SHORTS | Learning from Cabin Crew: Working with a New Team Everyday with Alex Chisnell

Every time a flight crew goes on another flight, it's essentially a new team coming together for the first time that needs to gel very quickly to work effectively on the flight. So based on that and your experience of being a crew member, being the flight services manager, what tips can you share that people listening could directly kind of use and apply straight away when they're maybe leading a new team, leading some sort of work group, and they very quickly want to get people to gel and set the right atmosphere. What did you pick up over the years?

Yeah, it's a really good question and I think it comes back to one of your points earlier, Ben, Connection. It was always notable, for example, with the Virgin example again. And I think people can take this in their own workspace of management versus, you know, employees and the different layers of that. When the flight crew, the captain or the first officer would come in and introduce themselves during the briefing, it was noticeable when they did that, because more often than not, back in the day, they wouldn't. The first thing you would see was you'd literally open the cockpit door and just say, you know, hi, guys, I'm Alex. What flight details have you got, by the way? Anybody want a cup of tea? You know, that kind of thing, having that connection, that spending the time to introduce yourself, it's such a basic one, but clearly, in my experience, got ignored many, many times. So I think whether you're a senior manager, taking the time to meet new staff, because as we said, every flight could be completely new staff. So taking the time to introduce yourself, I think goes a long way and especially is going to really stay with you, no matter what your age. I think if you've just joined a company. So I think connection is a really good one. I think setting out the vision as well, getting people to buy into that vision. And that could be as simple as in our scenario of this is the flight plan, this is how long it's going to take, these are the bumps in the journey. It's really, really kind of obvious stuff and people can take it, but in an airline, it's really obvious, like that this is when you're going to get turbulence. And I think the longer somebody might have been in a management role, they're going to know when there could be turbulence coming along in their own business, when somebody's, you know, coming into a new role, certain times of the year, that might be a bit more tricky for the business, etc. So I think, you know, coming out with a, with a, with a flight plan and then you Know, for us, which was really important, I think, because you bear in mind you've got the flight out, then you've got a day or two days together, or not together, as the case might be, and then flying back again. And you could go that whole length of time down route with not seeing that crew again, if you so choose to then have to almost start from scratch on the way home. So for me, what was very important was trying to get everybody together, be that in a. In a social occasion down route that could be, you know, the obvious one is meeting at the bar for a drink, but then equally it could be meeting for breakfast. And I think you can take that yourself in your own work environment. I just saw Frank friend of mine who I interviewed my podcast, George Cruz, former England rugby international and British lion, who's got a wellness company called four five now, and him taking his staff out for a picnic and inviting their partners along. You know, little things like that. And then Christmas, you know, they did something as well that they kind of bonded. So, you know, there are a gazillion different ways you can do that. And again, you know, I've found this out myself over Christmas, you know, I went from fully, you know, know, immersive team there in person before lockdown to then having to completely restructure that and go online. So my team are now, you know, all over the world, but having to bring them together over Christmas and going, okay, what can we do differently? Let's play a game, let's do something. So one of the team put together a Christmas quiz, you know, stuff like that. And you've just got to, I think, take it and use it for your particular example. But I think 100% connection, you know, vision and then camaraderie. Bringing people together is, you know, are vitally important, but can get easily missed.