149: Trust Builds Teams, with Nate Amidon

A cargo plane cockpit isn’t the first place most people look for lessons on software leadership—until you hear what happens when a co-pilot stays silent. A single dismissive moment can shut down a voice and invite disaster

In this episode, I talk with Nate Amidon, founder and CEO of Form 100 Consulting Today, about how trust, humility, and psychological safety turn complex, invisible work into predictable results, and why compassionate leadership is a performance advantage.

We explore what it means to pull out the best thinking from your team, and map the small behaviors that create psychological safety. We also dig into the unique challenges of a software business, where the work is hidden behind screens and pipelines. You can’t walk a factory floor to spot a stalled widget; you need people to surface risk early. 

Finally, we connect compassion to alignment: clear goals, plain-language requirements, and feedback loops that let executives and engineers row in the same direction.

If you care about building resilient teams, scaling delivery without burnout, and creating a culture where people actually speak up, this conversation is for you. 

Listen, and share with a manager you know who could benefit. 

Nate Amidon is the founder and CEO of Form100 Consulting, a veteran-owned and veteran-staffed technology consulting firm that brings military leadership principles to software development organizations. Nate has spent over 20 years serving in the Air Force as a C-17 pilot in both active duty and reserve capacities. His experience leading C-17 crews and planning large military exercises provided the basis for Form100 Consulting’s approach. When not collaborating with clients, you’ll find him chasing trout with a flyrod or skiing on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. 

You can connect with Nate and learn more about him on LinkedIn.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 2:23 From Air Force Pilot To Tech CEO
• 4:35 Why Compassion Fuels Software Teams
• 6:43 Seeing The Invisible Work In Software
• 9:29 The Cost Of Not Knowing Your People
• 12:04 Military Lessons: Leadership At Every Level
• 16:10 Training First-Line Managers
• 19:11 Humility And Idea Radar Leadership
• 21:50 Psychological Safety On Agile Teams
• 23:50 Aviation Story: Silence And Risk

Transcript

Nate Amidon: 0:00

If you have a low trust organization and you treat you treat your employees like commodities, let's say, that aren't just transactional, then those people aren't going to go out of their way to take care of you or the organization.

Manya Chylinski: 0:17

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Nate Amidon. He's the founder and CEO of Form 100 Consulting, a veteran-owned and veteran-staffed technology consulting firm that brings military leadership principles to software development organizations. We had a wonderful conversation about compassion and leadership, in the importance of caring about the humans that we are working with. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. Nate, I'm so happy to be talking to you today. Thanks for being here.

Nate Amidon: 0:57

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 0:59

To get us started, what is one thing that you've done in any area of your life that you never thought you would do?

Nate Amidon: 1:09

Well, I think starting uh running starting and running a company was never on my radar. I had started my career as an Air Force pilot. So I flew C17s, big cargo planes. And that was my main focus. And so I look back now and I never would have run my own company really in the software technology space as well. So it that for sure is is one thing that I never thought I'd do.

Manya Chylinski: 1:38

Yes. Especially with a military background.

Nate Amidon: 1:42

Yeah. I mean, we I sometimes get asked uh from my pilot friends, not an airline pilot, like what do you do you love PowerPoints? Do you love office stuff? You know, do you like sitting at a computer? And in a lot of ways, yeah. So yeah, it's just a different, different world.

Manya Chylinski: 1:59

It is a very different world. And and the pilots that I know personally do not want to sit at a desk and they do not ever want to know what a PowerPoint is. So it is interesting that you've made that transition.

Nate Amidon: 2:13

Yeah. Well, it's what I like about it is the problem solving aspect. I like the, you know, after a while, when you when you fly, it becomes kind of the same a lot of times. It's takeoffs, landings, a lot of time sitting at crews. And uh, and so I I like the challenge of constantly solving problems, trying to figure out figure out solutions, work with people that I wouldn't, you know, normally met. I like that a lot too.

Manya Chylinski: 2:42

Right. Yes, and you don't want to have to be solving problems in the plane every time you take off for a flight.

Nate Amidon: 2:50

Sometimes you have to solve problems, but those are usually not great things, right? Um exactly. And so is it uh someone would say like out them for 10 minutes of sheer panic? So yeah, that's kind of the life of a pilot.

Manya Chylinski: 3:04

Oh my goodness. All right. Well, great. Well, we are glad that you started your business because you think about things like why it is important to care about the people that you're working with, and to bubble that up just to the concept of compassion, which is something I think a lot about. Why is that important?

Nate Amidon: 3:24

Yeah, I so you know, we we really focus in on the process of software development, so which can be very technical, right? Thinking about writing code and advances in technology and AI and all of these things. And but ultimately it's a group of people solving problems. And we need people to be connected to the problems, to each other, so they can work together to actually move move the ball. So, I mean, at the core, it's a people business and comes to compassion, you have to feel connected to others, you have to feel connected to what you're doing to really get the best out of people.

Manya Chylinski: 4:02

Do you have an example from your experience of a time when really being aware of that made a difference?

Nate Amidon: 4:09

Yeah, I, you know, I think it's so it's so important, especially in the software development space, which seems weird, but a lot of times you can't see what's going on in software development because the the technology is on a computer somewhere or it's in uh someone's test environment. Like you can't walk the factory floor and see if there's a widget that's not progressing because it's it's kind of hidden in a way. And and so you really rely on people and you rely on them to see problems and to to seek out solutions and to find better ways to do things. And so I remember once talking to a lady who had been working at a company for a long time, and I was working as like a project manager in in space, and yeah, just started asking her about you know how you know where she grew up, you know, where she how many kids she had, what she likes to do on her free time. And she paused and almost got a little bit of emotional. And she's like, I've been at this company for a year, and nobody's asked me any of these questions. Is if you don't care about the person, then that person doesn't feel connected. And when they don't feel connected, they're not invested. And so, you know, she might not have gone out of her way to find problems or better ways to do things. She might not have been the one to speak up because she doesn't feel like anybody cared about her. And so that personal, though those types of personal relationships are what really makes high-performing teams and high performing organizations. And and I just think I think it's lost a lot in in the corporate world.

Manya Chylinski: 5:45

It does get lost a lot in the corporate world. Why do you think that is?

Nate Amidon: 5:50

I think that there is, I can't say for sure. I mean, I I grew up in a military world. So I went to a military college, went to the Air Force Academy right out of high school, and then was with a military unit for 12 years. And and so I always just it was always embedded in the culture that we're we cared about people, right? I mean, like, because it's the person next to you is going to be a lot of ways watching your back, making sure you don't do something dangerous. Uh, and and so you need to make sure that you know that person, and that person has just kind of a basic level, you know, feeling that we're all on the same team pushing towards something. So the private sector is a little bit different. It it's more transactional. People are doing a job to get paid, as opposed to like in the military, it's becomes a way of life. It's it's it's part of your identity. And so I think there's probably aspects from the top where it comes down to profit motives and you see record quarters, but then record layoffs at the same time. Like it's hard to it's hard to square those two things when you think about a people first organization.

Manya Chylinski: 7:00

Yes, it's not hard. I feel like it's impossible when we see those kinds of activities. And of course, it's always easy to judge from the outside, but I'm curious what kind of policies or structures or values do you think are really important to support leaders to be able to make those compassionate decisions and ask those personal questions?

Nate Amidon: 7:28

A lot of the the leadership, when people think about leadership, they'll think about the C-suite. Okay, they'll think about CEOs and CIOs and CFOs. And one thing I I really loved about being in the military was they started talking about leadership at every level. And so I guess maybe to answer that question is to kind of frame that leadership isn't really just a title, it's a set of actions. It's a everything anyone can be a leader regardless of your title. Maybe that's a better way to say it. And so team level and program level leadership is so critical to doing anything, whether it's improving compassion in a culture or or even just getting getting things done. And so I think your question was what organizational policies and and structures like I think it's it's being deliberate about leadership training and building that into a culture early on in the organization. Right. So I mean, there's so many first line managers, and those would be like, hey, they went from an individual contributor to all of a sudden now they're managing a team, and they just say, congratulations, you're now a manager.

Manya Chylinski: 8:39

Yes.

Nate Amidon: 8:40

And there's zero, there's zero training, right? Right? There's zero thought to how you should do it, and then there's zero mentorship. So there's not like a culture in a lot of these organizations of leadership at an early level, like leadership at the team level. And I think going back to the military example, I think from my experience, our military senior leaders, which would be kind of C-suite, were very deliberate about saying leadership happens at all levels. And so it in it was even embedded in how we got, you know, our performance reports. We went to leadership training. I mean, I like to say every military officer, well, maybe not everyone. I went through 40 weeks of dedicated leadership training in my first, like by the time I made eight years of of service. So I mean, it was just a constant thing. It's it's there. I had mentors that talked about it. It was pretty much embedded in everything we talked about.

Manya Chylinski: 9:39

Right. That's so important, and that is different than a lot of other kinds of environments. I appreciated what you said about whatever level you are and whatever your title is, you are you have leadership responsibilities. You can be a leader. Early on in my corporate career, somebody told me every person in this meeting has a responsibility to the success of this meeting. And that really changed my thinking because before then, meetings had been for a lot of us, oh, hey, here's an hour where I don't really have to work. And but it really changed the nature of our meetings and how we got things done because everybody felt a responsibility. And so that's a similar thought that I've heard in the past to what you're saying is that we all have that responsibility. I'm not sure people let me say it this way. In some organizations, I don't think people know that that's possible, or it might not even be possible the way the organization has structured itself.

Nate Amidon: 10:45

Yeah, I would say it's at some level, it's always possible. And a lot of what we do in in our consulting practice is, you know, well, we hire former military leaders and then we embed with software development programs to try to build a lot of a lot of these things and obviously do other things. But but yeah, it really comes from I think it does come from the leader, though, the the one that's assigned to be the leader, let's say, let's say that first line manager. Like even if the organization is one that doesn't promote, isn't what you would call like a high trust environment or high trust culture, you can still do it at a at a micro level. And you can, it really starts with the almost a sense of humility around, and I think this is probably the biggest thing I see in in the private sector, is a lot of times you think because you're designated as the manager or the leader that you have to have all the answers, right? Like you have to be the one to set the direction, you're responsible for telling everyone what to do. And it's a natural, it's it's a natural thing to have happen. Like I see you see this in the military too. It's not like the military is immune from this, like, because at a micro level or at the team level, program level, you can see this everywhere. But I had a mentor in the Air Force once tell me, like, your job as a leader is care and feeding of your troops. That's one way to think. And it's like, you don't want to be the one that always like I never had all the answers. And so in leadership positions, I think as a leader, you're an idea radar. That's your job. Your job is to set the conditions so everyone will actually speak up and give their best ideas, and then you may have to make the decision on which direction to take. But everybody knows that if they had an idea or if they had a thought, if they had input, that it was received, and then you have to be okay with being wrong.

Manya Chylinski: 13:15

Yes, which can be hard for a lot of us sometimes. And you mentioned you used a word that I think about a lot, the concept of trust. You talked about being in a high trust environment, and I think that might be the crux of it. Some organizations, for better or for worse, don't have a lot of trust, and people don't feel safe necessarily. And it sounds like in within your own organization, you really think about the concept of trust.

Nate Amidon: 13:41

Yeah, you have to build trust with people, you have to build a relationship with people. So that means like they have to believe that you care about them. Yes, and not just believe like you're faking it, like you have to actually care about people, like they have to know it. And so when you and that kind of goes back to the care and feeding of your troops, like you have to make sure that that like you're looking out for them as a person that you care, you hear about them, you hear about their what their ambitions are, you know, what's going on with them. It's it's kind of a whole person concept, which is different in the private sector because there's a lot of like, well, you talk about people's personal lives or other things, and there's a fine line there, and I get that, but um, but if people need to understand that and believe that you trust that you believe in them, right? That you that you care about them, and then they trust you. If they trust you, then they'll come up with better ideas, they'll come up with better things, they'll they'll go out of their way to help the organization because they wanna they want to help you.

Manya Chylinski: 14:50

Right. In my own working life, I've had experience both in organizations where I trusted and felt that I was also trusted, and in organizations where I couldn't trust leadership. And it was so much easier to be a contributor in the environment where I was trusted and I knew that people cared. And it doesn't mean spending half the day talking about what I did over the weekend, but it does mean that when something was going on, people noticed and checked in. And that made such a difference.

Nate Amidon: 15:22

Yeah. We work in the software development space around um agile practices and and really trying to build, you know, high-performing teams. And one of the things we talk about a lot is psychological safety and the idea that people need to feel safe saying something that might be wrong or might even be stupid. And it's and that can be a really hard thing to actually build inside of a team. But it's so, so important. It's so important to give everybody that confidence that they can speak, they if they have an idea or they see something, they should say something and they should be feel like they're part of the team to come up with the solution.

Manya Chylinski: 16:04

Right. And I always think of it as anybody can say something about any part of the project, even if it's not necessarily your purview. But if you see something wrong or confusing that I want you to say something. Have you yourself experienced an environment where maybe your employees didn't feel safe or didn't feel that you were trusting them?

Nate Amidon: 16:27

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, this is the type of how to build that that doesn't just happen. And that's where it goes back to like kind of the leadership training and the mentorship, but it's at some level you have to fail in this to know how to do it.

Manya Chylinski: 16:43

Yes.

Nate Amidon: 16:44

I mean, I fail all the time at this type of thing. I I actually have a I remember once I was flying in a formation. So C17 is a huge airplane, and sometimes we fly in formation, so there's multiple huge airplanes together.

Manya Chylinski: 16:59

And I'm scared already, and I know that you're safe, so continue on.

Nate Amidon: 17:04

And then we'll do uh air refueling with another other huge airplanes, and so there could be moments where there's six airline-size aircraft all within a couple of miles of each other, um, flying really close. And so, how you coordinate and move your planes around to stay in formation and to get gas is is really important. So I was flying with a new co-pilot, and he was excited about something on the plane that he found out or knew and and told me about it. And I I had been flying for a long time at that point, and so I mean, I kind of just roasted him in a very patronizing way. And what I didn't realize is at the time I basically shut him down. Okay, and so um, while I was flying after in this formation and this kind of exercise, I I was supposed to turn uh to the left, and I ended up turning to the right. Now that's not bad. Yeah, and so that puts you in a dangerous position where you could potentially hit another plane. And in people make mistakes, and so as I was going, I was like, Oh, something feels off. I caught it, and I went back the other direction. And I looked over to the co-pilot and said, Hey, did you know I turned in the wrong direction? And he said, He's like, Yeah, but I wasn't gonna say anything. I mean, so that it just shows like how powerful that can be to like allow a potentially dangerous situation to occur just because he's mad that I made fun of him.

Manya Chylinski: 18:42

Right. And he didn't feel safe telling you, yes.

Nate Amidon: 18:46

And so the I at that at that point it really hit that like look, this is super valuable. Now think about that on like a software development team. So you have uh an engineer who gets kind of yelled at by his manager or something, or you know, harassed or whatever, it doesn't feel safe or supported. And he or she might see a huge issue that could cause the whole system to go down, and they may just say, fine, let it go.

Manya Chylinski: 19:16

Right.

Nate Amidon: 19:17

Not my problem, not my problem. Or, you know, I know that's here, but they're not gonna support me, so I'm not gonna raise it and they can figure it out themselves. And that can derail projects, that can this type of thing can be if you're on the wrong side of this as a culture versus the right side of it, that's really the difference between high-performing teams and dysfunctional teams.

Manya Chylinski: 19:42

Right. Well, thank you for sharing that example. I think we can all understand the level of trust that was going on there. And it was just so upsetting to hear that he knew and didn't say anything. And I can so see that. Wow. Wow.

Nate Amidon: 20:00

Yeah, I mean, and there's there's been a lot of aviation examples where the hierarchy of I'm the captain of the flight and no one else says anything. That is that that's a it's a very powerful feeling that shouldn't be ignored by any organization.

Manya Chylinski: 20:16

Right. Well, and I think that's an example that so many of us can just understand, even if we're not pilots and we don't understand, we can see the the gravity of the decision and and the need to be trusting and open and feeling that you can you can share. So most of us are not in that position. So we're just in regular organizations on the ground. But what is the biggest risk for organizations if we don't build that trust and that psychological safety?

Nate Amidon: 20:49

I think it's it's kind of like what I said earlier. I think you'll see if you have a low trust organization and you treat you treat your employees like commodities, let's say, that aren't, you know, that are just transactional, then those people aren't going to go out of their way to take care of you or the organization. I mean, you hear this a lot in customer service-facing type businesses where it's it's like, well, you should take care of your employees because they're the ones taking care of your customers. I mean, it's the same thing, it's a more hidden thing, and especially in the software domain that I'm in, because again, you can't see the widgets, you can't see the things, things just happen to be delayed because of you know, whatever reason. But I think that's a that can be a symptom of just a low trust organization. And so, like the and I guess the other thing to I I like to bring up a lot is like those micro decisions become macro become macro results. And so even if it's just that that one time that that um an engineer says something that happens to fix the one thing that's just it's like a total random neuron firing type of event, right?

unknown: 22:08

Right.

Nate Amidon: 22:08

Right, those things though are they can be the difference between a huge like a catastrophic bug being released in production or not.

Manya Chylinski: 22:17

You said a word I think is so important, commodities. And I think there are still some organizations that the humans who work there are, for better or for worse, thought of as commodities versus humans with messy lives and who need to trust and feel safe.

Nate Amidon: 22:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I get that you're in a business environment and there's costs and you know you have to make I I understand that the private sector organizations are there for a reason, right? But I think the more that as we get more technical, especially with the use of AI and and rolling out, you know, agents that can help automate a lot of the work that maybe people were doing in the past, uh, we still have to remember that at the core we're a we're people organization. And the care and feeding of your people is gonna be is gonna be the best investment you can make for your business. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 23:18

Absolutely. Well, that's a perfect way to end this. Other than I would love to for you to please share a little bit more about your work and what you do and how um people can reach you.

Nate Amidon: 23:32

Yeah. So my company's called Form 100 Consulting. Uh, we're really experts in the process of software development. So we aren't software engineers, we're we're experts in the stuff that surrounds it. So, how do the teams work together, communicate? Um, how do requirements get from an idea into something that engineers can work on? And then how do we drive alignment in the organization so leaders have the right information to make the right decisions? Um, and so a lot of what we're we've been talking about kind of manifests in a lack of trust that can turn into a downward spiral where there's not clarity on what the engineering side is doing. And so then leaders are making different decisions, and and so driving alignment and clarity is so important in any organization, but especially the more technical you are. And then using AI automation, building helping clients build a strategy around AI that isn't really uh uh isn't built to replace people, but to enhance and to make our lives better. So, you know, go to pilot analogy would be like uh having autopilot on, right? It that's an automation that's an AI agent in a way that will fly straight and level for me so I can think about other things and making sure I turn in the right direction.

Manya Chylinski: 24:56

For example, brand for example.

Nate Amidon: 24:58

Yeah. Uh yeah, and people can reach me uh on LinkedIn is usually the easiest way.

Manya Chylinski: 25:03

Okay, excellent. Well, I'll include a link to your profile in the show notes. Um, Nate, thank you so much. This was such a great conversation. I really appreciate your sharing your insights with us.

Nate Amidon: 25:13

Absolutely, mine. Really appreciate you having me.

Manya Chylinski: 25:16

And thank you to our listeners for checking out this episode, and we will see you next time.