Pilot vs Passenger

I was reading a book called Amp It Up and found something very compelling that I wanted to summarise and share with people who are looking to change the world for the better.

Excerpt

People’s behavior in Workplaces (and in general in Life) can be classified into two types: (A) Passengers and (B) Pilots.

Below are the traits of the two types:

Passengers

1. Passengers are people who don’t mind simply being carried along by the company’s momentum, offering little or no input, seemingly not caring much about the direction chosen by management.
2. Passengers are often pleasant, get along with everyone, attend meetings promptly, and generally do not stand out as trouble-makers.
3. They are often accepted into the fabric of the organization.
4. While Passengers can often diagnose and articulate a problem quite well, they have no investment in solving it. They don’t do the heavy lifting.
5. They avoid taking strong positions at the risk of being wrong about something. They can take any side of an issue, depending on how the prevailing winds are blowing.

Pilots

1. Pilots, on the other hand, get their satisfaction from making things happen.
2. They have a strong bias for action.
3. They feel a strong sense of ownership for their projects and teams and demand high standards from both themselves and others.
4. They exude energy, urgency, ambition, and even boldness.
5. Faced with a challenge, they usually say, “Why not” rather than “That’s impossible.”
6. Pilots own their responsibilities, take and defend clear positions, argue for their preferred strategies, and seek to shift the orbit.

Few people are exclusively Passengers or exclusively Pilots 100% of the time. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

People who realize that they’re mostly Passengers have essentially two options. They can try to stick around without changing their pattern of behavior.

The other and better option for Passengers, of course, is to start changing their ways by emulating pilots. In the long run, that’s the only path to success.

Needless to say, Pilots achieve much more in their careers and lives compared to Passengers.