What connects a great coffee shop, great parents and excellent Flight Instructors?
Consistency!
We all value consistency and standardisation, don’t we?
- We drop into our favourite coffee shop and expect that our coffee will be to the same standard as the last time.
- We want our children to always respect others and learn to help out.
- We want our flight training organisation to consistently produce excellent pilots.
I love that my coffee shop gets me the same great coffee every time.
We try to be consistent with our kids as they grow – both parents giving the same message to the children so that they are clear about what is acceptable, important and what requires their attention.
We want our pilots under training to become consistent in their performance, understanding, attitudes and skills.
So how do we achieve this?
- All those people “behind the scene” need to be talking together
Great coffee shop owners and barristers talk about the process – how to greet customers, how to progress the order, what temperature do we use, what brand of coffee. Parents must talk about standards, expectations, hopes and desires with each other so they can be consistent as they guide their children. Flight training organisations need to develop a dialogue between the Head of Operations and line staff about what performance criteria actually mean. For example, what are the accepted map reading techniques in “Navigate using accepted map-reading techniques”, NAV4 (e) and the myriad of other Performance Criteria that are taught, monitored, reviewed and assessed each day. Unless we talk, we will never know what the other person expects.
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All those who teach need to do so from a consistent page
We often talk about being “on the same page”. With flight training, that is literally what we must be…on the same page, on the same detailed lesson plan – with enough detail to ensure consistency…and there is so much detail in flight training that we must understand. There is not much value in a Detailed Lesson plan that simply says – Teach “Navigate using accepted map-reading techniques”, and provides no more guidance about what is “accepted” and then how apply that to “navigation”. If we have not done enough talking (item #1 above – for every PC and UPK that we teach), then we will continue to come up with different answers within the same organisation about what is “accepted” – and consistency plummets. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t result in students becoming frustrated and leaving to go to another organisation, or students failing to pass training milestones or their final flight test and our reputation suffering. And even worse, it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t result in some students (somehow) getting through to their licence with poor skills, wrong knowledge or indifferent attitudes and then being involved in an accident. Consistency is critical, and where consistency is lacking, standards plummet and safety is put at risk.
Consistency matters in aviation. Consistency starts with great instructors and managers who “talk”, but it is embedded into the organisation when we have that “conversation” written down, codified and available to all through the Detailed Lesson Plans for every flight training course we conduct. The conversation can now be built around the document and we don’t have to try to remember what we agreed to last time – it is documented and stored for use and for revision as we discover better ways of teaching and building excellent pilots. We call this process standardisation.
Consistent coffee – I’m for that!
Consistent parenting – that brings up great kids!
Consistent training – this creates excellent pilot. And it all starts with talking and using a truly “Detailed” Detailed Syllabus and Detailed Lesson Plan.
What do you think? Can this improve our consistency?