CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 9 Issue 1 - 7

EVERY PILOT HAS STRONG AND WEAK POINTS, GOOD AND BAD DAYS, AND
BEING ABLE TO ASSESS THOSE DIFFERENCES BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER EACH
FLIGHT IS CRUCIAL TO OUR ABILITY TO LEARN AND IMPROVE.

his GPS and he said he just forgot, he was
nervous, and that he would have remembered
at some point. Fair enough. I asked him about
his personal minimums and how the forecast
weather affected his go/no-go decision. He said
he had never really had to use his minimums
before and that he guessed he should have set
his ceiling minimums lower so they fit better
with the actual conditions that day. I asked him
if his landlord let him set his own rent lower to
fit better with his actual income, and he gave me
a blank stare.
As we continued, I tried to focus on the positive.
While his list of triumphs for the day was
longer than mine, I never felt there was undue
danger. He handled the airplane well. I told
him I thought he would be ready to go crosscountry with just a little more practice with his
instructor to fill in some gaps. He didn't argue,
but his body language screamed that he thought
he was ready to go now.

I then told him about my largest concern. His
self-assessment skills were not quite up to
standard, and he needed to work on evaluating
his performance more objectively as part of his
overall risk management strategy. We discussed
the importance of being able to evaluate our
aviation skillsets as though we were an outside
observer, without getting defensive or making
excuses. Every pilot has strong and weak points,
good and bad days, and being able to assess
those differences before, during, and after
each flight is crucial to our ability to learn and
improve. I hoped I had gotten through to him.
Time will tell.
Two or three months later, I was working with a
new instrument student, a retired professional
who had been flying for decades but was just
now getting around to earning his instrument
ticket. He came to each lesson fully prepared,
notebook in hand and homework complete.
Most days he had prepared a written list of
questions, and our conversations during
preflight briefings would always dig well below
the surface.

Instrument training is tough duty, and each
flight had things that he did well and things
that went not so well. In our postflight
debriefs, he would dissect that day's lesson
in detail. He would write lengthy notes about
everything he thought he'd done wrong with
a written corrective action plan. I could tell
from the start that there was no ego involved
in his evaluations; his goal was to be a good
instrument pilot and he knew that it did no good
to gloss over problem areas. Best to find the
bugs, develop a plan to correct them and move
on. This guy was good.
It's interesting that some people are so good at
self-assessment and others are so poor. Two
psychologists at Cornell University set out to
test the hypothesis that poor performers will
tend to overvalue their abilities, while high
performers will undervalue their skills. They
asked a bunch of college students to evaluate
their ability to think logically, apply English
grammar, assess their class ranking, and judge
the quality of their sense of humor. Those test
subjects who performed at a lower level rated
their performance as significantly better than



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 9 Issue 1

https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol14issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol14issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol14issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol14issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol13issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol13issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol13issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol13issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol12issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol12issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol12issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol12issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol11issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol11issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol11issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol11issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol10issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol10issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol10issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol10issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/flashcards_2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol9issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol9issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol9issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol9issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol8issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol8issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol8issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol8issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol7issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol7issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol7issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol7issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol6issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol6issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol6issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol6issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol5issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol5issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol5issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol5issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol4issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol4issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/flashcards_201310
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol4issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol4issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol3issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol3issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol3issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol2issue4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol2issue3
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol2issue2
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_vol2issue1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_201011
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aopa/cfi_201009
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com