Launching this year’s Bombardier Safety Standdown on November 7, Convergent Performance founder Tony Kern brought his unique perspective to a packed audience of business aviation professionals. Wearing a shiny suit that looked like something George Jetson would have worn during the animated television show of the 1960s, Kern claimed to have beamed into the Standdown via a wormhole from the future, showing up on the stage at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Wichita to pass along warnings about what’s happening in business aviation safety.
Business aviation is facing a critical moment, Kern noted, with many professionals poised to retire and preparing to relinquish their roles to younger generations. “We are undergoing a huge, massive handoff,” he said.
“Safety concerns are increasing because of our business aviation accident rates,” Kern said. “Staffing issues are critical. It’s tough right now getting good people, getting any people.
“The only time you get bad pilots is when you need them really bad. So we have to be careful with our standards. What we end up with is a younger, less experienced set of leaders because as the wisdom ages out of the flight [deck]…the experience base, the wisdom, and the judgment of that group need to be picked up earlier and faster. Already we’ve got people in leadership positions that are a decade younger than previously because people are moving up, people are moving out.
“I believe the biggest challenge right now is not so much that we’re not going to get enough qualified people. Supply and demand will work its way out like it always does. But it’s what’s going on with all of us. We’re at an inflection point, and that’s why I’m back.
“All of life, but especially our professional life, is built on the integrity of our bodies, our minds, and our purpose. There's a constant battle going on inside us."
Using the metaphor of T-cells, which destroy harmful viruses and even cancer cells, Kern explained that part of staying physically healthy is helping T-cells by exercising, eating properly, and not exposing ourselves to carcinogens. Before showing a video of cytotoxic T-cells in action, Kern said, “As we look at this, I want you to keep that in mind before we switch over and use this metaphor for another purpose.”
After the video, which showed T-cells injecting cytotoxins into cancer cells, he said, “Isn’t that cool? Don't you want to root for those guys?”
Continuing with his theme of having come back from the future, Kern explained the metaphor and why he showed the video of the T-cells. “I've come back to talk to you about the mental health challenge that we have, what I'm calling cancers of the mind…How do we build an immune system against the things that are slowly but surely eroding our stability, our resilience, our resolve, our mental health? We're not building our immune system, we're not building our psychological strength. Then when it gets bad enough, just like it does when your immune system [and] your T-cells can no longer fight the cancer cells, you've got to get help where you die as a professional and then you start counting the days to retirement. It’s not a fun way to live.”
Suicidal Thoughts
Citing studies from 2016 and 2017 of commercial pilots, Kern explained that the results showed 4.1 percent having suicidal thoughts. He extrapolated that to the approximately 100,000 pilots in North America, and said, “Even back in 2016 and 2017—pre-Covid, before it got really bad—4,100 of them are having suicidal thoughts. Does that scare you? It scares me, and then if you look a little bit deeper, way more are experiencing what are diagnosable symptoms of clinical depression.” In the surveys, 12.6 percent met the threshold for clinical depression.
Kern cited more recent evidence of mental health problems, including the axe-wielding pilot who attacked a parking lot gate in Denver, the first officer who last year threatened to shoot the captain if he landed the airplane before the destination for a medical emergency, and the jump seater who pulled the fire handles in a 737, nearly shutting down the engines before the pilots intervened. “I don't know what's going on here,” he said. “But there are some weird indicators that things are not well. This isn’t a one-off. This isn’t a two-off, brothers and sisters; this is a trend. Whatever we’re doing is not working.”
Trying to get aviators to seek professional help isn’t going to work, even though that is how some are approaching the mental health problem, Kern said. “Pilots are not likely to do that in large numbers for a variety of reasons.” Pilots will never seek help because their paychecks are at risk, and most people, not just pilots, don’t seek help when they need it. “They literally would rather die than cross the threshold to see a counselor or in some cases, they'd rather kill. So what we're doing right now is not solving the problem.”
Instead of just telling people they need to ask for help, “We also need to teach them to reach in. We have an untapped pool of psychological strength inside of us,” he said, but it is underdeveloped, and he shared some ideas to help. “Every one of us in this room can grow stronger, to learn to handle more. And when we learn to handle more, [that is] better coping, mental agility, emotional recognition, all of those things, which are trainable, learnable, applicable, shareable. All of those things we are not being taught.”
Well-adjusted people with a learning mindset already understand this, he explained. But most of us could benefit from developing psychosocial strength, which is “something you have or you don’t have. It's something you constantly develop, mentally and socially stronger, to speak your truth and contribute effectively even when and where your opinions and ideas and maybe your whole body are not welcome. To remain strong and focused under the pressures of the times and of the moment. To welcome the unwelcome and ensure they become contributors to the shared goal. Psychosocial strength is integrity and action, and it's not just a professional skill—it's a life skill.”
Psychosocial Strength
Psychosocial strength is not the same as psychological safety, Kern said. “Psychological safety creates an environment…so that everybody can speak their mind without fear of ridicule. Psychological strength is what you need when psychological safety is not there.” But while organizations strive to provide an environment of psychological safety, he added, “for all of our best intent [it] will never be universal in any organization or any team. People have conflicts; there will remain bullies and secret harassment going on. There'll be all kinds of that stuff that you run into in your career over time. It's time we gave people the skills to handle that. But oh, by the way, it also feeds the T-cells of our mind fighting against all of these other issues in mental health.”
Illustrating his next point, Kern showed an image of a hand holding an orange next to a basket, and he asked the audience whether the image showed the hand putting the orange in or taking it out of the basket. “Are you a consumer or a contributor? If you're a consumer, it means your profession is supposed to serve you.” This means that there is an expectation that “your organization is supposed to serve you. You're inwardly focused, right? Feed me. I need stuff. I need money. I need dignity. I need respect. I need adulation. I need pats on the back, Whatever it is, you're always looking for that.”
That attitude “leads to frustration,” he said. “And if you don't deal with the frustration, it turns into something more permanent…cynicism, right? And then you get to the point where you become so cynical, nothing matters and everybody's feeding you crap right to where you're angry at your profession; you can't wait to get out of it.”
A contributor, however, will ask: “What can I give? Who can I help? What do the others need?” That person will have psychological safety. “That feeds your sense of well-being and your overall mental health. If you're here to give, it's going to help you stay stable and more satisfied.”
The aviator who has the right relationship with their profession is one with gratitude for the career opportunities and who also enjoys the fun aspects. “We can’t let the pleasure drip out of it,” Kern said. “We have to find a way to challenge ourselves and our team…and to keep it fun when it’s fun. Everything about that whole mental health thing gets better.”
However, he added, we need to face the truth that mental health trends in aviation are not headed in the right direction. “Unless we take some major changes, we’ll probably have a few more funerals and some more bad press. If we choose the difficult path of trying to solve these things, what can we do now?”
Kern then introduced a concept he’s been working on, an idea that gelled during the Covid pandemic when he experienced cynicism and frustration whenever he had to put on a mask. “What would it look like if we built something that would strengthen our mental health immune system?” he wondered.
Adapting CRM
What he came up with is called Armored Knight, a science-based program designed to help anyone—what he calls inoculating the herd rather than treating the symptoms of individuals. Kern offered the program to the FAA as an alternate means of compliance for crew resource management (CRM) training but was rebuffed, so he redesigned the program to be part of CRM training. “It's one of those swing-for-the-fence kind of solutions, and I'm not showing it to you so that you can say, ‘Oh yeah, we need some of that.' I'm showing it to you to talk about the process that attempts to find solutions.”
CRM training is going to have to take into account new people joining the aviation industry. “There's a lot of weird stuff going on socially with our industry and…the more the merrier…we want more women, we want more minorities, we want diversity…we don't have enough people. It all sounds like a great idea. But if you haven't prepared for it, it's gonna generate all kinds of interpersonal challenges that interrupt that CRM loop.”
Kern explained that what underlies psychosocial strength is “your cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and behavioral strengths.” CRM training addresses various factors such as communication, decision behavior, team building and maintenance, distraction, avoidance, etc., but all of those elements require mental stability. Psychosocially strong people will be an important resource when it comes to working with the diverse people who are increasingly making up the aviation industry. “What could be more important than that?” he asked. “It fits right inside something [CRM training] that almost every pilot in this room has to take annually.”
Meanwhile, we can all help ourselves and others with some small moves that will have a beneficial impact.
“Maintain mastery over technology,” he said. “It doesn't mean, ‘Yeah, it worked for me today.’ It means ‘I understand it.’ Make intentional outreach to people who aren't like you; find some common ground to get to know somebody better. Learn and practice emotional intelligence and empathy. We’ve got to shake up our training to make this stuff happen. It's not just good enough to have a good idea or say I want to look at it. We need to build some world-class stuff to get this out there—the clock's ticking.”