Your story of the "rogue captain" rings true for many of us in airline
training. Your one statement that throws us all into a conundrum is, "but
sufficiently smart to say and do the right things when training hurdles are
created for him." What you are saying is that lectures, guided discussions,
and counseling sessions may appear to be fruitful, but in fact, will
probably be a waste of time.
I'm not convinced that anything would work with this person, but I'd try a
"facilitated LOFT." It probably requires a special LOFT, customized to
bring out the dynamics of this captain. Granted, this is an expensive,
time-consuming endeavor, but the product may be saved for other training
ventures. In fact, a series of mini-LOFTs might even be better, because
they would allow you to tackle the problem from different directions. I do
not support "rigged" training, particularly in LOFT, but this case may
justify it. The captain could be teamed with an FO who is privately briefed
to behave in a certain way - to bring out the captain's Airmanship and
Judgement Skills. This FO must be a good "actor," capable of maintaining
character so that the captain's skills are challenged beyond his comfort
zone. I suspect you'd begin to see some of the conflict resolution, flight
deck management and teamwork issues that may be the root-cause of his
problems.
If LOFT training was developed for this captain, rigged or not, three items
are important:
1. The LOFT cannot be contrived; it must be challenging, but realistic.
2. The LOFT must be videotaped so that there is concrete evidence of
behavior and performance.
3. The facilitator must be a "pro" in two ways:
* a) he/she must be someone that the captain truly respects,
* b) he/she must be a skilled facilitator - able to make the feedback
session truly reflective; the captain must be challenged to address the
behavior anomalies that occur.
This is not an easy problem - probably one of the toughest challenges for
CRM trainers. But we do need to learn how to handle these folks. I suspect
every airline has a few of them and every airline has complex industrial
legislation or union issues that prevent termination. Kris, thanks for
giving us this important challenge. It's one thing to castigate the rogues
or try to figure how they got so deeply imbedded into our systems. It's
more useful to explore ways to restrain them and to reduce their impact,
while we are forced to keep them on the flying rosters.
Cheers, Guy
Ypsilon Associates
Customized Airline Training Programs
Guy M. Smith, Ed.D.
Managing Director
9370 207th Street West
Lakeville, MN 55044-5999
(612) 985-5853 (Office)
ypsilon_at_concentric.net