Have you ever flown on a really, really bad flight? Sudden drops, shakes, and clangs definitely give you a renewed appreciation of Earth when the wheels finally touch the ground, but what do you do while you’re still in the air?
Life comes with more than its fair share of turbulence whether you’re in an airplane or not, and there are three telling behaviors that emerge in response to it. We’ll investigate not only the actions associated with turbulence, but our individual roles in it as well.
IGNORE
What’s the typical response of non-thrill seekers who find themselves on a roller coaster? They close their eyes right?
While that may be fine at an amusement park, closing your eyes during tumultuous circumstances can be one of the worst things you can do. But it’s our most natural response. The possibility of injury or death, whether it be physical or social, can be paralyzing, and in that state, we hope that wishing things away will make everything alright. Here’s what this looks like.
Pilot - as the leader of the vessel, ignoring the turbulence is not limited to but includes continuing at normal speeds even when the environment is requiring adjustments. Refusing to acknowledge or heed the signals and alerts from the people, tools, and atmosphere designed to warn of problems. Not communicating before, during, or after the turbulence what’s going on and why it’s happening to Flight Attendants and Passengers.
Flight Attendant - as the support staff of the leader, ignoring the turbulence can look like delusional optimism, where questions are not being asked to silent leadership, and customer experience is neglected to keep up appearances or just completely checking out.
Passenger - as the customer or guest who’s found themselves in turbulence, ignoring it can involve minimizing or not-verbalizing hazardous activity, accepting whatever happens as out front their control, taking any all face value information as a universal law.
COMPLAIN
The only thing that can make a bad situation worse is a pessimistic complainer that expresses their opinions of impending doom over and over again... exasperating everyone who is doing all they can to control it.
Not to be confused with those raising questions about problems, complainers aren’t sharing any new information. In fact, they are focused on what everyone already knows... the could be. Their acute morale-puncturing imaginations, easily make a short-list of every negative feeling, outcome, and implication of absolute disaster. Good news is met with dedicated cynicism and skepticism undermining the best efforts of leadership and support staff. Here’s what it looks like in each role.
Pilot - a complaining leader is an uninspiring and deflating one who over-communicates problems, often assigning blame to everyone but themselves. For the weak-minded, they create nightmare scenarios that are far worse than actual circumstances, and when situations turn dire, the focus is solely on their own pain and suffering. For the strong-minded, they attack their suggestions for improvement with venom and rigidity, viewing it as an act of betrayal undermining their leadership.
Flight Attendant - complaining staff incites insurrection amongst the team, volunteering unpractical and unhelpful ideas that stem from unrelated personal vendettas against leadership and key members of the team. They join arms with discontent passengers to insight them into joining their complaining ranks, while passive-aggressively sabotaging initiatives to correct the problem.
Passenger - complaining passengers have one goal, to cause a scene. They will become irrationally irate about occurrences that are largely out of the control staff and leadership demanding outrageous accommodations that may even put themselves and other passengers in more danger. They will not rest until valuable manpower and time are spent listening to their personal grievances, even if it is at the expense of others traveling along with them.
PREPARE
The prepared mind is a sound mind, that looks for the best but understands the worst. They are not overly optimistic, nor are they expressing every negative thought that may come into their head aloud.
Preparedness comes from understanding, using prior experience, and best practices to engage with the situation at hand.
Pilot - A prepared pilot knows the options available to them to examine issues, the amount of time needed to fix them (if it can be fixed), and how to execute the best course of action. This includes timely communication to those who feel the most vulnerable, which are the passengers that have entrusted them with their life, time, and or money and staff who will be on the front lines dealing with the growing anxiety of the passengers.
Flight Attendant - a prepared flight attendant, is aware of the climate they are in, and normal causes for turbulence and has responses ready for such occurrences. If they notice that senior leadership is particularly busy putting out a fire, they are ready and willing to support in creating communication for passengers or performing emergency tasks for leadership.
Passenger - a prepared passenger, is a critical thinker that ingests any and all information with a grain of salt. With their knowledge of best practices and previous experience, they will compare those behaviors to that of the staff and leadership stewarding the vessel, acting in the best interest of themselves and others. This may include making staff aware of company errors according to their policy and external conditions that are not being considered by leadership. Most importantly, it is characterized by reviewing safety procedures, so they are familiar with where and how to exit should the situation breakdown and chaos ensue.
At any given time, we all can be pilots, flight attendants, and passengers in life’s turbulent times, but we do get to decide how we will respond.
We certainly hope you choose the prepared route and making yourself aware of who you will likely be on board with is the first step in the process. Safe travels.