Top Gun teachings

John “Gucci” Foley has made a life out of living in the danger zone. As a former Blue Angels pilot — Foley knows the importance of teamwork inside and out.

That’s why he led a keynote address at Aspire’s Ignite 2025 event earlier this month in Anaheim, California.

With the Blue Angels, Foley explains that each year new pilots were coming in to fly with the team, so getting everyone up to speed on the same page was essential. And not just for the crowds’ entertainment purposes but as a matter of life or death.

“About one third of my team was new every year,” he says. “We had to adapt to the change and still perform. Not only that but we had to be physically and mentally at the top of our game every single day or someone’s life was on the line.”

The three principles of the Blue Angels that Foley taught attendees were — connect, align and commit. As for which one is the hardest to implement within your own team, he says it’s the latter.

“Commitment is a choice,” he says. “Nobody can force it on anybody.”

Despite new people constantly coming into the fold, Foley says the Blue Angels had sky high goals when it came to performance. As they were looking for 300% improvement after only 90 days.

One thing that helped him personally deal with these pressures was changing his mindset early on.

“The world is coming from you — it’s not coming at you,” he explains. “That’s the perception that needs to drive your behavior.”

Once all angels were on board with this way of thinking, Foley says there’s an easy four ways to get a team into their high-performance zone. Those are: beliefs, brief, trust and debrief.

Foley says teams should never settle and should always be pushing to achieve more through these four steps.

“There’s always a gap between where you are and where you want to go,” he says. “If there’s not than you need to change your goals.”

Typically, Foley says leadership teams tend to fall into one of two categories — a culture of excellence or a culture of caring. But he says the best teams have both.

That’s why proper briefing and debriefing time is just as essential as the job itself.

For example, Foley says the Blue Angels debriefed for twice as long as their actual airtime every single day. That didn’t matter if it was a practice, demonstration, show or other event.

Scheduling debrief time is critical, Foley says. And he warns attendees that these debriefs shouldn’t include any ego or blaming. It’s about getting people, and any level in the company, to acknowledge their mistakes, own them and vow to fix them.

According to Foley there are five dynamics to a good debrief, they are:

1. Respect — Create a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable talking about mistakes.
2. Humility — Check your ego at the door. No one should feel superior to anyone else.
3. Honesty — Lay it all out on the table without fear of repercussions or judgement.
4. Accountability — Own any mistakes and take the necessary steps to fix them.
5. Gratitude — Do all this with joyful effort.

Step 5 is why Foley says him and the rest of the Blue Angels always use the phrase “glad to be here.” Because acknowledging that joy is so uniting.

“Don’t only debrief when things go wrong,” Foley says. “Do it every day. And make sure to celebrate your victories, too.”