Jason Harris
Senior teams say they trust each other until something actually goes wrong. Under pressure, the gap between stated trust and operational trust shows up as hesitation, missed handoffs and decisions deferred to the top. Most leaders do not have a working method for building the kind of trust that survives a bad day.
Jason Harris is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and combat pilot who helps leadership teams build the trust and decision discipline that high-consequence operations require.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jason Harris
- He brings a working framework, No Fail Trust, that he has applied with Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, not a set of war stories repackaged as leadership lessons.
- His operational credibility is current. He still flies commercial widebody aircraft for American Airlines, so the standards he teaches are standards he is still held to.
- He commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has run a real organisation with real accountability for safety, performance and people, not only led from the cockpit.
- He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy, which gives the framework an academic spine that most ex-military speakers do not have.
- His material translates cleanly to civilian teams under restructure, hybrid working strain or post-incident recovery, where the question is whether trust will hold when conditions degrade.
Biography highlights
- Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, nearly 30 years of service across active duty and the Air Force Reserve Command, concluding as a flying Squadron Commander.
- US Air Force Academy graduate, later instructor in the Academy’s Military and Strategic Studies department.
- 11 combat deployments, 470 combat sorties, more than 2,000 combat hours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.
- Co-author of “Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership” (RTI Press, 2022), reviewed in the USAFA Journal of Character and Leadership Development.
- Commercial pilot with American Airlines, type-rated on the Airbus A320 family and Boeing 757, 767 and 777.
- Featured in Forbes and on the History Channel series “Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters”.
Biography
A cargo aircraft taking fire on approach is not the place to discover that a crew does not trust each other. The cost of unspoken doubt in that environment is measurable in seconds and lives. Jason Harris flew 470 combat sorties in environments where that calculation was not theoretical.
That operating context shaped a leadership method, not a memoir. The No Fail Trust framework codifies what high-functioning aircrews actually do: the habits of disclosure, calibration and accountability that hold a team together when conditions degrade. He has carried it into Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, Ford and Lockheed Martin, where the trust problem looks different on the surface but obeys the same logic underneath.
Harris also brings the structural side. He taught Strategy and Innovation at the US Air Force Academy and commanded a KC-46 air refuelling squadron, which means he has been responsible for organisational design, safety culture and people decisions, not only flight operations. His co-authored book “Aiming Higher” (RTI Press, 2022) was reviewed in the Academy’s Journal of Character and Leadership Development, which is rare for a bureau speaker working in this lane.
He still flies. As an American Airlines pilot type-rated across the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 757, 767 and 777, the standards he asks corporate teams to consider are standards he is still operating under in the next week’s flight schedule.
Key speaking topics
- Trust as an operational capability
- Leadership under high-consequence pressure
- Team performance in distributed and hybrid environments
- Psychological safety and crew resource management
- Decision-making under uncertainty
- Culture in safety-critical organisations
- Leading after restructure or incident
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams confronting a trust gap after restructure, leadership change or a public incident
- CHROs and culture leads designing for safety-critical or distributed teams
- Operational leadership cohorts in regulated sectors: aviation, energy, defence, logistics, financial services
- Sales kick-offs and leadership summits where the brief calls for credibility under pressure rather than motivational lift
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of trust that can be observed, measured and rebuilt, rather than asserted
- A method for surfacing unspoken doubt inside senior teams before it becomes an operational cost
- A clearer view of how psychological safety, accountability and decision speed reinforce each other under pressure
- Specific behavioural habits drawn from aircrew practice that translate to civilian operating environments
- A sharper read on what leadership presence looks like when conditions are not stable
Talks
The anchor keynote, framing trust as an operational capability built through specific habits rather than an attitude.
Key takeaways:
- How high-functioning aircrews build trust quickly across rotating teams
- The observable behaviours that distinguish stated trust from operational trust
- A practical sequence for rebuilding trust after a performance or culture incident
Applies the framework to distributed and hybrid teams where face-to-face calibration is no longer the default.
Key takeaways:
- Why distance amplifies trust deficits that were hidden in co-located teams
- How to design check-in and feedback rhythms that hold under hybrid conditions
- The leadership behaviours that protect psychological safety across time zones
A workshop format aimed at leadership cohorts and operational teams, structured around five habits drawn from cargo aircraft command.
Key takeaways:
- A shared vocabulary for accountability inside a leadership team
- Behavioural patterns that hold under fatigue and operational stress
- A diagnostic for where trust is breaking down inside a current team