What’s your PDI – II?

Case study – Can high PDI cause plane crashes?

Let us check out the ethnic theory of Plane crashes written by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Outliers wherein he breaks down preconceptions of airplane crashes – often, it is not bad piloting or harsh weather or old flight that causes them.

In aviation industry, the performance is measured by “loss” rate per million departure. To put it in perspective, the United airline’s (USA) loss rate was .27 per million departures which can be considered as a good track record.  The Korean Aviation Industry was once a very poor performance and their loss rate was 4.79 per million departures which was not an acceptable standard at all and it can be considered as a very bad track record. 

Korea turned it around and their current performance is on par with any other country.  How could they have done it?

When Korea did the investigations on their flight crashes, one of the major attributing factor that they found was their “Cultural aspect” which is more of hierarchical and authoritarian. They trained their pilots / co-pilots on how they should communicate in English and assertively rather than using “hierarchy-oriented and mitigated communication approach” in their Korean language.

In fact, this is said to be the common factor for most of the flight crashes.

To give an example, a hypothetical situation was given to a group of captains and first officers by the linguists Ute Fischer and Judith Orasanu and they were asked as to how they would respond. The situation goes like this –

You notice on the weather radar an area of heavy precipitation (in layman terms it’s not suitable to fly) 25 miles ahead. The Pilot is maintaining his present course at Mach .73, even though embedded thunder-storms have been reported in your area and you encounter moderate turbulence.  You want to ensure that your aircraft will not penetrate this area.

Question – What do you say to the pilot.

Ute Fischer and Judith Orasanu had 6 types of persuasion, each one with a different level of mitigation to convince the pilot to change the course.

    

     Command – “ Turn 30 degrees right” – That’s the most direct and explicit way of a making a point imaginable. Zero mitigation.

     Crew obligation statement – I think we need to deviate right now. Notice the use of “we” and the fact that the request is much less specific. That’s a little softer

.       Crew suggestion – “Lets go around the weather.” Implicit in the statement is “ we are in this together.”

     Query – “which direction would you like to deviate?”. That’s even softer than a crew suggestion, because the speaker is conceding that he is not in charge.

     Preference – “ I think it would be wise to turn left or right”

     Hint – “That return at twenty-five miles looks mean.” This is the most mitigated statement of all.

While captains said, they will resort to command (1^st approach given above), the first officers, on the other hand, said they will resort the other types of mitigated communication.

Let us have a look at an example related to flight crash and try to figure out what this cultural factor is and how it can be a contributing factor for flight crashes.

Plane crash – 1 – 1982 Air Florida plane crash that happened right after the 

take off

(Conversation between the Pilot and the co-pilot)

First Officer to the Pilot- Look how the ice is just hanging on the, ah, back, back there, see that?

Then:

First Officer: See all those icicles on the back there and everything?

And then:

First Officer: Boy, there is a, this is a losing battle here on trying to de-ice those things, it gives you a false feeling of security, that’s all that does.

Finally, as they get clearance for take off, the first officer upgrades two notches to a crew suggestion:

First Officer: Let us check those wings tops again, since we’ve been setting here a while.

Captain: Think we get to go here in a minute.

After the take-off

First officer – Larry, we are going down, larry.

Captain. I know it.

Instead of so many attempts to communicate indirectly (mitigated communication) , the First officer should have said that it’s not safe to take off with so much of ice on the aircraft wings.  (Source – The Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell)

Are you a person with high PDI – Some of the indicators (more of based on my observations, not a validated or scientific evidences)

You dislike your team members disagreeing with you.

You expect unquestionable obedience

You don’t like team members who are more confident and assertive than you.

You expect your team members to greet you when you walk into the office.

Open door policy and non-hierarchical or flat culture remains only in paper in your team, not in true spirit.

Managers with high PDI may not necessarily severe someone’s hands. But they do severe motivation, team work at workplace, new thoughts, perspectives and initiatives at work place.  Manager with High PDI is not healthy since the corporates want to nurture a flat and non-hierarchical culture which essentially means a low PDI culture.

So what is your PDI?

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