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MAN: Teamwork. What is it?
It's people with matching skills
working toward and achieving a common purpose and goal.
And it can have a major impact on risk and safety.
So it's critical in aviation,
and it occurs when every team member on the ground and in the air
performs and contributes in the best way possible
to achieve a safe and successful outcome.
A good leader recognises team members have different strengths and limitations,
but ensures through communication, programs and culture
that the individuals are unified to work together
in a coordinated manner to achieve a desired result.
LOUISE KIRKWOOD: The need to get people to work together as a team is crucial.
TREVOR WRIGHT: It's like a motor. If you take one part out of a motor, it won't go.
It's black-and-white. It just will not work.
And it's the same with a team.
PETER GASH: The world is so full of examples of teamwork.
Referring to the cave example with those Wild Boars -
that was not a one-man operation to get those people out. It was teamwork.
De Crespigny with the A380 -
that was teamwork that got those people back safely.
Sully in the Hudson River - that was teamwork, you know?
Yes, the media and we as humans always like to hold up a hero and say,
"Wow, this guy or this person was the hero that made this happen."
That's... I guess that's just how we've evolved as human beings.
But deep down inside, we know that it was teamwork that made it happen.
We all tend to be a little bit selfish
and we'll all tend to want to say, "I did this. I'm very proud of what I did,"
but, hey, we wouldn't be here without the help of so many other people,
and I clearly recognise that.
And it makes a lot of difference when people realise that they're a part of a team.
- One profession that exemplifies teamwork is air traffic control.
They're an essential link in the chain in keeping aviation safe,
both on the ground and in the air.
PETER JAMES: Teamwork is important,
and teamwork comes from understanding one another's jobs.
All the staff in the tower here, after they've been here a few years,
can do all of those roles,
and we understand each other's jobs.
ROGER CHAMBERS: Coordination is a really important factor with air traffic control,
whether it's coordination between individuals in the tower cab,
between the tower and the aircraft,
the tower and ground staff that are moving on the aerodrome,
or with the terminal control unit and the en-route sectors.
So that is really encouraged
through this process of assessing the contextual behaviours,
which helps identify how they're working within that team environment.
JOHL BROWN: Everyone is very friendly with each other.
There's always a good mood upstairs as well,
so that kind of helps with the team culture.
DAN PHILLIPS: Most of what we do here at Bankstown is virtual.
We are trained not to use the radar.
We look out the window, we sight aircraft,
and we space them apart accordingly, just looking out the window.
Binoculars are just another one of the many tools that we have upstairs,
so back to the teamwork again,
other people in the cab help you sight aircraft if required as well,
like our coordinator, he is in the middle,
helps the aerodrome controllers with sighting aircraft
and bringing them in safely.
We all have each other's backs.
So if you hear someone miss a readback,
you have a responsibility to say,
"Hey, this happened. Just double check it with the pilot."
So back to that teamwork aspect again,
we're all looking after each other's backs.
TREVOR WRIGHT: We are a very, very quirky little business out here,
from the point of view that the business actually is in a remote area
and everyone has to live in this area.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
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Because you need to be able to work out here in a group environment,
it's just important.
If you take away the group environment, the whole rest of the structure will collapse.
MATT HARNETTY: You've got to spend all day together,
you eat together, you live in the same house,
so you really need a really good team sort of environment and team spirit
to be able to live and work out here, yeah, for sure.
- Yeah, we're really lucky. We've got a brilliant team of guys,
and everyone's good at checking in, good at working together.
- When they arrive, we empower them to be part of the team.
They have group tasks and they've got to learn how to do it.
So not only are we teaching them to be commercial pilots,
we're also teaching them some basic life skills as well,
how to actually participate in a small community
and the running of a small community,
and how to help other people that are in the community as well.
- Everyone's friends, so I think everyone's so approachable
that if anyone does have something that they may be a little bit unsure about,
everyone feels very comfortable to kind of go to someone and to ask them a question.
Everyone's very willing to help each other, and I think that's a huge part of it.
So I think for everyone to leave their egos at the door
is pretty rare in the world of aviation,
so, yeah, we're very lucky out here.
TIM FRANKEL: First of all, we roster our teams together consistently,
so although our teams do change around subtly,
you get crewed with people on a frequent basis.
So you end up establishing a rapport,
forming relationships with your own colleagues,
and the same is true of the medical staff.
So with fairly small groups, you're always working with the same people,
so that naturally fosters a very strong working relationship within the teams.
And then we translate that across into our training as well.
So we operate together and we train together,
and that just naturally builds a strong team environment.
MARK DELANY: One of my sayings is,
"You've got to go and sit in the dust with your people."
So I spend a lot of time on the road, visiting.
So I stay engaged with my people. They all know who I am.
And they should know who I am, and they can ring me anytime.
GRAHAM EDKINS: If we look at the evidence around high-performing teams,
where we're talking about military teams in warfare situations,
emergency service personnel, like ambulance, fire emergency services,
what we do find from a lot of work in this area
that what's really important in teamwork
is having clear standard operational procedures.
Everybody knows what they've got to do. Everybody knows their role.
Having a defined leader is very important
so that there's no confusion as to who is in control.
TODD MICKLESON: It's about getting that right standard right from the start,
the right level of discipline,
building the team, encouraging input, and allowing people to do their jobs.
Don't micromanage.
You know, the more you micromanage people, as we know,
the more you're told to do something, the less likely you are to do it anyway.
So really building that rapport with the crew, that goes right through the organisation.
Clearly defined procedures, correct phraseology
and standard challenge and response checklists and phrases
are very important for building that teamwork as well.
RICK SELLERS: Even little things,
like giving the pilot in command a simple comment at the end of a brief
along the lines of,
"OK, look, we can all make mistakes, you know,
"if you see anything you're unsure of, you're not happy about,
"I want anyone in the crew, just speak up and let me know."
You know, we're in this together, we're a team,
we've put those forward as ways for a pilot to empower people,
particularly if they're new to the organisation,
to feel comfortable to speak up.
- We talk about a cockpit authority gradient,
it's fairly well known these days.
You don't want to have that too steep where it's a very authoritarian,
"I'm the captain, you're the first officer, you do what I say."
You don't want to have it too flat where it's, "Yeah, g'day, mate. You do it today.
"Do it your way, I don't mind, I'm just the captain sitting here today."
So there's a happy medium there,
so that's why we talk about an appropriate cockpit authority gradient.
There has to be a certain amount of authority and hierarchy
for that respect of authority to be within that organisation,
without making it too authoritarian,
and without making it too friendly or chummy, if you like.
BEN COOK: It's important to get time where required to get people together
to understand how they can work more effectively and efficiently.
As soon as you start getting a breakdown across the team,
then no surprises, your levels of trust will start to go down,
communication will be ineffective.
Most of the time the challenges is,
people tend to look at the world from different perspectives
with different personality traits.
Some people are abrupt, some people are kind,
there's a nice, healthy mix out there.
Most of the time, if you get people to actually genuinely understand each other,
the bigger challenge and particularly for males within our system
is that we've got to get them to have the real conversations.
If you looked at Robert,
he had two opportunities in airtime to actually put his hand up and to say,
you know, "Things actually aren't quite right at the moment.
"I haven't had enough sleep. I'm not where I need to be, performance-wise."
But he chose not to do that.
We kind of got a response that was, "No, I'm OK, I'm OK."
And the same with Wilko a couple of times.
The important thing with teamwork
is to get to a point where people feel comfortable with each other
to be able to talk about the important things going on in their lives,
and that is the critical bits,
because they're the human factors that are gonna make the fundamental difference
as to why things are not going as well as they could be.
Getting out of the workplace and doing something,
like, we've done a lot of adventure activities,
so we deliberately want to put people under high levels of stress.
The idea is twofold -
you want to start to let people work together
under relationships where they do have to rely on each other
and they have to grow a high-trust relationship to look after each other.
More importantly, what I tend to find on days like that, it's what happens after hours.
So it's being able to get into an environment where you're out of the workplace,
you're a little bit more relaxed,
you build up a trust relationship and a working relationship with people,
you get to know a little bit more about them on a personal level
rather than a professional level.
And that tends to engender different relationships
that build higher-performing teams.
And you see it all the time -
anytime you invest some time to take people off site
and do those type of bonding activities,
you do tend to find that the outcome is better relationships,
enhanced communication,
in many respects, a better understanding on a personal level of where people are at.
We've seen people manage significant time pressure,
high stressors, family issues,
and still deliver consistently high performance
because they've got good self-awareness,
they're on top of those various human factors that are impacting their lives
both professionally and personally,
they're talking to people about it, they're getting the support they need
and they're still able then to manage their professional life
and deliver the high standards required from our industry.
LOUISE KIRKWOOD: We also have, I suppose, another bit of a control
if we haven't managed to get everybody in that environment,
then we try to engage that teamwork through things like briefings or through sign-ons.
Psychologically, we know that if somebody has met somebody, flown together,
it makes it easier to bond as a team, versus two people who have never ever met.
If workload is so high or the turnaround time is short,
if the pilot has been able to come in
and at least do a PA to the crew, said their name, hello,
that helps a little bit more than a pilot and a cabin crew
that haven't even spoken or worked together.
So we build that in as a bit of a cultural way to say,
"Look, try to do what you can to bond as a crew."
- I remember at a CRM course, having it compared to a soccer team once.
That here we are putting a crew together to go and fly an aeroplane.
Imagine if you had a soccer team that nobody had ever met anybody before.
We just threw a few people in different positions,
didn't communicate what you were actually expected to do,
who we were playing today or how we were gonna play.
How do you think they would perform on the field?
You know, probably not very well.
So if we're building teamwork, it's about having defined roles, defined positions,
building up that communication style, and obviously practising.
Now, that practise comes in not just with that same crew,
but how you do your role in your daily flying,
your checks, your simulator exercises, if that's what you do.
Doing it the same way so that we increase that level of standardisation
and discipline and expectation for everybody,
you know, when you're flying with people you haven't flown with before.