Soft Skills Are Key in Crew Resource Management

Because safe aviation on the flight deck means effectively managing all available resources – technical and non-technical, including soft skills such as communication – practicing crew resource management (CRM) at the highest level can be challenging.

“The soft skills side of CRM is often the hardest for pilots to master, said Bob Baron, Ph. D., and president of The Aviation Consulting Group, LLC. “Then, when things go wrong, crews don’t manage the situation in a safe way.”

On the flight deck, the technical skill of flying and the soft, non-technical skill of communicating aren’t so easily separated. Barbara E. Holder, Ph.D., FRAeS, presidential fellow and associate professor, School of Graduate Studies, College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, is leading an FAA-funded research program to investigate how to assess flight crew performance for flight path management and crew resource management.

“In the performance of these tasks, the skills are done in an integrated way,” Holder said. “Making distinctions between the technical and non-technical may be useful for training purposes, but there is no distinction.”

For example, Holder said procedural callouts are considered “technical” communications because their utterances are tied to procedures and maneuvers that are technical in nature. “However, non-technical communications might involve how the crew talks to each other across flight situations,” she said.

“The consequence of it is we have this dichotomy of where we find these technical and non-technical interactions,” Holder said. “We’re interested in how that process works and how to measure and improve it.”

Other non-technical communications may include gestures and speech patterns delivered quickly or slowly, depending on the context and situation. These communication acts may have varying levels of assertiveness, level or tone that implies collaboration or urgency.

Training and Manuals

“Back in the ‘90s, when I started in business aviation, CRM was kind of a new thing. Now it’s pretty much integrated into everything we do,” explained John Tuten, captain at Silver Stream Aviation and former chair of NBAA’s International Operations Committee. “It’s taught and emphasized in pretty much every flight operations manual I’ve ever seen.”

While it’s possible to “bust” a checkride because of poor CRM practices, experts agree that softer skills still don’t receive the level of structured training attention they deserve.

“Receiving good CRM training is still a challenge today,” Baron said. “These soft skills are often tied to a person’s personality. Pilots come out of training with the tools and knowledge to fly the airplane, but in many cases disregard the CRM training because, in their minds, they don’t need it.”

Baron said it’s hard to enforce someone’s use of CRM practices on the flight deck. “One of the biggest violations we see with our LOSA (Line Operations Safety Audit) evaluations is with the sterile cockpit rule. Every professional pilot knows about the rule, but few pilots follow it.”

Another issue facing both operators and their training providers is available time. “Formal training sessions are so compressed today that there’s limited time to cover all the dimensions of all the skill sets that need to be practiced,” said Holder. “You have to pick and choose what training is really important.”

Computer-Based Training

To bolster the “personal side” of their CRM training, many smaller flight departments and Part 135 operators rely on computer-based training (CBT) programs. However, many training experts feel that, while better than nothing, these programs aren’t as effective as they should be.

“I understand that these operators can’t afford to take their pilots off the line, but when you do CBT, you’re just clicking through some slides and then getting a certificate,” Holder explained. “Because there is no interaction with other people in the target operational context, you can’t practice CRM in the ways needed to maintain and improve those skills. Especially in high-stress situations.”

“It’s especially challenging when you’re switching crews all the time,” she added. “Pilots may never get the opportunity to work into a CRM rhythm with each other.”

CRM as SOP

One proven way to ensure that the practices are used to their fullest benefit is to make them part of your operation’s standard operating procedures (SOPs).

“We’ve created our own flight operations manuals with the SOP sections in them,” Tuten said. “Everything is standardized, and everyone knows to follow those procedures, so no matter who you get in the cockpit with, everyone is doing everything the same way.”

To help keep everyone sharp in a constantly evolving environment, Tuten suggests holding regularly scheduled meetings. “We just have regular conversations among our pilots about how things are going and what they are seeing in their operations,” Tuten said. “If there were any unusual situations, we ask the pilots to share their experiences so we can all learn from them.”