Crew Cohesion Online Program
Updated: Mar 22, 2021
For an aircraft owner and an airline company, nothing is more important than passengers being very satisfied with their flight experience, having felt safe with a professional and harmonious crew that was able to meet their demands with calm and serenity.
What is beyond the scene?
The crews of the same business jet, or jets belonging to the same owner, often fly on missions together for several days or even weeks to lead passengers where they want, serve them according to their needs whenever ensuring their safety on board. They stay always available waiting for the next possible flight, participating in its organization, ordering the catering and taking care of the plane.
Crew members have to deal with each other, often far from their base and their families what may bring personal concerns. It is also human that habits set in, sometimes also misunderstandings and frustrations that can potentially affect the smooth running of the operation.
If the crews are most of the time well trained and experts in their field as individuals, what about their interpersonal skills? What about the cohesion of the crew over the duration of the mission and beyond when the aircraft owner wants to keep his crew for the long term?
I have seen cases where passengers have reported feeling unease in the atmosphere on board, even when it was of an intangible order. They may have blamed it on poor service, although this was not necessarily the exact cause.
The space is small, interpersonal perceptions naturally exacerbated. This can lead to real headaches for all concerned, costing time, energy and money until the balance is restored.
Regulatory courses lasting half a day a year, notably on CRM (Crew Resource Management) and human factors, are organized by the airlines. They certainly are a first step towards the prevention of errors and accidents and therefore are very useful. On another hand, all crew members from the same operation may not always be present together at the same time. In my opinion, we need to go deeper to bring a lasting transformation aiming at collective intelligence, which is the ultimate stage of maturity of a team and therefore a crew, to reach the best possible experience for the passengers.
As an airline inflight service director, I had to intervene regularly in order to understand the dysfunctions between members of the same crew, sometimes even solicited by the owners of the aircraft directly.
What I realized is that situations that had escalated, often started from almost nothing. Most of the time each crew member was persuaded to act according to his or her utmost professionalism and conscience. To prevent those situations to happen, I have developed a pro-active program to work upstream with your crews over several weeks or months.
Supported by assessments, this program takes place over several video sessions set once a week or twice a month. In this way, wherever the crew members are, they have the opportunity to meet during the sessions, without extra transport costs.
The length of the program is fitted according to the needs pre-defined with the client. It normally lasts over a period of 7-15 sessions of 1.5 - 3 hours on 2–10 months.
First and most important, my program allows participants to understand how they and their colleagues function and how best to manage the interaction. The next step I propose could be to work on the emotional intelligence that each person has developed as a team member, or otherwise to move directly to the cohesion of the team based on the 5 major behaviors that are trust, conflict, commitment, responsibility and results.
All crew members who have followed my program get all the needed tools and insights they can use in order to fully focus on their tasks, in a more mature, respectful and balanced environment. The service rendered is magnified, safety increased, turnover reduced and the customer experience improved.
Anticipation, upstream organization and communication are the keystones of a successful crew and successful flights. The program has started and I still have a few slots available those coming months
And you? When do you start?
