In this chapter, Malcom Gladwell continues on showcasing cultural legacy through airplane crashes. He discovered that crashes had common factors: all started out with a technical error and then 6 human mistakes on top of that; as co-pilots, those who fly commercial planes (or anytime of planes) should check each other so mistake don't occur. Gladwell found out that countries who had multiple crashes within a span of time had a problem because of cultural legacy. The boss would be flying the plane and not talking the air traffic control (ATC) or focusing on the other gadgets; that's the first officer's job, and raised in a classed society they were taught not to give commands to their boss. So when Korea brought in someone from the US to help train their pilots, the first thing the man taught them was how to be commanding with their voice and not to use "mitigated speech" (where you sugarcoat something or tiptoe around a topic so you don't come out harsh). Therefore their cultural legacy is not to command or directly ask your boss a question.
From this chapter we can take many lessons, but two are important. The first one is if you have a problem don't sugarcoat it, confidently tell someone who can help you so it can quickly be solve without ending in a diaster. You see this shown through Avianca 052. The first officer doesn't directly tell ATC the problem, pausing, using 'ah', and putting it in the second half of the sentence; therefore, ATC doesn't pick up on the fact that they were dangerously low on fuel. But if the first officer had clearly stated the problem and used a tone of emergency then ATC would have realized Avianca 052 had a problem.
The second lesson is that sometimes
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| Avianca 052 crash |
you have to be aggressive with your words and command others to do what you need them to do because maybe you see something they don't, maybe just maybe you are saving them from causing a diaster. For example, if Klotz (first officer for Avianca 052) had been able to directly tell ATC in New York (people known to be strict because of how stressful their job is), he could have saved the 78 people who lost their lives when the plance crashed. If first officers of crashed planes could have added a little bit more force behind his words, hundreds if not thousands of lives could have been saved. Our lesson to take from this is that being forceful with your words is not a bad thing. Also another lesson is sugarcoating commands, questions, or statements is not always the best way to go because someone might miss interpret you.
Coming from cultures that where in neither the top 5 or bottom 5 from the list of countries most likely to stick to the rules and sugarcoat words spoken to bosses (top: does it, bottom: does the opposite), I can follow the rules and sugarcoat things at some times when needed. But if the outcome is better when I add force behind my words or don't follow the rules, I will do that. As I reflect upon my normal behavior, I notice that I usually follow the rules and don't forcefully tell people things but nor do I sugarcoat them. I realized I just stay out of a problem instead of getting someone mad at me by either forcefully telling them to do something or by sugarcoating my words. All in all, my cultural legacy is half and half though I lean toward the top, following rules and not aggressivly saying things, and along with my faith, these communication skills make up my cultural legacy.
