I'm what you'd call a low-hours pilot, new to commercial flying on a medium twinjet.
As cliched as it sounds, I learn something new every day (having a relatively sparse knowledge-base at the minute!), often from the captain I'm flying with. It's great because there's always a different take on doing the same thing. I lump everything together, pick out the things I think make more sense or those that I've seen work well and slowly come up with my own way of doing things which I think will work.
When I'm PF I like to make the decisions based on this slowly increasing knowledge-base...right up to the point that the captain suggests a different way of doing things. 99.999% of the time the suggestion doesn't have any safety connotations at all - it's simply a suggestion on how to fly the approach, or a recommended wx avoidance path, or s/he bringing a trend I might not have noticed to my attention. Unless something makes an FO uncomfortable (safety-wise) for some reason, I fail to see what benefit there is in trying to assert authority/argue over issues/requests that have NO SAFETY IMPLICATION AT ALL. When it's been appropriate (low workload) I've often asked, if I wasn't sure of the reasoning behind a suggestion/request, for the captain's thought process, interested in his/her take on things and also offered why I was following a certain course of action so the captain (especially if they are a trainer) understands my take. If I spout something out that, on hearing it myself, I realise is bo****ks, I'll happily refer to myself as a muppet and get over it! If it's busy, we can speak in the crew room.
The best captains I've flown with allow for the fact that I'm relatively inexperienced, let me make minor mistakes and don't over-the-top prompt if it's purely a matter of technique rather a question of safety etc. The most vivid memories I have are minor mistakes such as where I've been allowed to burn a few extra kilos of fuel by levelling off, dirty, a little earlier than I really needed to or bringing the speed back a little too early/cautiously, resulting in dragging it in a bit. The best learning tool is doing - I'll be very aware of making a similar mistake again, having seen the result first-hand, and so will hopefully avoid it in the future!
As has been said before on other threads it's sometimes quite tricky as an eff-oh, having to be a bit of a chameleon depending on the captain you're with that day.
To sum up my view of things - I want to be good at my job and enjoy it, I see myself as an apprentice-captain i.e. a future captain in training. It's the captain's aircraft (his/her names on the paperwork and a leader is needed) and it's a two-person operation to fly the aircraft properly and safely. In the vast majority of cases, routine decisions made have no safety implication at all - most of the time I don't think it's worth jeopardising the channels of communication by being unnessarily argumentative/tenacious. This isn't being submissive - it's being rational and appreciating the big picture. No one always gets the balance right.
The story a few posts back about wx avoidance was an eye-opener. I can't see any benefit in approaching the scenario as the FO did. By the sounds, the operation wasn't any safer and all that resulted was a p***ed off skipper, a breakdown of the relaxed relationship (with an obvious and required authority gradient) which seems to work well in the cockpit and a spoilt day out
Early days so I've not come up against any real CRM issues yet but in my (very) short-lived experience of things so far - things seem to run perfectly smoothly and a healthy open channel of communication maintained by a relaxed, friendly cockpit atmosphere and a we're-in-this-together/the-mission-comes first mentality. I think you should always give the other guy time to notice something/correct before mentioning something yourself if it's not time-critical. "Just the before takeoffs then we're set." when the other guy was busy and is about to line up having forgotten them, "We're looking for 180 on the speed." when the other guy has forgotten to bring the speed back on ATC's request, are usually the kind of things I'll spout out. When I get prompts like this I always acknowledge with a "Thanks.". Everyone's happy and there's no aerial bust-up!
Will keep reading this thread with interest,
B&S
P.S. Sweet Jesus - this has turned into an essay - wasn't the intention!