We often talk about the root cause of an incident, but what about the root cause of safety? What is the essence, the fount, the core, the foundation of safety itself?
Answer – our character.
The virtues of a pilot
‘Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.’ – Martin Luther King Jr.
Consider how we got to where we are professionally. If we’re a successful pilot, engineer, controller or any other aviation professional, how did that come about? The answer is we had to study, learn and practice – we had to persevere. Then, as a part of our vocational development, as we’ve learnt and grown, we’ve had to accept critique (hopefully constructive), which means we’ve had to practice humility.
Then, when we’ve become a vocational expert and we’ve seen our juniors being stretched, and perhaps struggling at times on their own journey, we’ve shown compassion (or maybe could have?). At the same time, with rules, policies and procedures aplenty, we’ve employed personal integrity as we’ve sought to comply with those many rules, policies and procedures.
Then, for almost every operation that has aviation in its name, we’ve prepared and planned – we’ve been prudent. At other times, perhaps more ‘political’ times, we’ve courageously spoken up.
Perseverance, humility, compassion, integrity, prudence and courage – not words we’ll find in our flight manual. But when we reflect on our own professional maturity, it becomes profoundly obvious that without these character strengths and elements of humanity in our human factors, we would not be where we are now, let alone safely so.
Character formation is 3 steps forward and 2.9 steps backwards.
Why things go right
‘If we are to make progress, we need to reconsider the nature of safety.’ – James Reason
Without our character strengths, then our best technology, governance and systems are branches and leaves without roots. Which is why it’s such a problem when our modern instincts drive us to incessantly systematise, technologise and bureaucratise aviation safety – tending the branches and leaves – but overlooking our humanity and our character.
Worse, when we do talk about the human in human factors, we talk about accident after accident, error after error and bias after bias. Thus, we learn, albeit inadvertently, our humanity is an accident looking for a place to happen.
But if our humanity is so stricken by various biases, partialities, psychoses and neuroses, it’s a wonder we even manage to make it past breakfast. Why was the international air transport non-accident rate in 2023 an astounding 99.99998% (The converse statistic of an accident rate of 5 in 30 million movements). This is inspiring.
In the post-COVID-19 resurgence of aviation, with all the accompanying safety challenges, 99.99998% of flights safely took off and landed without any of those biases, partialities, psychoses and neuroses triggering a major incident.
Of course, this is not to say systems, technology and governance are unimportant or that we do not need to understand the ‘warts and all’ of our humanity, especially when 5 fatal accidents is 5 too many. But why neglect the ‘all’ – our humanity and our infusing character strengths – which are the very generators of aviation safety?
In any case, hopefully you get my point: with so much focus on our technology, our governance and our systems, or rather on our limitations, flaws and weaknesses, we come
away thinking human factors is just a synonym for human errors.
Which then means, with our humanity a bias rather than a boon, errors rather than excellence – an accident looking for a place to happen. We continually miss the safety point, or we congest and choke that point with ever-more systematising, technologising and bureaucratising.
If character is so essential to flight safety – and to every human endeavour – what can we do to encourage character formation in ourselves and our teams?
Building the self
‘Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.’ – Mahatma Gandhi
This leads to an important question: how do we build our character? More specifically, how do we encourage and nurture the various character strengths that are so essential to safety and societal flourishing? Where do we even start?
Character studies
‘The proper study of mankind, is man.’ – Alexander Pope
Character science was pioneered in 2004 by psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson who were troubled by the fact that while there was a whole manual of human pathologies (The Diagnostics & Statistics Manual of Psychological Disorders), there was no manual categorising traits of human success and flourishing. So commenced a massive, multi-year, multi-cultural research project involving a team of 55 respected scientists drawing upon over 2,500 years of philosophy, virtue ethics, moral education, psychology and theology. Eventually, in what was to be the first of many other peer-reviewed publications, what emerged was a classification system of character strengths and virtues: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification.
Much more could be said about the relevance of 20 years of character science to all things aviation (the ‘further reading’ list below is just the beginning), but for now consider some key take-outs.
Growth and balance
First, the practice of a ‘growth mindset’. Contrary to our instincts, the science shows overwhelmingly that character traits are not fixed – they are ‘developmental’. They can, with a ‘growth mindset’, be practised and improved. Unlike any other known consciousness, our brain’s pre-frontal cortex (PFC) empowers us with a miraculous cognition that is self-aware, self-regulating and self-improving. With our cortex, we get to think about thinking. We get to regulate our emotions. We get to endure short-term pain for long-term gain. We are able to think about our own character right now and what we want it to be in the future. We are not trapped like a twig in the strong currents of our biases. Sure, ‘warts’ exist but, with our cortex, we get to out-think and out-strategise these biases. Then we get to send people to the moon, invent the internet and aviate with a non-accident rate of 99.99998%.
Second, we can practise what character scientists call strength-spotting. This is a simple strategy: pause, reflect and consider why are we acting the way we are and then envisage what character strength (or strengths) we might require. When we pause and reflect deeply, we engage the PFC with its deliberate thinking (the upstairs brain). This contextualises and regulates the more instinctive thinking of the limbic system (the downstairs brain) and its instinctual patterns. Our thinking becomes ‘mind-full’ (rather than ‘mind-less’) as our most advanced cognitive system fully engages.
Want to be really proficient, a master of our craft? What character strength can we mind-fully strength-spot? We’re going to need perseverance (persisting despite difficulties). Want to have great situational awareness? We’re going to need prudence (wise, cautious forethought). Want great judgement? We’re going to need curiosity (devotedness to learning and knowledge). Want those prickly, but ‘good-faith’, EBA negotiations to go smoother? We’re going to need compassion (actionable empathy). Thus, character traits are formative aimpoints – guiding stars if you like –that we may never reach but give us our much-needed direction away from dysfunction. The more we practise, the more these wellness-promoting character strengths become instinctual and more naturally a part of who we are.
Asymmetric dangers
There are challenges to consider. Character formation is 3 steps forward and 2.9 steps backwards, that is, it involves non-linear growth (I am my own case in point!). Patience and compassion is required (for the 2.9 steps backward part) as well as perseverance, courage and humility. This means we will need to avoid segregating, but rather integrate, our character strengths. Our character strengths must operate as a whole, otherwise we will unhealthily experience what we could call ‘character asymmetry’. For example, asymmetrical compassion – a fixation on compassion to the extent of the other character strengths – inhibits courage. To speak up will be to displease someone – maybe even jeopardise our standing with that person – and so we stay silent.
At the same time, asymmetrical courage is just as problematic. We may be so used to ‘telling it how it is’ and ‘calling people out’ that real people with real struggles (struggles that may in fact be at the root of the behaviours we are ‘calling out’) become unintended victims of our ‘courage’. Which then leads to a dysfunction of unhealthy reactions, over-reactions and over-over reactions.
Another challenge is the tendency for our more instinctual character strengths to disproportionate into what we could call ‘over-realised’ or ‘under-realised’ characteristics. This tendency was first recognised by Aristotle who noted that each strength must operate in a kind of healthy middle – away from one unhealthy extreme or the other (the ‘Aristotelian mean’).
Do we like the idea of courage? Be careful (be mind-full). Too much courage becomes over-realised into rashness and we then courageously, but dangerously, rush into a hazard we should have avoided. On the other hand, under-realised courage (too little courage) means we allow fear to control our actions and become risk averse, uncreative and non-innovative.
Maybe we love the idea of compassion. We love showing people we care. Be careful (be
mind-full), because our over-realised compassion (too much compassion) then becomes unhealthy people-pleasing and even not-so subtle sycophancy. On the other hand, under-realised compassion (too little) means we are distant, detached and uncaring.
Much more could be said about the role of character science in a healthy aviation safety culture (and much more is said in the ‘further reading’ list below) but, to conclude for now, if character is so essential to flight safety – and to every human endeavour – what can we do to encourage character formation in ourselves and our teams?
Perhaps one answer is to employ character formation as a powerful risk mitigation strategy in addressing the new requirements of psychosocial risk management. Perhaps another sees the science of character formation becoming an integral part of our wellness and performance programs. Perhaps it’s integrating character science into human factors and human performance programs. Indeed, we can think of safety management systems as developing organisational character. Humanising our systems as much as we have systematised our humanity seems the wise way to go – especially if that empowers the many character strengths that enable the human in human performance. In any case, let’s remember that when we’ve got character, we’re most certainly not accidents looking for a place to happen – we’re safety looking for a place to happen.
Further information
- The VIA Institute of Character at viacharacter.org
- Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004) by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman.
- Character strengths of airline pilots: explaining life and job satisfaction and predicting CRM performance by Littman-Ovadia, H., & Raas-Rothschild, E. (2018). Psychology Journal, 9(8), 2083-2102.
