Over Christmas I caught up with an airline pilot friend. We were discussing the issue that Korea Airlines and Japan Airlines used to suffer from – that of younger/junior air crew feeling unable to challenge decisions of the captain and senior pilots. Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book ‘Outliers’ reports that more air crashes occur when the captain is flying the plane, not when the co-pilot is flying. This seems counter-intuitive because the captain has more flying hours and is more experienced. The reason, Gladwell says, is deference. The captain would have no problem challenging the co-pilot when he/she is flying the plane but the opposite is not true.

Gladwell cites Geert Hofstede’s “power distance index”, a concept designed to express the strength of hierarchies in the workplace. The five countries with the strongest hierarchies are Brazil, South Korea, Morocco, Mexico and the Philippines; the least hierarchical are the US, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This index, says Gladwell, very closely matches the ranking of plane crash frequency by country.

He illustrates this with a riveting “black box” recording of a notorious Korean Air crash in 1997, where the anxious first officer could not bring himself to do more than hint: “Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot.” He could have seized the controls, said crash investigators, but deference inhibited him.

My friend has recently experienced this phenomena in a hospital when a junior doctor challenged a consultant’s decision. The junior doctor was given short shrift in front of the patient and visiting relatives. It turned out she was right but it makes you wonder how likely she is to challenge someone more senior in the future. Not being able to freely challenge, in this environment at least, becomes a serious safety issue.

Of course this power/distance equation exists in other sectors too. I take comfort in the fact that Gen Y are less likely to be deferential to authority and more likely to speak up if they believe something is wrong. But of course that is no good if their senior colleagues won’t listen. Or indeed if the more junior person does it in a way that gets peoples’ backs up and comes across as disrespectful.

Add the power/distance occasion to a healthy dose of cross-generational differences and, depending on your industry, at worst you could have serious safety issues, at best a fractious relationship.

I am arguing for serious attention to be paid to developing cross generational teams. For each generation to take a step back and start to understand each other more. To understand their own prejudices about one another. To understand this power/distance issue and its consequences. To learn to listen and communicate effectively. This is great teamwork. And great teamwork does save lives (if you are in the airline industry or NHS) as well as allows amazing work to be done in all sectors!

Sally

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