How to improve non-technical skills?

[Cpt_Schmerzfrei]

Dear all,

once again, I am looking for good reference material, e.g. articles and books. This time, I am trying to find something about how to improve/help others to improve non-technical skills.

Although a lot has been written about how to assess NTS, I couldn't find anything about how to improve them. Yes, it should be done in LOFT debriefings and CRM classes, but how? From my humble perspective it appears that all too often, instructors only rate NTS, but do not provide feedback or guidance how to improve.

As always, any pointers towards good literature, but also thoughts about the topic are welcome :ok:

[mundaka]

From my humble perspective it appears that all too often, instructors only rate NTS, but do not provide feedback or guidance how to improve.


HOW DO YOUR INSTRUCTORS RATE NTS? Are they using behavioral markers?
Are they facilitating the debriefing? Are you asked questions in regards to observed behaviors the crew has had during the sortie?
If they are, then you are already getting the feedback.
I find one of the best ways to improve NTS is to become a better listener and a good observer.
A better Listener so you can hear what your colleague is telling or trying to tell you at all times, and a better observer so you can "HEAR" what the Hardware is Telling you.
During my training and checking (BD700 TRI/TRE) I start to notice decay in the way we communicate with each other when something goes wrong or a challenging situation arises. Ex( QRH procedures misinterpreted, not properly confirmed or read wrongly) The tendency is NOT to LISTEN and try to do things on our own. We tend to STOP functioning as a crew and the words/enquiries spoken are not necessarily clearly understood. These accepted without being properly challenged, as the message is neither LOUD nor CLEAR.
I see pilots running out of spare capacity dealing with the challenges given.
Sometimes it is the lack of familiarity with something as simple as the switches and buttons in the cockpit (YES, those we never touch!) that are cause to the problem. Are you sure this is the Cross Bleed XXX? ( Many Cross-something designations onboard, ex. Bleed, A/Ice, Fuel, etc)

In the Hardware side of things, we need to become more conscious of the fact that the aircraft, the FMS, the Flight Mode Anunciator (FMA) is communicating with us. It would help us if we acknowledge that verbally. Many are the times where a MODE change happens when the crew is unaware of it. They are simply not observing the changes nor what the FMA, FMS, AIRCRAFT, is telling them and this ensues in a lack of Situational Awareness that if left unattended can develop into something worse.
The only way to train and correct this in by ensuring changes in the FMA , FMS, AIRCRAFT are CALL OUT aloud. This should be part of a company SOP that only the company culture can address.

Good communication is the basics for Situational Awareness, Decision Making, Cooperation, Leadership & Managerial Skills to improve. Sometimes changing a few details produces a huge impact in how we behave in the rest of NTS categories.


Depending the issues at hand, there are different ways to approach them.
I would start by properly defining and ensuring both Instructor and Crew understand what all this NTS jargon is about. A common language will help sort out ways to improve NTS. Sometimes an extra 45 minutes of briefing NTS and clarifying expectations is all that is required to set the tone for success.

[Sciolistes]

All good stuff Julio,
I other words, slow it down and be deliberately be methodical during a non-normal.

The real NTM skill, is calming or just slowing the other pilot down. This is easiest when you know how to determine relative risk, prioritise activities and are confident with procedures, confident enough to know when not to follow the procedure.
The only way to train and correct this in by ensuring changes in the FMA , FMS, AIRCRAFT are CALL OUT aloud. This should be part of a company SOP that only the company culture can address.
I often think it is better to verbalise what you want to happen rather than just relaying FMA changes. For example, if the PF silently pressed CMD during say a busy GA, but there is a probem and it doesn't engage, then it is likely that neither will notice that nobody is flying the aeroplane, at least for a while. Announcing autopilot, alerts the PM as to the intentions of the PF. If the CMD FMA does not appear it is much more likely that somebody will notice, but then subsequently verbalising the expected FMA changes is pointless.

On the other hand, verbalising an unexpected or unprecipitated FMA change is CRM gold.

[Cpt_Schmerzfrei]

Here's something Prof. Sidney Dekker wrote in the latest edition of Hindsight:

The focus on making the training environment as photorealistic as possible has a few important consequences. One is that, very easily, the focus of safety training glides back to technical skills. To flying the aircraft, programming the Flight Management Computer, answering the radio call, finding the right display page, turning to the correct non-normal checklist
in the manual. The recurrent training exercises that I (and all airline pilots) have to do are breathless exercises in technical credentialism: show that you can handle the airplane when it all but breaks apart in your hands. The sessions are so full of technical problems and issues that they are like a sausage: stuffed full of all kinds of ingredients without much regard to placement or authenticity. The debriefings afterwards, naturally, can hardly do justice to the social and coordinative nature of the work that had to be done in the cockpit to survive the various technical failures and problems. “You might have spoken up a bit more here or there,” might be the encouragement afterward, for example. But it was pretty superfluous. In hindsight, it was never hard to come to such a generic conclusion yourself.

[Pull what]

I other words, slow it down and be deliberately be methodical during a non-normal.

Even better why not always operate like that-?

[Pull what]

Prof. Sidney Dekker, an example of an academic who has forgotten how to articulate easliy understood English.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Prof. Sidney Dekker, an example of an academic who has forgotten how to articulate easliy understood English.

Working widely with academics, I could find you plenty of those - along with a smaller number who never knew how to write simple English in the first place.

To be fair, many of the best professors are fantastic at communicating with anybody of any level, but a proportion of the readers and senior lecturers, and a few of the more mediocre professors aren't.

G