Creating Cohesion Out Of Chaos

When I first started translating the Crew Resource Management skills that flight crews use into other business teams, I thought I was sharing strictly communication skills. I very quickly realised that you can’t address human communication without coming smack bang up against culture, and that together, communication and culture are the grease that allow the cogs of our relationships, structures, team and businesses to turn smoothly. Without them, the going is tough, energy sapping and underproductive.

The reason I’ve been able to adapt Aviation’s CRM skills so successfully outside of the cockpit is that they are not aviation specific skills. They are human specific skills. Whilst our humanness may seem somewhat chaotic, it’s fairly predictable when you choose to study it and focus on elevating it. Whilst the systems and equipment present in any given operation may be predictable, they will always require the human element of operation. Not only that, but the reason that any of us do any of the things we call work is because they somehow serve somebody else somewhere along the line. The human aspect cannot be underestimated, and if we don’t focus on working with it, it will work against us.

All human beings have similar wants and needs. We want honesty, respect, integrity, and trust. These four are intimately linked together. We want to belong to something bigger than ourselves and to matter.

The current state…