Well Tee Emm, welcome to the club.
That's two of us who have had a "whatever" when suggesting that perhaps a more introspective approach might be in order. Normally a response I get from those champions of good manners and management, my teenage children.
There is no doubt that "CRM" in all it's manifestations will never, nor is it intended to, homogenize the enormous variety of personalities and character traits that make up any given work force. The purpose is to provide an improved level of awareness and self awareness of how aspects of those traits may impact on flight safety. This is not only a factor when it comes to differences, but also as much so when two or more individuals share very similar traits.
Understanding other people and your own interaction with their personality traits and character can often be a very difficult and time consuming exercise. Thinking about my teenage children again, I would even venture so far as to say, impossible on occaissions.
As a Captain, I almost exclusively share a workspace the size of a small cloakroom, with First Officers. In that aspect of my professional environment they are the people I have the most professional interaction with. First officers, in much the same way, have most of their day to day interaction with Captains. I regularly hear stories of Captains who have irritated, amused, upset, impressed, bored, or generally been cause for comment. I don't doubt that to other Captains I have been the subject of similiar discussions.
This is just the way of the world. It is what happens in many walks of life and occupations, and isn't in itself a particular cause for concern.
Ghengis, it may surprise you to hear, that the low time integrated course cadets, are in fact some of the least problematic people in this respect. I fly with a lot, and have done consistently for the last 15 years. I have always maintained (and still do) that what these pilots lack in experience they more than make up for in their understanding and adaption to what we would term "CRM" techniques. Unlike those of us brought up in an era of "assertiveness = command" these pilots as part of their integrated training, grow up with the ingrained concepts of "CRM" awareness and self awareness. They tend to have a much more defined awareness of their limitations, and they absorb information like a sponge.
I find as I get older that "difficult co-pilots" are a very rare commodity. These days I put into that category people who persistently turn up late, scruffy, or fail to put in what I consider the requisite attitude and application needed to complete a task. When I was a new captain in my twenties, "difficult co-pilots" may have been older first officers who had been long term pass-overs for promotion, or new hire military pilots with a bit of underlying resentment at adopting a new found junior rank. Even then such instances were very rare, and it was still as much of a challenge for me to understand and adapt to their sensitivities, as it was for them to accept the reality.
Without doubt it is much harder for a First Officer, who is usually on a much steeper learning curve, to have to adapt to perhaps a hundred different Captains, who "CRM" and "SOP's" notwithstanding, will still all have their own foibles and differences. It amazes me how so many F/O's do this so well. Nevertheless, the Captain brings his own experience to the ingredient mix, and is him/herself promoted on the basis of experience and ability as well as being subject to the normal ongoing performance criteria.
In these days of OQAR's and safety channels, it is much easier for an individual to report flagrant breaches of safety, whoever they are, and (natural reluctance notwithstanding) whatever their rank.
I have said it before in another thread running on this forum, but I cannot understand why such things as a "Captain wanting to eat his meal in courses" causes so much angst to the author of that thread. It isn't a safety issue, it might be a foible, but it does raise the question of introspection, and perhaps something of an underlying issue here?