comes from that.


Todd Tuthill (08:51)

Well, thank you. I'm looking forward to it. we'll see if I end up having any hours less than the day to sleep after I do all those things.

THE NAME RINCON HORIZONS EXPLAINED


Dylan Mitchell (08:58)

So you decided to call this podcast Rincon Horizons. Do you want to talk a little bit about what's behind that name and how does it tie all into leadership?


Todd Tuthill (09:06)

Sure. So you may be noticing a kind of a pattern here. You know, the company's Rincon Aerospace, the podcast is Rincon Horizons. The video cast is Rincon Aerocast. What's the story, Todd? What's so special about Rincon? Well, a couple of things. Obviously I wanted a clear connection between the brands, and even though this isn't an aerospace podcast, I did want to kind of tie it to the aerospace consulting company I'm starting. But there's


But also another aspect of it is if you tried to start a business and try to create, look for domain names and things, you know, I can't just call it the aerospace podcast or the company, the aerospace company, those things were taken years ago. You need something


Dylan Mitchell (09:48)

Sure.

Todd Tuthill (09:49)

I looked to the geography of, of where I live and, you know, like to say, ⁓ my wife and I like to say, we, we, we're fortunate. We get to live in a postcard. We live here in Tucson, Arizona. As we record this, it's November.


And I'm looking at across the country and watching the big giant, uh, you know, winter storm come across the country and it's 80 degrees here in Tucson today. So sorry, sorry, sorry everybody with the lake effects. No, and all my friends, uh, from where I used to live in Buffalo, not so much in Tucson.


Dylan Mitchell (10:11)

Wow.


Todd Tuthill (10:20)

we're fortunate to live in Tucson. And if you know Tucson very well, if you've been here, you know that Tucson is a Valley that sits between five mountain ranges.



Todd Tuthill (10:29)

And if you walk outside my front door and turn left, you look right up and there's the Rincon Mountains. Absolutely gorgeous mountain range as far as I'm concerned. And I chose to call, know, use Rincon in the name of all these things for lots of reasons. One of the cool things about ⁓ the name Rincon is the name Rincon comes from the Spanish word for corner. Because if you look on Google Maps at this mountain range, It forms ⁓ almost a perfect natural corner. As I think about my leadership journey, I can remember several corners that I've had to navigate to get to where I'm at today. And, you corners and in terms of, you know, forks in the road, things we have to navigate to get to where we are. And I think that's true for many of us.

You know, we all want to climb the leadership mountain. We want to grow and get better, but the journey's not always up. Sometimes that path is horizontal. Sometimes it's even down before we climb up. That's what one of this podcast to be about. That's why it's a Rincon horizons. Uh, this is the journey and the changes and the struggles we have to go through to become better leaders. And of course I put the word horizons in there for a couple of reasons too. When you think about a journey or leadership, you think about reaching further. What's next.

Where can we go? What can we accomplish? You know, what can the organizations and the people we lead accomplish if we become better leaders in all aspects of our lives? And of course, there's the aerospace angle, too, because Horizons is kind of aerospace related. know, we'll probably even though it's a leadership ⁓ podcast, I'm sure aerospace will find its way in here and there and everywhere. Because, you know, I love aerospace and I just can't help myself,

DESIGNING THE FAMILY OF RINCON BRAND IDENTITIES

Dylan Mitchell (11:58)

Sure Well, here's hoping anyway. was going to say, and I know that we'll talk about a little bit, but a little bit later in the show, ⁓ but you kind of hit on, you know what Rincon in Spanish means and you know how it means corner. And as as I got the chance to work with you and design the brand identity for not just Rincon aerospace, but for Rincon Horizons as well

It was really quite a fun project to design for. One thing you know art art in and of itself is very interpretive a lot of the time. And this one if you're looking at the key art now as you listen to the episode wherever you're listening from you'll see that it is in in truth a very angular design a very angular mountain design with kind of a an R ⁓ character nestled into it. ⁓ So this was just one that I got to be very literal on in the design process and hopefully that that really kind of lends itself to the true meaning of the name.


At least that was the intention with it.

Todd Tuthill (13:06)

Yeah, I think it turned out great and to our listeners you have my permission. It's OK. Pause the podcast right now if you haven't seen the art. If you're driving, you pull over on the side of the road. Maybe take a look at that already. It's really cool art that I think ⁓ Dylan created to really express the whole idea of horizons and mountains and leadership and climbing and all this. Hopefully, hopefully that comes out in the art. I know he put a lot of time and thought into it, so thank you for that Dylan.

HOW TODD’S CAREER TURNED A LEADERSHIP CORNER

Dylan Mitchell (13:34)

Of course, more than happy to work with you on that. And you know, thinking about it, you know, again, my intention in that process was, know, wow, that is such a powerful image. And it really is just to hear you share the thought process behind it as well. You know, turning corners, not just climbing up. Can you maybe share one or two of those corners from your own leadership journey?

Todd Tuthill (13:54)

Sure, let's talk about a leadership corner in my journey. We're gonna go back, ⁓ wow, it's been, I guess, more than 20 years. It's hard to imagine it's been that long, but started on the F-35 program. I was the system design lead. 20 years ago and I remember a time in a really early design meeting for the F-35. I was leading the team for the flight control actuation system at the time and we were having a large meeting over the course of a couple days with people from several companies. It was pretty early in my leadership career.

And I kind of think I was probably talking a bit too much in this big meeting, you know I was I was pretty confident my abilities and my opinions at the time Dylan, you know in other words I was pretty arrogant I can admit that now right I was pretty arrogant, but also I saw things very very black and white.

Any topic, any decision that came up, you know, it was either completely right or completely wrong. You know, you were with me and we were together or you're an idiot because he couldn't figure it out. Right. That that's kind of the way Todd saw things. I can say that now. So at the time in the, this large meeting we were having, the vice president for engineering for the company I was working for at the time was at the meeting and he was a mentor of mine at the time he was, ⁓ he really invested a lot, helping me grow as a leader. And, and I remembered distinctly that day, we kind of finished the first morning of the meeting. He kind of pulled me aside and I'm thinking, okay, what I do now? I mean, he looks at me like, like leaders do. And he says, okay, Todd, you're very, very black and white. You need to see more grey. I can still hear him saying it to me today. And.

And I'd love to say that, you know, I took that advice and I snapped into it and I became a better leader. That is not what happened. I didn't just take that advice and run with it. I'll see if I can explain, you know, the immature thought process I had at the time and maybe how I've grown as I've kind of rounded that leadership corner.

I'm probably sure you've heard our listeners have heard this idea about relative truth. You know, you have your truth. I got my truth. Everybody's got their own truth. Right. Well, I was so opposed to that idea. And by the way, I still am this idea of relative truth.


But, I just assumed immediately that that's what this leader was talking to me about. He was talking about relative truth. I'm like, I want nothing to do with relative truth. Why do need to see the grey? It's right or it's wrong, you know? And I'm an engineer, right? Gravity's true. If I jump out of an airplane without a parachute, or you do, if we both do, we're both going to fall and die, right? That's what we're going to do. All right.

Dylan Mitchell (16:39)

Well, that's what I was going to say in as an engineer, relative truth and black and white. That's kind of how you think, right?


Todd Tuthill (16:44)

It's how you think it's what I was taught. It's how I thought. Right. And, know, it's true for all of us. If we jump out of that airplane, we're going to, we're going to die. Right. Whether or not you this is true in so many aspects of our lives, but over time, what I began to realize, my mentor wasn't talking about relative truth at all.

That wasn't his point his point. He was talking about business and about organizational leadership Okay. Now, like you said, gravity may be universally true, right? Like you said, I was an engineer most things about designing an aircraft people may think most things about designing aircraft are pretty black and white You know, you just you just do an equation and it works. The reality is that's not true You can think about things like how should we structure the teams to design and manufacture this aircraft. That's not black and white universally true. Even something more technical like what's the optimal architecture that balances performance and safety for the aircraft. That's not black and white. It's not like that. And my mentor could see that I had applied the laws of physics and math to everything in my world, right? I thought I could answer any question or solve any problem with an equation.Well, what I learned in leadership over time is that people don't work like that. You can't just apply a formula to say this is how a person is going to work, right? And while I certainly believe then and believe now, leaders should be decisive, they should never assume they've cornered the market on wisdom. All one of the best things any leader can do is listen to other people, other opinions. And that's especially true


Dylan Mitchell (18:04)

Sure. Mmm. That's good.


Todd Tuthill (18:29)

when those other opinions are different from yours. Great leaders are never threatened by people who are smarter than them. Who know what they are people who know more than they know. mean, arrogant people like I was then I was threatened by that. But real leaders aren't right. Real leaders aren't threatened by that. Great leaders welcome those conversations and they see them as opportunities to grow and get smarter themselves. And and I think that's what my mentor was saying to me that day. Todd You need more grey.

You need to have some fuzzy conversations with people that don't agree with you and not just shoot off your mouth thinking you know everything in the world. And I think that's what he was telling me. And that conversation, that leadership corner was more than 20 years ago. And I think I'm still learning from that wisdom in that simple statement today.


Dylan Mitchell (19:16)

Man, that's that's incredible. That's wow. There's there's I want listeners to go back and hopefully, you know, whatever platform you're listening on. I know some of them have have the option to bookmark an audio clip, just that that statement that leaders should be decisive, but they should never assume they have cornered the market on wisdom.

I think there's a lot of truth in that, regardless of at what level you find yourself leading.


Todd Tuthill (19:40)

Thank you, Dylan.

Todd Tuthill http://www.rinconaero.com
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