A friend who used to be a flight attendant commented on the brother-in-law research question today. The conversation reminded her of situations where something would change and a flight crew had something new to accomplish.
She said some attendants-in-charge took a ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ attitude. But when she was in charge, she preferred to say something like ‘Let’s do it this way right now, and see how it works. If not, we can tweak it on the morning flight.’ She also tried to collect feedback in different ways to make sure whoever she was needing co-operation from was on the same page as her. As she put it: ‘You really need to be direct but in a pleasant way.’
There have been some interesting instances in conversational research of ‘experts’ who sound authoritative and ‘experts’ who sound more tentative. The latter seem to collect more feedback. So ironically, if you sound too much like an expert, it may prevent you from receiving the information you need to behave like expert.
How directives are given is an important safety issue on an aeroplane. But more on that another day…
If you have a couple of minutes to spare and haven’t answered the research question yet, it’d be great if you could. And many thanks to those that have!