
In a Life-or-Death Crisis, Humility Is Everything - jkuria
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-life-or-death-crisis-humility-is-everything-11564133402?mod=rsswn
======
Animats
This is a weak article on an important subject. In the aviation community,
there's much talk about "crew resource management".[1] This is about how to
avoid disasters produced by overly authoritarian captains. There are at least
four well known crashes like that.

There's an old tradition in the US Army that, when officers are discussing a
course of action, the most junior officer speaks first. This is to avoid
echoing the senior officer despite a big problem with the plan.[2] The Army
routinely does an After Action Review after doing something, to go over what
went right, what went wrong, and what needs to change. If you don't do that,
you make the same mistake twice.

[1] [https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/what-happened-to-
crew-r...](https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/what-happened-to-crew-
resource-management/)

[2]
[https://verasage.com/blog/after_action_review_the_army_way/](https://verasage.com/blog/after_action_review_the_army_way/)

~~~
dredmorbius
NB: Versage.com is offline.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151004225940/https://verasage....](https://web.archive.org/web/20151004225940/https://verasage.com/blog/after_action_review_the_army_way/)

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neilv
It looks to me like the article doesn't clearly argue that humility is
everything, but perhaps a fourth of everything:

> _Humility isn’t a byproduct of heroism, it’s a precondition. Modest people
> achieve miracles under pressure because they’re far more likely to possess
> four major qualities that pay dividends in a crisis._

Which are enumerated: Expertise, Composure, Collaboration, Confidence.

Of these, the article discusses Collaboration in terms of humility, but not
the other three.

For example, why would a ``modest'' person be ``far more likely to possess''
Confidence (``believing something so unequivocally that it becomes
contagious'')?

~~~
chantelles
Confidence based upon comparison to others does not result in modesty.
Confidence based upon continual self-work via the search for an aesthetics of
existence creates modesty and a necessary humility in order to go a piece of
the way with other ways of being in order to sort out what works in each
context.

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nrb
The article does a poor job of explaining how truly incredibly the flight crew
of United Airlines Flight 232 performed under crisis; I watched a talk[1] by
Nickolas Means recently that goes deeper into the events of that day and the
lessons learned. Wikipedia also has a good summary of the NTSB accident
report[3].

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)

3:
[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR-90-06.pdf)

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DoreenMichele
I think the connection between humility and ability to foster cooperation is
undeniable. Blow hards with big egos can't successfully pull that off.

You might disagree with some of the framing, but there are undeniable lessons
to be learned.

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davycro
The article extrapolates leadership traits from extreme and rare emergencies.
In my experience these qualities work when error or poor team work will lead
to death or harm of another person (say combat, trauma surgery, or aviation).
They don’t apply as well to business or politics.

~~~
msolujic
I would add one important thing: it does not apply to business and politics
when you want self serving or short term results. Otherwise, I would argue
that it still applies. This is what Jim Collins found with his colleagues in
research about exceptional CEOs, and put in book "Good to great"

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stmw
Interesting ideas in that article but doesn't seem quite right. In case of
Sullenberger, the transcript below tells a more complex story, he immediately
took over control of the stricken aircraft, not a lot of humility here:

"15:27:07 HOT-1 after takeoff checklist complete. 15:27:10.4 HOT-1 birds.
15:27:11 HOT-2 whoa. 15:27:11.4 CAM [sound of thump/thud(s) followed by
shuddering sound] 15:27:12 HOT-2 oh #. 15:27:13 HOT-1 oh yeah. 15:27:13 CAM
[sound similar to decrease in engine noise/frequency begins] 15:27:14 HOT-2 uh
oh. 15:27:15 HOT-1 we got one rol- both of 'em rolling back. 15:27:18 CAM
[rumbling sound begins and continues until approximately 15:28:08] 15:27:18.5
HOT-1 ignition, start. 15:27:21.3 HOT-1 I'm starting the APU. 15:27:22.4 FWC
[sound of single chime] 15:27:23.2 HOT-1 my aircraft. 15:27:24 HOT-2 your
aircraft. 15:27:24.4 FWC [sound of single chime] 15:27:25 CAM [sound similar
to electrical noise from engine igniters begins] 15:27:26.5 FWC priority left.
[auto callout from the FWC. this occurs when the sidestick priority button is
activated on the Captain's sidestick] "
[https://www.tailstrike.com/150109.htm](https://www.tailstrike.com/150109.htm)

~~~
ginko
I don't get what that transcript is supposed to show. It's mostly "uh oh"'s
and descriptions of sounds to me. Care to explain?

~~~
DangitBobby
Not OC, but it seems like there was barely any communication at all until he
decided to take control of the plane, and he just said "my aircraft" to ask
for control.

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bobosha
For every one of these examples, one could provide counterexamples: Gen Patton
was anything but humble, and known for his flamboyance and show-boating. But
he was the general the US military relied on during the battle of the bulge
crisis during WW2. Gen. MacArthur was similarly not well known for humility.

~~~
spinach
This isn't math where one counter-example totally disproves a theorem. People
are just 'far more likely' (as per the article's words) to have these traits
and perform well under pressure for the best outcome.

~~~
bobosha
Actually, not just one counter-example, there are several: Steve Jobs, Winston
Churchill, Lee Iacocca - and many many others in Business, Politics or
Military, weren't exactly paragons of modesty. On the contrary, they were
often bombastic and very arrogant. But they all projected a sense of
competence, self-confidence and calm and imbued their team with a sense of
mission. I think this article makes some fallacious suppositions and arrives
at some dubious conclusions IMHO.

~~~
adamsea
I Recently read a biography of Churchhill and he was an interesting
combination of humility and arrogance.

His success at leading England during the Second World War largely rested on
learning from his numerous past failures. He knew enough at that point to
surround himself with people who would stand up to him when he was wrong.

If you look into all the “great” leaders - folks you mentioned - you’ll find
plenty of instances where their arrogance led them astray.

Arrogance in and of itself is not what enabled those folks to facilitate great
or important work.

Lastly, nobody does it alone.

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redis_mlc
The article is B.S., written by somebody shilling a book who wants to be as
famous as the author of the checklists trope book.

All of the people interviewed denied being heroes, not because of humility,
but because they had no choice but to press on and do the job they were paid
to do.

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bullen
In retrospect I think it will be very obvious that the right decision was to
never board a flying piece of aluminium in the first place. It leads to
nothing of value.

------
known
On average we do not have qualities or abilities that are superior to other
people. Illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias whereby a person
overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same
qualities and abilities of other persons;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

~~~
bobosha
That's known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

~~~
benjaminbrodie
Stop mentioning this effect. Every time I see it I get a big headache. Maybe
I'll write a userscript (some kind of monkey whatever lol) one of these days
to regex replace lol.

