CRM WORKSHOP 31

1 Background

Pilot training programs historically focused almost exclusively on the

technical aspects of flying and on an individual pilot’s performance; they
did not effectively address crew management issues that also are
fundamental to safe flight.

2 Introduction

This briefing note presents guidance in practical terms so that operators

can immediately begin to move forward with their crew resource
management (CRM) training programs. CRM training is designed to
become an integral part of training and operations.

3 Objectives of CRM Training

The objectives of CRM training are:

 To enhance crew and management awareness of human factors

that could cause or exacerbate incidents that affect the safe conduct
of air operations
 To enhance knowledge of human factors and develop CRM skills
and attitudes that, when applied appropriately, could extricate an
aircraft operation from incipient accidents and incidents, whether
perpetrated by technical or human factor failings
 To use CRM knowledge, skills and attitudes to conduct and manage
aircraft operations, and fully integrate these techniques throughout
every facet of the organization’s culture to prevent the onset of
incidents and potential accidents
 To use these skills to integrate commercially efficient aircraft
operations with safety
 To improve the working environment for crews and all those
associated with aircraft operations
Finally, the main goal of CRM is establishing a common “corporate safety
culture” within the company.
4 CRM Training in Practice

CRM training focuses on situational awareness, communication skills,

teamwork, task allocation and decision making within a comprehensive
framework of standard operating procedures (SOPs). Thus, training in
CRM involves communicating basic knowledge of human factors
concepts that relate to aviation and providing the tools necessary to apply
these concepts operationally. It represents a new focus on crew-level (as
opposed to individual-level) aspects of training and operations.

In fact, CRM training should involve all people working in an airline and
should be considered as a long-term development process that
encompasses a varied set of training resources and media. These run
from the traditional and passive to the highly interactive and experiential
such as: self-study, classroom awareness training, modeling, classroom
skills training, continual skills practice in both classroom and simulator,
and practice or coaching during flying operations.

As discussed in the briefing note CRM Schemes, CRM training programs

should be broken into three phases:

 Awareness
 Practice and feedback
 Reinforcement

5 Essential Curriculum Elements

Curriculum elements are divided into two major areas: concepts to be

understood and skills to be acquired. There is a great value in enhancing
"understanding" of certain topics that pertain to the interrelationships
among crewmembers. It is of equal importance, however, to develop
"skills."

5.1 Concepts to be understood

The following list of topics is not complete, nor is it intended to substitute

for the conceptual learning that is an integral part of learning skills.
However, the topics constitute the "language" and awareness that enable
skills to be understood and ultimately used in an operational environment.
These are the topics to understand:
 Common language or glossary of terms
 The concept of synergy — a combined effect that exceeds the sum
of individual effects
 The need for individual commitment to CRM principles
 Guidelines for continued self-improvement (continuation training)
 Individual attitudes and behavior, and how they affect the team effort
 Complacency and its effect on team efforts
 Fitness to fly: the concept that each individual is responsible to arrive
at work "fit to fly" and the ramifications and refinements of this
concept
 The impact of environment, such as company policy and culture, air
traffic control, aircraft type, etc.
 Resources available — identification and use
 Identification and assignment of priorities
 Human components and behavioral characteristics, including
awareness of the human being as a composite of many complex
characteristics that are often not controllable. Each crewmember
must be aware of these characteristics in order to adjust his or her
own actions and behavior
 Interpersonal relationships and their effect on team work — the way
in which crewmembers approach or respond to each other has a
critical effect on team building and team results
 "Team required" versus "individual" tasks — some problems require
a team solution, while others may be solved through individual effort
 Identification of norms — that is, tacitly accepted actions, procedures
and expectations. Whether consistent with or deviant from written
policy, norms exert strong pressures upon individuals to conform
 Pilot judgment. Once all information is available to the pilot-in-
command, the situation may be clear-cut or may require judgment.
These judgment calls are the ones most likely to spark dissent,
produce initial resistance and have a negative effect on the team
 The statutory and regulatory position of the pilot-in-command as
team leader and commander. All decision making must be done by
or funneled through the pilot-in-command
 Ground rules — policies and procedures to be followed during the
course of instruction, as well as subsequent operations. For
example, management support for the program and concepts taught
and for those who attempt to act in accordance with learned
principles, and the absence of punitive action during the course and
afterward in actual flight operations
5.2 CRM skills

From an operational perspective, a skill is an element that is tightly linked

with a specific set of subtasks, closely related to performance and
requires practice to perfect. Proctor and Dutta (1995) provide a good
starting point for an operational definition: “Skill is a goal-directed, well-
organized behavior that is acquired through practice and performed with
economy of effort.” Most CRM skills are complex cognitive skills that
involve problem solving, efficient grouping of information, or use
specialized forms of mental representations. These skills take time to
develop, and they are specific to the aviation domain.

There is agreement among the airlines that CRM skills need to be trained,
but there is little consensus on exactly how those skills are best trained.
Most CRM skills and markers have been trained at the knowledge level
with some actual skill training taking place in line-oriented flight training
(LOFT) sessions and their subsequent debriefings.

Airlines have not clearly understood the value of distinguishing between

knowledge and skill. This distinction is essential because it allows an
airline to train knowledge through presentations and documents while
training skills through practice and feedback. Thus, CRM skills do have a
knowledge component that can be trained in classroom settings, but the
actual skills need to be trained in interactive computer-based training
(CBT) and simulator environments where crewmembers can actually
practice and receive feedback.

6 Skills Taught

There are six major areas to be taught:

6.1 Communication and interpersonal skills

Specific skills associated with good communication practices include such

items as polite assertiveness and participation, active listening and
feedback. In order to improve the communication channel, cultural
influences must be taken into account as well as factors such as rank,
age and crew position, all of which can create barriers to communication
in the cockpit. Polite assertiveness is a skill frequently ignored in
communications training but vital to a healthy cockpit. A pilot-in-command
may be open to communication but temporarily unable to receive and
comprehend. Other crewmembers must be aware of the importance of
the information they hold and have a strong feeling of self-value; a single
hesitant attempt to communicate important data constitutes a failure to
discharge individual responsibility. Pilots-in-command must constantly
strive to emphasize this responsibility in their team-building efforts. The
concept of "legitimate avenue of dissent" is an important vehicle for
"clearing the air" and maintaining lines of communication self-image.

6.2 Situational awareness

Situational awareness refers to one's ability to accurately perceive what is

going on in the cockpit and outside the aircraft. It further extends to the
planning of several solutions for any emergency situation that could occur
in the immediate future. Maintaining a state of awareness of one's
situation is a complex process that is greatly motivated by the
understanding that one's perception of reality sometimes differs from
reality itself. This awareness promotes ongoing questioning, cross-
checking and refinement of one's perception. Constant, conscious
monitoring of the situation is required. Note that the situation referred to
here includes the human environment. The evaluation of oneself and
others for partial or total incapacitation is vital but often overlooked.

6.3 Problem solving, decision making and judgment

These three topics are very broad and interrelate to a great extent with
each other as well as with the other areas. One may consider problem
solving as an overall cycle of events beginning with information input and
ending with pilot judgment in making a final decision. During the phase in
which information is requested and offered, some conflicting points of
view may be represented. Skills in resolving conflict are therefore
especially appropriate at this time. All decisions must come from the pilot-
in-command because the team will fail if command authority is not
maintained. This authority requires the support of all crewmembers. The
immediate post-decision review in flight is likewise a vital concept for
promoting good decision making.
6.4 Leadership and ‘followership’

In this area, there is clear recognition that the command role carries a
special responsibility. For instance, although individual crewmembers
should be actively planning and managing their own workloads with
respect to time, the pilot-in-command is responsible for supervising the
overall management of the flight. This command authority must be
acknowledged at all times. The effectiveness of command authority
cannot be assumed by position alone. The credibility of a leader is built
over time and must be accomplished through conscious effort. Similarly,
every non-command crewmember is responsible for actively contributing
to the team effort, for monitoring changes in the situation and for being
assertive when necessary.

Table 1: Domains for CRM Training

6.5 Stress management

Stress creates a special kind of problem for a crew since its effects are
often subtle and difficult to assess. Although any kind of emergency
situation generates stress, there is also the stress, both physical and
mental, that a crewmember may bring to the situation and that others may
not be able to detect. A crewmember's overall fitness to fly may
nevertheless decline because of fatigue, mental and emotional problems,
etc., to the extent that other crewmembers should consider that individual
as incapacitated. Skills related to stress management refer not only to
one's ability to perceive and accommodate stress in others but primarily
to anticipate, recognize and cope with one's own stress as well. This
would include psychological stresses such as those related to scheduling
and rostering, anxiety over training courses and checks, career and
achievement stresses, interpersonal problems with cabin crewmembers
and/or other flight crewmembers, as well as the home and work interface,
including related domestic problems (family health, children's education,
etc.). It would also include so-called life-event stresses such as those
related to the death of a spouse, divorce or marriage — all of which
represent major life changes.

Several operators are attempting to alleviate stress problems by

encouraging open and frank communication between operational
management and flight crewmembers, and by viewing stress as part of
the "fitness-to-fly" concept. The prerequisite for this is management
understanding of the stress problem. In at least one case, the
understanding required by management personnel was fostered by
having managers and other non-crew personnel attend the CRM training.

6.6 Critique and self-critique

Skills of critique generally refer to the ability to analyze a plan of action

whether future, current or past. Since techniques for accomplishing
critique vary according to the availability of time, resources and
information, there are three basic types of critique:

 Pre-mission analysis and planning

 Ongoing review as part of the in-flight problem-solving process
 Post-mission debriefing
All three are of vital importance but are often overlooked both in
operations and during instruction. Each type has two fundamental
elements — remembering to perform the critique and structuring the
critique itself.

Table 2: Example of a CRM Training Syllabus for Flight Crew

7 Key Points

To be effective, CRM concepts must be permanently integrated into all

aspects of training and operations. While there are various useful
methods in use in CRM training today, certain essentials are universal:

 CRM training is most effective within a training program centered on

clear, comprehensive SOPs.
 CRM training should focus on the functioning of crewmembers as a
team, not as a collection of technically competent individuals.
 CRM training should instruct crewmembers how to behave in ways
that foster crew effectiveness.
 CRM training should provide opportunities for crewmembers to
practice the skills necessary to be effective team leaders and team
members.
 CRM training exercises should include all crewmembers functioning
in the same roles (e.g., captain, first officer, flight engineer, flight
attendants) that they normally perform in flight.
 CRM training should include effective team behaviors during normal,
routine operations.
Good training for routine operations can have a strong positive effect on
how well individuals function during times of high workload or high stress.
During emergency situations, it is highly unlikely — and probably
undesirable — that any crewmember would take the time to reflect upon
his or her CRM training in order to choose the appropriate behavior. But
practice of desirable behaviors during times of low stress increases the
likelihood that emergencies will be handled effectively.