The eager beaver pilot
In another thread, Tee Emm posted something that struck a chord with me:
`Working together` does not mean the captain must ask the first officer or second officer his opinion for every tactical decision. It should never be a committee situation. There is no room for a voting democracy in the cockpit much as some crew members would love that.
Since the first mention of CRM (which was originally aimed at curbing arrogance in some captains and a very tiny minority at that - although every captain eventually became tarred the same brush) CRM principles have been either deliberately abused by some subordinate crew members or been genuinely misunderstood.
Tact and good manners has been replaced in some Western cockpits by downright smart-arsing designed to promote one-upmanship where the unstated aim is to impress the captain with eager-beaver way ahead of the aircraft attitude.
This inevitably leads to latent hostility when the captain finds himself pushed into a corner and having to explain every decision he makes to the satisfaction of his first officer. Some say it is a generational thing where teen-agers watching too much TV and laughing as the actors play at kids who steal laughs at the expense of their parents who are seen as `wrinklies`.
This generalised and ill disguised contempt for good manners is part of Western society nowadays and it shows on the flight deck where challenging the captain's every small decision is seen as `cool`.
Well, it is not `cool` at all. This sort of juvenile behaviour in some first officers is unnecessary, irritating and in the worst case flight safety can be compromised.
Of course, dangerously incompetent actions or decisions by the captain must be challenged by the first officer. As second-in-command that is one of his responsibilities. But where a certain type of character challenges for the sake of challenging in order to establish his position in the pecking order, and thus forces the captain on the defensive and accountable to his subordinate for even minor actions or decisions, the time has come for firm action by the captain to stop the rot and quick-time at that.
CRM does not mean open season on captains - although it is going that way; except in some Asian cultures where first officers are culture driven to being `your most obedient servant et al"...
I have been noticing the same thing but I could neither put the behavior pattern into words nor adequately describe the negative CRM impacts of the behavior. Well done Tee Emm. This is NOT a body slam of FOs, Captains could be eager beavers too. I am just very interested in fully fleshing out this behavior pattern because I want to recognize it immediately and have some tools to mitigate the behavior with 'tact and manners'.
I will post any recent eager beaver experiences from now on under this thread and how I handled it. I would like to ask any other PPruners to do the same.
My only new addition to the behavioral description is that the eager beavers seem to gossip a lot about other pilots. I'm not talking about a funny bar story, I'm talking about running another pilot's skills down when he's not there to give his side of the story. As you would expect, the other pilot is a poor fool and the eager beaver saved the day. When I ask: "Did you look the other pilot in the eye and discuss the problem?" They just have a blank look on their face.
I don't have a clinical name for it so eager beaver is as good as any.