Prof. Nevzat Tarhan: "The pilot should stay ahead of the airplane"
President of Üsküdar University Psychiatrist Prof. Nevzat Tarhan participated as a speaker in the "Psychology, Aviation and Space" symposium organized by the Aviation Research and Applications Directorate of the Turkish Airlines (THY) Flight Training Directorate. Tarhan made a presentation titled "Aviation Psychology and Its Importance" and shared important information about flight psychology and said that situational awareness is a fundamental part of the decision-making process in flight psychology. Emphasizing the importance of stress management in aviation, Tarhan noted that pilots should think about the next stage at every stage of the flight.
The symposium, which was held in the conference hall of the Turkish Airlines A.O. OC Building, was attended by many airline company employees as well as figures from the academic community.
The symposium, which was held in the conference hall of the Turkish Airlines A.O. OC Building, was attended by many airline company employees as well as figures from the academic community.
"Pilots need to think about the next stage at every stage of the flight"
Drawing attention to the importance of the ability to stay calm under stress, especially in flight, Prof. Nevzat Tarhan stated that "There is a concept called ‘staying ahead of the airplane.' This is also the case with traffic. If a person driving only looks at the car in front of them, there is a high probability of an accident. It is about the ability to stay calm under stress. Increasing awareness of the environment and the present is a state of consciousness that increases coping skills. It is even called mindfulness. Staying calm under stress... It is the person who is in Zen meditation to stay calm. While looking at a target, the person can also be interested in the details and use their multiple attention. Pilots need to think about the next stage at each stage of the flight. This is expressed as staying ahead of the airplane."
"Situational awareness is a fundamental part of the decision-making process"
Stating that situational awareness is a fundamental part of the decision-making process in flight psychology, Prof. Tarhan said that "There is a saying, 'Parsley covers the mistake of the cook, iron covers the mistake of the tailor, and the soil covers the error of the doctor.' As... For the pilot, we can say that the pilot's mistake is covered by how many hundreds of passengers. Therefore, a pilot should pay attention not to making six times more zero mistakes, maybe nine times more zero mistakes if a physician attach importance not to make three times more zero mistakes. They will pay attention to this. Among the pilots, it is the first lieutenants who have the most accidents, because they take courage, and it has even entered the literature. One of the lieutenants say, ‘If I do not hit the target, I am going to be buried in it.’. They say this as a joke and gets too close to the target while firing, crashes and becomes a martyr. His ambition upsets himself, his family and all the investments made in him with a small mistake. Therefore, six times zeros are more important. Therefore, situational awareness is a fundamental part of the decision-making process of a flight or a decision-maker in flight psychology."
"Stop, think, act"
Tarhan made evaluations about standard learning, which is one of the learning methods. Tarhan stated that "In standard learning, you make a mistake, you take a lesson in the first one and you do not do it in the second. A person's life is not enough to learn everything by trial and error. A smart person takes advantage of the mistakes of others, predicts, analyzes and makes decisions. A person makes a risk analysis of possible errors and tries not to make them. This is the way smart people learn. There are also some people who make a mistake again and again.... In Anatolia, such people are called ‘loon’. They swim against the current. These people make a lot of mistakes. Their awareness is low, they do not know themselves, and they keep repeating the same mistake. For this reason, we all must learn the paradigm of 'Stop, think, act' at all times."
"Learning lasts until the end of life"
Stating that when we do not consider emotional and conscientious intelligence, we may increase the possibility of making mistakes, Prof. Nevzat Tarhan said that "Learning is lifelong learning, and it lasts until the end of life. This is actually nothing new. Aristotle talked about emotional intelligence. Ethos, that is, its counterpart, is conscientious intelligence. Ethical values increase the credibility of the speaker's ethical and virtuous attitudes, honest, modest, affectionate and tolerant in persuading the interlocutors in communication. He describes it as Ethos. Pathos is the ability to act by considering the feelings of others by empathizing, to comprehend, to sense their needs, and to act positively. What we call Logos is logical intelligence; however, we are only considering Logos at the moment. It is possible for us to make mistakes with an approach that does not consider emotional and conscientious intelligence. The twenty-first century has brought these to the fore."
4 scales in the emotional intelligence competencies of pilots!
Drawing attention to the fact that those with high logical intelligence can establish good relationships and good cooperation, Tarhan stated that "One’s IQ is very high, and they rank first in school. They enter business life, social life and get married; however, they cannot keep up. These people are people with high logical intelligence and low emotional intelligence. If these highly intelligent executive leaders have a lot of experience, they have emotional agility, not IQ, but EQ is high. This is where emotional agility comes in. In this way, one adapts quickly to changing conditions, and it is important for a person to be able to manage the emotional states and anxieties of the people they work with. Those with high emotional intelligence are known to be kind, loving, and compassionate, but they are not. Hitler also had a high level of emotional intelligence. He gets people's emotions moving in such a way but their goal is wrong, and their conscientious intelligence is at the bottom. It is a great success, but its success is in a bad way. EQ height is no guarantee of being good-hearted. For this reason, there are four scales in the competencies of the emotional intelligence of Turkish pilots, that is, Leadership, self-awareness, social awareness, internal motivation... Here is a study on self-knowledge called Harrison Assessments, which was done on 274 pilots. Self-knowledge were 66 percent, largely competent... Internal motivation and internal management were 34 percent. Social awareness and service orientation were 95 percent, and relationship leadership was the lowest area with 25 percent and the area that needed the most improvement. For this reason, we can say that it draws attention as a weak area of pilots."
"The brain is able to relax"
Pointing out that managing our stress has a counterpart in the brain, Tarhan explained that "Stress management is important here. There can always be stress on the flight and so on. Here is a study showing the equivalent of stress in the brain. According to the results, the brain is able to relax. The brain manages not to secrete stress hormones. That is why our ability to manage our stress has a counterpart in the brain. Therefore, people who are constantly stressed are those whose heart rate is always '70-80-90'. They die at an early age because the telomeres in their DNA are exhausted early. Therefore, people with a pulse of '50-60' live longer because their DNA and telomeres divide less. For example, the pulses of turtles and elephants are calm, but the pulses of cats, dogs, lions and tigers are '140-150' so they do not live long. That is why the number of breaths we take closely determines our lifespan. Rapid breathing is also related to the heart. Here, being able to manage our stress is not only in terms of health, but also very closely related to the ability to manage one's life and body well, and thus, the frontal lobe of the human being is important."
“The first condition of reliability is honesty"
Prof. Nevzat Tarhan emphasized that being virtuous in leadership is profitable in the medium and long term. Tarhan stated that "There are types of intelligence in leadership. There are two emotional intelligence activists, one of them is to be an idealist, to dream, to produce thoughts, to create expectations, to think strategically, which we call logical intelligence. That is to be an idealist, to be an emotional activist, which means to take action and to activate. In physical intelligence, it is about work, discipline, being realistic, being focused on the goal, and being open to cooperation in social intelligence. They all need to work in harmony. It is about being reassuring and, ultimately, conscientious. Such as being able to listen to the inner voice, inner responsibility, accountability, responsibility to the creator, having ethical values, using moral reasoning, wisdom, humility, honesty. All intelligences must work in harmony. I mean, it does not make much sense if one is too big, but it is conscientious intelligence that is like a conductor. Hitler is a leader without conscientious intelligence. A leader is a soldier, a painter, very disciplined and works day and night. A leader gets the masses moving. The Great German becomes Emperor of the whole of Germany. He destroys the opposition. Even in terms of physical, political and social intelligence, only his conscientious intelligence is at the bottom. 5.5 million people are killed on the grounds of inferior race. Merciless, ruthless... He says, ‘I make it, or I die.’ When he fails, he commits suicide. That is why he commited suicide with his wife. This leader, this kind of leadership, that is how Napoleon was. Trusting leadership is important here. To make the orchestra work in harmony, the leader must not be in a panic. In a study conducted on 54 thousand people, honesty came first in the characteristics that employees look for in a leader. The first is honesty. The first condition of reliability is honesty. To be open, transparent, honest, accountable... This seems unnecessary in the short term. It looks like we will miss out on a lot of opportunities, but it pays off in the long run. Being virtuous in leadership is profitable in the medium and long term. Being self-interested is profitable at that moment. That is why honesty is the greatest ethic."
"The brain of a person who works with love does not wear out..."
Pointing out that repeating the same things dulls the brain pathways, Tarhan said that "Our brains work like a well with the 'use it or lose it' rule. It opens as you draw water from the well, or the brain opens as it works. That is why I say, 'Working hard is good for Alzheimer's,' but without being stressed out. A person who works hard with love does not really wear out their brain. It gets better. There is a saying of Confucius for a person who knows how to work; ‘I do not work hard, I do what I love," So, it really is like that. This is really brain friendly. Thinking openly to new experiences... If you go through the same thing over and over again, the brain pathways atrophy because they do not use new pathways."
"If we create a pyramid of importance, we make fewer mistakes"
Stating how the attention pyramid can be used in the decision-making mechanism, Tarhan said that "It is important to be able to distinguish between the most important, less important and mundane situations. The person will spend more time on the most important and less on the less important. If we build the pyramid of importance, we make fewer mistakes. A Canadian psychologist who found 5W1H in the decision-making pyramid calls it 'The 6 faithful guardians of memory'. 5W1H; Who said it? What did he say? Where? When? Why did he say that? and How? By asking these, when a person keeps the information in his mind, the brain writes it with 6 networks; therefore, one network work reaches the information in the other network. In other words, the brain is therefore a connectional organ and there is also a pyramid of attention. The pyramid of time, the pyramid of attention. In other words, we will put the top priority on the target. There is a saying that 'the devil is in the details,' but at the same time, success is in the details. Both the devil and the success are in the details. Reason? Because if it is a purposeful detail, success is in that detail. However, for instance, while you were on the road, someone said something to you, you got stuck on something. You spent an hour with it, and it sets you up for failure, but purposeful detail leads to success. That is why it is said, ‘The procedure is premise.’ It is the rule of Mecelle. In other words, there is a 60-day period in law. If you go on the 61st day, the case will be dismissed procedurally because there is a statute of limitations. It is not enough that you are right. You lose. You cannot win the case. Thus, the basis is important first; however, the procedure takes precedence. In other words, this is how we will use the pyramid of attention in our decision-making mechanism."
"One who is not their own leader cannot be someone else's leader"
Mentioning that being benevolent should be in candidate leaders, Tarhan stated that “We say that a mother and a father should be smart and hardworking while raising their child, but this parameter is not enough. One can be a smart, hard-working chemical engineer, but you see that they are a chemical engineer has produced synthetic marijuana. One is a hacker. Intelligent, hardworking… Yes, that is true, but then two parameters are not enough. We need one more parameter. To be intelligent, hardworking and kind. Being benevolent and malicious t can exist in the candidate leaders. Therefore, it is also important in human relations. 'Neuroleadership' comes to the fore here. Neuroleadership is that we cannot be someone else's leader without being our own leader. A parent is a leader. The manager in the workplace is the leader. Those who cannot be leaders on their own cannot be the leaders of others."
Simple attention errors can have serious consequences...
Drawing attention to the fact that people should educate themselves, Tarhan made the following remarks: " For instance, important landings are cases that have entered the literature. In 1982, F.O., suspecting that he could not adjust the take-off speed correctly due to a snowstorm, hesitated to report his idea to the captain. The B737 stalled and crashed into the Washington Potomac River. 74 people died in 1982. These are simple mistakes. And what do attention errors cause in flight? Here is a very important thing about knowing ourselves and improving ourselves. Thus, why do we need to change ourselves instead of changing others? We need to educate ourselves. This is what emotions are, in fact, Tolstoy summarized the following parameters in managing emotions. Notice the basic emotions. Notice the causes of emotions. Think about how you are going to deal with it. See options. Choose the best option and act accordingly. The phrase 'Man occupies as much space in the universe as his heart, not as much as his body' is a really important saying."