Dr. Bart Barthelemy of The Wright Brothers Institute: “Be a leader”
Originally published on Thrive Global: The Thrive Global Community welcomes voices from many spheres on their open platform. They publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect their own. By Charlie Katz, Executive Creative Director at Bitbean
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Bart Barthelemy, Founding Director of the Wright Brothers Institute and the President of the Collaborative Innovation Institute.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started my career as a rocket scientist and nuclear physicist with degrees from MIT. When I entered the United State Air Force, I was assigned to the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. My first few years with the Air Force were as a scientist, but I was promoted to a manager when I was about 25 years old. From there, I had greater and greater leadership roles and responsibilities and became an Executive Director of the Laboratory in 1984 (44 years old). In that position, I managed and directed over 10,000 S&Es to develop high-end technology for the Air Force. I retired from the Air Force in 1995 (55 years old) and started several companies and a non-profit called the Wright Brothers Institute (WBI). Now in 2021 (80 years old), I still have the position of Founding Director at WBI and work every day on innovation and collaboration projects.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
When I became a manager in the Air Force, I wanted to impress my group on our first team meeting. I prepared a long speech and put every word on prompt cards. I was nervous and I essentially read the cards to the group. They were not impressed and asked me to put down the cards and speak to them directly. It was more embarrassing than funny, but that experience taught me a great lesson, “If you are a leader, speak to your team from the heart”. To this day, I remember that lesson and it is one of my five “take aways” for future leaders, “Speak from your heart and be transparent to your team”.