Introduction to Crew Resource Management — Page 336, Lesson 556

I want to walk you through a key part of Crew Resource Management — understanding personality as psychological preference. This builds directly on the work of Jung and the American mother-daughter team, Myers and Briggs, who identified four opposite pairs of psychological preference. The whole point of discussing these preferences is to increase your awareness that differences between people on a flight deck are real, and that no preference is right or wrong. Each preference has its own strengths and its own weaknesses, and a weakness can be recognized and combatted. With tolerance, a combination of individuals with very different personality preferences can actually increase team potential. Let's start with the first pair: where we focus our attention. Extraversion — these people prefer to focus on the outer world of people and things. They normally prefer to communicate orally rather than in writing, and they learn through experience. They like variety and action. On the flight deck, they readily communicate orally, which increases good crew situation awareness. But they need to recognize the introvert's requirement for quiet to concentrate and formulate ideas. Introversion — these people prefer to focus on the inner world of ideas and thoughts. They normally prefer to work in quiet surroundings without interruptions. In training, they prefer to think and reflect before acting — reading through notes, consolidating concepts — so thorough preparation is very important for them. On the flight deck, they tend to think before they act. They continually need to recognize the importance of transferring their thoughts and mental model to other crew members by oral communication. Now the second pair: how we acquire information. Sensing — these people readily accept and like to work with individual facts. They are realistic and practical, careful with detail, and like established, structured ways of doing things — for example, Standard Operating Procedures and checklists. On the flight deck, they are good at remembering and working with a large number of individual facts. They like to collect factual information and prefer to work in a structured way. However, they can be expected to oversimplify and could miss the "big picture." Intuitive — these people prefer to go beyond individual facts to find connections, meanings, and overall patterns. They tend to ask "why," look for the overall picture, normally dislike repetition, and see new possibilities and methods. They value imagination and inspiration. On the flight deck, they ask why and look for the big picture, which aids their situational awareness. But they can become overloaded with large quantities of factual information, and they should remember to recognize the sensing types' need for structure. So here's the core takeaway: these are not good or bad traits — they are preferences. Each has strengths and weaknesses. The key to effective Crew Resource Management is recognizing your own preference, understanding the opposite preference in your crewmate, and using tolerance and communication to combine those differences into stronger team performance.