The Dirty Dozen: From Poor Teamwork to Poor Safety
This article series sheds light on the 12 most common causes of human error, known as the Dirty Dozen (article 8 of 12).
Aviation is built on collaboration. Every day, pilots, cabin crew, air traffic controllers, and maintenance personnel must work together to ensure safety.
When a team cannot work together – either due to poor communication, conflicting priorities, or simply lack of trust, there is an inherent risk of errors and faulty decision-making.
Teamwork is critical in an industry that relies heavily on a good reputation and spotless safety records. Lack of teamwork will essentially compromise safety.
Read more: Diving into the Dirty Dozen: Limit the Impact and Improve Safety
When Teamwork Fails
Good teamwork brings people with diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives together. Bad teamwork can cause fatality.
When teamwork fails, it is often because the members of the team fail to communicate their ideas, goals, and perspectives to the others in a clear and including manner. If a team must succeed, there must be common understanding and acceptance about the plan of action.
Everyone should be able to answers the following questions:
- Why are we doing this?
- How are we doing this?
There are several ways in which teams can improve their collaboration and communication within the team:
1. Disseminate information clearly, openly, and respectfully to all team members. Even in small teams it is crucial that everybody is kept in the loop.
2. Train as a team, perform as a team. Introduce scenario-based training of CRM and Human Factors to strengthen interpersonal communication, collaboration, decision-making, and problem-solving within the group. Teams that practice these skills during training perform better in real life.
3. Establish an easy to access, easy to use, and non-punitive reporting system where employees can address safety issues or concerns that might affect the teamwork.
4. Build trust within the team by sharing information and working towards a common goal.
Read more: Human Factors in Aviation: The Crucial Role of Training
