Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker, and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi, and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today, I’m very excited to have Aleksandra Kapela with me. She’s an aviation psychologist and human factor specialist. So, Aleksandra, first, as we get started, that’s not a common thing to be an aviation psychologist. So, I’d love to hear a little bit about how you got started, what you do, and the passion you have around this space. Let’s start there.

Sure, absolutely. Thank you very much, first of all, for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and talk about such important topics. In my stories, usually in aviation, the story goes the same way. People, they fall in love with flying first. They become pilots, cabin crew, and engineers, and only later do they start becoming interested in safety, human factors, or psychology. But for me, for me, that was the other way around. I always knew that I wanted to be a psychologist. Long before aviation entered my life, I was fascinated and fell in love with the human brain. So, behavior, decision making, neurology, and especially human potential. Why do people act the way they do, how they perform under pressure, and how the environment can unlock their potential or, let’s say, limit it? That’s why I started the master’s programs in psychology and human resource management. I knew quite early on that I didn’t want to be a clinical psychologist or psychotherapist. I wanted to work with people and organizations in real, complex environments, helping them understand how and why this behavior might emerge and how systems can support them in that.

Aviation came into my life almost by coincidence. It was supposed to be a summer job at the local flight school to try something new. My friend, he was working there at that time. When I stepped into that environment, I fell in love with the industry as well. I think mostly with people at the beginning. But even more, later, I became fascinated by the safety element and safety culture. Sure. In such a critical, safety-critical domain, when a decision is made, they matter every single day. Actually, I assume that psychology and human factors would be fully embedded. I imagine that at every flight school, not to mention the airline. They would have at least one aviation psychologist supported by a team of human factor specialists. But that was a big surprise that it wasn’t the case. Even though aviation, compared with many other safety-critical industries, is usually thought to be really advanced in terms of safety awareness. I quickly realized that there was still quite a big gap between what we know today in modern psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral psychology, and how stress, attention, decision-making, and the human brain actually work, and how systems are designed and managed in the industry.

That’s when I started to look into how you can become properly qualified in this field of aviation psychology. I discovered that it is a really small, highly specialized discipline. Globally, there are only around 100 officially accredited aviation psychologists with a bit larger group of human factor specialists, of course, as let’s say, the entry requirements are a bit less demanding, you don’t need to be a psychologist. Becoming accredited required a lengthy certification journey, but it allowed me to work exactly at this intersection of psychology, safety, and operations. Today, I work in a few, let’s say, complementary roles. I run my own company, My Wingman, which focuses on supporting airlines and flight schools from the human side of safety. So, competency-based training and assessment, leadership development, instructor support, and well-being initiatives are directly linked to operational performance. At the same time, I also work as an Associate Aviation Psychologist with Symbiotics, a company known for assessment and selection solutions. Along with that, a large part of my work involves speaking and teaching, including delivering speeches, workshops, and training programs for leaders, instructors, and operational teams, mainly in Aviation but also in other safety-critical industries.

I’m also a ground instructor, so I work with students, which I really enjoy. And recently, I’ve been working on a book about Human Factors in Aviation, which is a very big project that is still a bit in the making. So, the book is still with the editor for the final editing. But this is a very exciting project I’ve been working on for the last 2 years.

Interesting. I’d love to start with human factors and really a modern perspective on what is happening in that space, when we’ve talked about it before in terms of capabilities, limitations in your mind, and the environment. Tell me a little more about how this space has evolved.

The modern view of human factors has led us to a bit more uncomfortable truth: the human brain is incredibly capable but also very limited. Sure. As its core, the modern human factor starts with this shift. Instead of asking what’s wrong with the person, why something happened, we ask what was happening inside their mind and how the environment also shaped what was possible in that moment. Because it’s really easy to say what we would do from our couch, but actually, in a specific moment, in a specific situation, with the specific limitations and capabilities of one’s mind, that might be very different. Now we focus on the capabilities and limitations of a brain as such, but also of a person at the moment. We know, for example, that attention can be our biggest help, but also our biggest enemy in stressful moments and in specific environments. We try to blend together the person, those limitations and capabilities, but also the environment, and also the system that the person operates in, which is really important. We have this systemic approach now, so we don’t look at individuals only, but we look at all those elements that made the situation happen in this specific scenario.

Somebody else or in a different environment could behave in a different way or maybe the same way. This is something that we always need to check.

Rear view mirror, once something happens, a more holistic view of what will occur, how can it practically help proactively? To ensure we act on the environment, we act on capabilities and limitations before something occurs.

Basically, if we take this more holistic perspective, then we are able to actually change things for the better for the future. If we would only focus on, let’s say, for example, in aviation, we’ve used to focus on how we can improve the aircraft for this situation not to happen again? Let’s say a certain switch was connected to this situation. How can we update or redesign the switch to help in the next situation? The problem is that the situations are so complicated that we will never be in the same situation again. Even though we replace the switch or we redesign something, which, of course, is also one of the approaches that we should have, and of course, improve that and upgrade as we can. But also, if we only hope that after changing this one switch, the situation will not happen again, or the bad situations will not happen, then this is a bit of false thinking. We need to understand how complex it is. We need to understand that things are happening both inside and outside. If we focus on this holistic approach, it’s also easier to think, even with changing that one switch of thinking, okay, but if somebody else were working with that switch, would that help them if we redesign it?

Or if this person is in this and this environment, in this company, let’s say, even in this culture, would that help them as well in the future? It helps people to rethink and redesign bigger systems. Also, it helps us educate not only system operators but also leaders and authorities, so they understand that a single change can make a big difference. That’s why, as we understand people more now and gain more knowledge about how we function and the environment, we need to use this knowledge. We need to use these findings, of course, slowly but to help improve safety and change the situation for the better in the future. So, not to add more hours, for example, in case of aviation training, but try to focus, okay, what we can change that actually, regardless of the hours, can help in the future in a similar setting, in a similar situation.

Is there anything that can be done, if I’m thinking particularly of the capabilities, but also some of the limitations, proactively from competencies development, or in terms of assessing competencies as well, for those circumstances that may exist?

Absolutely. This is one of the biggest concepts we focus on right now: competencies and some behaviors connected to them. So, they come out of our competencies. This is really important to focus on at the very beginning because, again, as I mentioned, we can add more hours, more training, more education in different industries. But again, if somebody had a low level of certain competencies, they would, regardless of the training, their knowledge, they would not be able to cope with a specific situation. If the situation becomes more stressful and more complicated, they need to adapt to this specific situation that might quickly evolve into a change. In that way, competencies and this whole approach of competency-based training and assessment, or CBTA, now focus on how we can improve human beings at the beginning. Sure. For them to be able to behave in a situation that we cannot predict. In the past, we tried to predict every possible situation, and we failed in that because those environments, even automation, everything becomes more and more advanced and complicated. One thing can change the situation that we couldn’t predict. Instead of doing that, we now shift, and we try to answer a case.

If this person had those competencies on a very high level, then it might actually be easier for them to cope with any situation. We don’t have to focus on those situations so much, but we focus on people who are capable, within their limits and capabilities of their brain, to react to different situations in different settings with different people. That’s why we first focus on those competencies. Those competencies are, there might be also a bit more technical, but we focus even more on those non-technical aspects. We focus on things that we used to talk about already in the case of human factors. But some of those things we know are actually. We are able to improve them if we know how to work on them. For example, decision making, for example, problem solving, communication, and workload management, those aspects, we know that if we have the right tools and also tools to assess them at the very beginning, and then if it improved, then actually they are proven to be those barriers that actually can stop this bad situation from continuing to happen. Now we focus on, okay, if we know the entry level of someone’s, let’s say, communication skills, then I know this level, that’s the first step.

Then I can, with the right tools, try to improve this. In the future, this person, despite stress, despite a very dangerous situation, will still be able to communicate with others, even though the possibilities of their brain would narrow their attention and their memory. Still, they would have the communication on such a high level that they would be able to communicate, even if the situation is very demanding. We know that in those safety-critical environments, proper communication with your teammates, with some people who might be responsible for the next steps, for example, is crucial. So very often this communication would be the first part that would be really affected by the stress, by this very demanding situation. Because this is a natural tendency of our brain. If we have a very stressful situation, we need to limit our attention; we need to limit what we say to others in order to be able to survive. In that way, if we focus on communication skills despite the stress, despite different problems that might occur, then we keep this relatively high level of communication, even though our brain and the situation want us to maybe limit this ability a bit.

That’s why we focus now on those core competencies, as we call them, because we know that also for the success stories that we have. Sure. Of course, in aviation, those success stories are really spectacular, let’s say. But for those stories, we know that those individuals who saved the day had a very high level of those competencies. In that way, we need to focus on this positive safety approach, as we call it safety to approach. We focus on improving the positives instead of trying to limit the negatives.

Sure. In aviation, you use the example of communication. In many cases, you have a job that is, for the most part, fairly routine until something goes horribly wrong. Then, as you mentioned, high intensity. If you think about the Air France incident where autopilots disconnect, all sorts of signals are giving you contradicting information, and you’ve got to process. Communication and stress levels are incredibly high, and you’ve got very short periods of time to address the risk in front of you. In a lot of other businesses, a lot of other industries, sometimes that difference between routine and high stress isn’t as pronounced, but in some cases, it might still be. How could some of these principles translate to other industries to still help? As you mentioned, communication. On a good day, you could be a very good communicator, but in that peak moment of stress where you really need that communication, that’s where you need at next level performance.

The beautiful and also problematic thing about our brain is that it cannot really recognize the settings that we’re in. In that way, it doesn’t matter really if we are 30,000 feet in the air, and anyone would say that that’s a really dangerous situation if something happens. Or it can be at your workplace, at your desk, but something very suddenly increases your stress level. For our brain, that would be the same situation. Very basic instincts and very basic reactions, they start to happen. We have our fight or flight response that is still really, really strong, even though we don’t have to run away from a lion anymore. But still, our nervous system doesn’t understand that. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a situation in the air or it might be a situation, let’s say, in the operating room. Still, this high peak of stress would narrow our possibilities in the same way. Our brain needs to be really focused on the basic things to survive. That’s why those higher functions, let’s say, like keeping the attention on different sources or communicating with others using complicated sentences, are something that first would be just raised.

In that way, for example, in the case of attention, I think it’s really relevant for different safety-critical domains that you need to keep your attention at a high level. You need to be sure that you’re not making any mistakes. In that way, your attention really needs to be at a high, highly functioning level. In that way, it’s really important to train those abilities. No matter what stress hits you, you can still maintain this high level of performance and teamwork, for example, because this is another competency that is pretty core. Being able to work within a team, which is, of course, connected with some other competencies. They all relate to each other. But most of the safety-critical environments need the same competencies. They need a high level of attention and situational awareness. They need communication, teamwork, and the ability to solve problems and make good, timely decisions. Of course, aviation is the industry that is the most, let’s say, spectacular in that way. But if you imagine someone working in any other safety-critical industry, they need the same competencies. But what would be different is the behaviors, so how they perform or how they use those competencies with specific behaviors.

The pilot would need to behave differently, and let’s say the surgeon would need to behave differently, but they would still need to use, let’s say, the same source and competencies. Of course, I focus mainly on aviation, but I also consult on other industries as well. I use my experience from aviation, but actually, I see more and more that it’s really the same thing, the same elements, because our brain is the same. It just needs to be used differently. That’s why we have certain training. Let’s say this technical part and the educational part are what will be different. But how we act in this really highly stressful situation is something that would be the same across different domains and industries. If we just lack those competencies, our performance will be affected. It doesn’t matter what industry it is. We aim to achieve the highest possible performance to increase safety. To do When you do that, your capacity needs to be enough to handle that situation. Of course, there are some other things, like psychological safety, that need to be at the proper level.

Your, let’s say, physical abilities need to be at the proper level. But we see that those abilities of your brain, in terms of competencies, are one of the most important things to be able to perform at a safe level in any situation that you need to perform.

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CBTA really helps us understand competencies that are needed, where I am at, and how I am progressing through different interventions, potentially?

Yes. They also answered the question of why those limitations exist. For example, I might repeat the same mistake in my work, and I might have more training, more education. I will be more frustrated. Still, I would not perform well in certain situations. Sometimes, a very simple key for that is just to improve the competency level. If somebody were, let’s say, very good at, say, communication, again, but they would not be very good at decision-making. They might talk with others. It might help them with other competencies as well. But they still would not be able to make timely decisions, and this can sometimes be really critical for safety. That’s why it’s really important to know those levels right from the start. If somebody enters the training or a job environment. We, as people, would be responsible for training that person. But also, this person themselves would want to know what level of those competencies I have. Because very often people cannot realize that they wouldn’t think about it earlier, that they might have problems with certain competencies because they do quite well, they progress, they live in society, etc. But actually, those levels need to be a bit higher for that safety-critical work.

In that way, it is so crucial to know it at the very beginning, and then only you will benefit from that if you retest it. If you check it again, then you know if the person can progress, if you’re doing the right things in case of the training. And also, they start to feel more and more at ease. So, they might not realize that this is their issue, their problem that they have. But after a certain period of time, we see that people with a raised level of those competencies just feel better, they function better, not even in these very stressful moments, but daily. So, in that way, it gives them more space, more capacity to work with any situation that they face. If the CBTA is done well, the safety conversation also changes. We stop asking who made a mistake and what exactly happened in that situation. We also stop blaming individuals, but we start asking whether the system built the competencies needed to deal with what actually happened. To do anything. It worked both directions, we might say, because we know that people are not perfect, systems are not perfect.

But we try to find ways to increase both of those elements together. And by increasing competencies, we see that everything goes up.

And how does this connect with psychometrics? Because of the scenario you just shared, somebody who is good at communication, but may not be great at decision-making in a peak moment of stress. And so that could make you incredibly functional in many roles. In some functions, you can have the liberty of time to make decisions. For a pilot, you don’t typically have unlimited time in terms of that decision-making. How do we start checking around for a specific work environment, and how does that connect back to CBTA?

So, of course, in the case of CBTA, the last letter is A. So, this is the assessment. And this is more connected with how the competencies can improve. So, if we can learn, if we can improve them. In case of competencies themselves, it’s a bit easier work because if, let’s say, your baseline is okay, if you don’t have any disabilities, learning disabilities, or any, let’s say, disorders that would not make it possible to increase those levels, you can work with competencies. You can improve your competencies. If you have the right tools, if you know what to work on, you can improve them. Competencies are something that we use on a daily basis in different environments. This is something people sometimes do not realize they can improve if they work on it. It’s like with our memory. We can improve it if we don’t have any disabilities in that area. Sometimes we joke that it’s like a muscle we can just improve by working on it. In assessments, we don’t focus solely on competencies; we also consider other things, like personality or attitudes, which are a bit more core to people.

They are usually built from the beginning of our life, connected with how our nervous system is built. So, they are a bit more difficult to change. Regarding personality aspects, we can also check this. So, with the right tools, with the right assessments, we can check what traits, what, let’s say, tendencies you might have. This might make you better or worse in some specific environments or jobs. Let’s say there is one personality trait called conscientiousness, which is associated with people who like to be organized and structured. They like things. They like routine. This is something that is pretty core in you. People would be higher or lower on conscientiousness. In the case of pilots, for example, we like to have pilots who are high in case of conscientiousness because they need to work with routine most of the time. They need to pay attention to procedures, follow them, etc. They need to be organized, and everything needs to be neat. In that way, if somebody were higher on that trait, it would be easier for them to feel good in this environment.

If someone has a low level of conscientiousness, it doesn’t mean they cannot become a pilot, but it does mean they would just struggle, and that struggle would make them less able to perform well under stress. It will make them less able to train in case of their competencies as well, because those things just go together. For example, there are certain traits that, let’s say, a good accountant should have. I wouldn’t be a good accountant myself for sure, knowing my personality. If I were still trying to keep this job, I would probably be really frustrated, unhappy, and struggling with my performance. In some jobs, that would just make people unhappy. But in safety-critical industries, it’s really important to have people who are a bit better suited to this specific job. Psychometrics is one of the most, let’s say, misunderstood tools in safety-critical industries, I feel, because for some people, the word itself immediately triggers fear of labeling, discrimination, and being put in a box. But that fear is understandable because psychometrics has sometimes been used poorly, so not to use the right tools, not to use the results in the right way.

But when it’s used correctly, they are not about exclusion; they are about information. If we have this information, then, for example, we can place somebody who still wants, let’s say, they really want to be a doctor, but with those traits, they might struggle, they might be not so good, for example, being a surgeon. It would be better for them to work as some other type of doctor. In that way, and for example, for pilots, it’s maybe not best for you to work in an airline when the routine is there, and work is almost the same every day. Maybe it’s better for you to go to flying, which there is less routine, more changes, and a bit more risk. Some people need to have a bit more going on to feel good. That’s why it’s so important to check it at the beginning, not to spend a lot of money, a lot of time, and invest in something that might just be some concept that you might have in your head but does not really fit your capabilities and limitations. A big part of my work is also to explain that to people, that it’s not like yes or no.

It’s more than we need that information to increase safety, because if people who are not fit for certain jobs perform those jobs, it’s the first step toward unsafe acts in this environment. It’s not a verdict; it’s a map that we use for the future.

I think it also, to your point, if you’re going to be frustrated, unhappy in that work environment, that’s not an environment that’s conducive to your well-being, and also will create more friction in terms of the work in addition to some of the safety elements that you brought up. It can also be a vehicle to get to know yourself in terms of where your best fit might be.

Yes, exactly. If you’re more frustrated, a bit more stressed, then the first thing that happens is that your limitations come to the surface. If you’re angrier, sadder, or more frustrated, then you would simply make more mistakes. Then if you make more mistakes, you will be even more frustrated. Then you start to blame, usually people, they start to blame others rather than themselves, because this is what they wanted and why it doesn’t work. Also, in some of those industries, it is really difficult to stop or to say, I’m struggling. In that way, as you said, it is really connected to well-being because not only do you feel bad and angrier, frustrated, but you will have more problems with your family and friends. But also, it adds to that silence that if something is wrong with them or me, maybe I should just keep on going, but then I see that nothing is changing. So, my level of well-being is dropping dramatically, and I might not have a safe place to question that, to ask those questions. So that’s why it is so important to have this information at the very beginning. Sometimes, also what I’ve seen is for those different industries, especially if somebody young is starting in those industries, then parents, it is very important for them, for their kids to perform well and support their dreams.

But if everybody got this information at the beginning, maybe it’s time to rethink, maybe adjust a bit this path that you want to have, then eventually everyone would be happier, more satisfied, and their well-being would be higher. So, all those things that we do at the very beginning are not to make people’s lives more stressful or more difficult, but to make it less stressful and less difficult later.

Yeah. And on this topic of well-being, what other things can an organization do to create a really safe environment where people prosper from a safety standpoint?

That’s a really interesting topic because well-being is something that we hear quite a lot about now. We are more and more about well-being, well-being. We need to ensure that there is a healthy work environment. But what is most important about well-being is to understand it. Again, to understand how people’s brains work, what well-being actually is, and what levels it has, so you can create well-being programs or actions in your workplace. Very often, there is a well-being website, sometimes that is focused on well-being, but this is just like an end product. If there is no box-sticking exercise, when there is no understanding of what really makes people well in the workplace, then it might actually not change anything, but also make things even worse. What is really important is, first of all, that well-being is closely connected to what we call safety culture, as well as psychological safety in the environment. In that way, we might create a lot of things, yoga classes or any other things that should make people more relaxed. But when the workplace is not supporting this culture, nothing really will change.

The first and most difficult element is organization’s working with the culture of the culture. When people feel good about sharing things, especially things they may have done wrong, if they are not blamed for it but it is accepted, and people focus on improving it, they are thankful you share that. Of course, it might be connected with some more serious action as well. But what is really important is that you don’t feel this fear. You have this state of mind that you can talk about everything, about what was okay, but also what was not okay. In that demanding environment, people learn really quickly what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to show. If the safety culture in the workplace is high, then people will start to follow that pretty quickly. If the safety culture is low, people will learn very quickly that you can miss some things, you cannot report some things, and that’s okay. It is really important to understand what safety culture is and how it can be built. That is also, again, connected with the environment on the outside, but also with people from the inside.

What is, I think, most important is to start with education because people are not educated about their own well-being. What does it mean? What does it mean in this specific industry or company, in the training place? People, they need to understand how they might feel. They also don’t have to feel happy every day. But what is, let’s say, in the norm? Also, what they should do very quickly if they feel that something is not right is not wait; everything is open for them to share it. Again, that brings me back to competencies once more, because, again, people with a higher level of competencies deal with some well-being fluctuation better. If you have a higher level of communication and teamwork, then it’s easier for you to share something with others, to communicate it. But without a proper safety culture, you can have great levels of communication, but if you cannot communicate it, then nothing will change. Those are two things: safety culture in an organization. People from the top levels who will set this culture, who will understand that people need to feel good to be safe and to perform well. And then from the bottom, also for people to understand what Wellbeing is.

That is not just a nice word to repeat, but what does it actually mean, and what does it mean in my job? Because for different jobs, it might be connected with a bit different elements. Let’s say in the job of a flight attendant, being a bit lonelier in a sense of not having your family all the time next to you or a lot of people, a lot of crowds to share things with. This is also typical for this job. Again, if you understand that, and do you know what tools you have if something feels different? Also, if you have the right, again, personality and competencies to deal with this specific environment. Everything connects. That’s why this holistic view is really important, no matter if it’s well-being, competencies, or any other assessment, so anything connected with safety. We are only now starting to understand it. It is a bit more difficult now for us because we built those systems that were not built for that, for the holistic view. It’s more built for, again, adding more hours of training or improving one part of something. But now we need to learn, and we start to understand that only changing things from this holistic level can actually improve safety.

So, thank you so much, Aleksandra. We covered a lot of ground today from a modern view of human factors, as you said, that talks about capabilities, limitations, the environment, connects very well to the CBTAs and how do we understand competencies and how we can you give us a little bit more about how you get involved in this element of psychometrics, and is it the right fit? Are there better fits for you? And how that also links back to well-being, which connects back to what we talked about in the environment where we operate. So, thank you very much for joining us today to share some of your insights. Somebody wants to get in touch with you. What’s the best way to do so?

I would say the fastest way would be to contact me on LinkedIn. I’m there with my full name or try to reach me through my wingman site as well. But I’m on LinkedIn every day. I post quite a lot, also about human factors and safety. That would be the best way to contact me.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Aleksandra.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.