The Power of Attitude

As a student in flying training, attitude was often mentioned in debriefs. Negative or bad attitudes were frowned upon, and good or positive attitudes were commended.

In my current airline we have an excellent Pilot Skills List to use as a debriefing tool or for self analysis, and yet not one of the 36 key skills on the list mentions attitude. Plenty of the elements of an appropriate attitude warrant a mention, but not the word itself. Perhaps, in a desire to drill down into the elements of what constitutes an effective pilot, we have lost sight of such a useful word.

To me, the simplest description of the elements of a high performance task such as flying is that it consists of Knowledge, Skill, and Attitude. For many years the emphasis in training was on knowledge in depth, and skill retention. Attitude, while often mentioned, was self taught to a large extent.

Sadly, the knowledge requirement has now been reduced to 'need to know to operate'. However, the most effective pilots are not content with that level and seek out more in depth knowledge. Others would do well to emulate them.

Similarly, skill levels at the end of conversion training are the minimum required to pass the Skills Test. The effective pilots find ways to regularly practise and improve their skill. Once again, others would do well to emulate them, and not just before the next sim check.

Attitude though is what I want to discuss in this post.

In the context of flying and other high performance tasks, attitude can be described as a combination of understanding and confidence. The understanding part reflects back to the knowledge element - knowledge without understanding leads to 'barrack room lawyers' who can quote all the rules but not understand the content or context. So what I want to concentrate on is the 'confidence' part of attitude.

Most of what follows is derived from the work of Dr Martin Seligman, an American who worked with depressed patients.

Dr Seligman coined the phrase 'Learned Optimism' because he wanted to teach his depressed patients the benefits of a more optimistic outlook. In our context 'Learned Optimism' is attractive because of what it can help us with in both task management and dealing with poor performance. Nevertheless, Dr Seligman does caution against being a total optimist - it does need to be tempered with realism!

First, a quick quiz:

What best predicts success?
    A. IQ
    B. Attitude
    C. Educational attainment
    D. Genetics


Answer: B

So, let's look at attitude to failure or poor performance.

For a pessimist, failure is personal, pervasive, and persistant.

For an optimist though, failure is temporary, is to learn from, is to change because of, and is a step towards success. As an aside, successful salesmen use the last point all the time, they treat each lost sale as a good thing because it puts them one step closer to the next closed deal.

It turns out in studies that attitude predicts success, attitude shapes mood, and attitude is contagious. The issue with having a pessimist in the crew is that they awfulise or catastrophise instead of devoting capacity to solving the problem. By taking it personally, the pessimists links their attitude to the event, but this cannot be true. The attitude causes the emotional response to the event, not the event itself.

Attitude also affects crew performance. The attitude of each crew member will be reflected back in the performance and behaviour of other crew members.

It should also be emphasised that, in an instructional or examining environment, the attitude of the instructor or examiner when setting the scene in the briefing is crucial to getting the best out of the candidates.

So, don't waste mental capacity on worrying about the problem. Accept that it happened, even if you were partly to blame, and get on with fixing or mitigating the resulting mess. Of course, in an ideal world, your knowledge, skill and attitude would have reduced your chance of getting into trouble in the first place, but even the best crews get in trouble, it's then about finding the most effective way out.