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Supervising professor: Ververi Maria
Merchant MarineAcademy
of Aspropyrgos
Thesis
Subject: Management and Psychology
on Board Merchant Vessels.
Date of assignable: May 19, 2015
Date of completion: September 26, 2016
The thesis is considered complete
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Introduction
The goal of this graduation project is to focus on the importance of management
in the merchant navy industry. And in order to further analyze the value and results
of a good management systemwe will have to also talk about psychology and
human behavior, since after all we have to deal with humans in this specific subject,
a bring that is incredibly diverse and unpredictable at times, especially in a high
stress environment such as the maritime industry.
I will use many of my personal experiences on board 3 vessels I have been part
of as apprentice officer, as well my knowledge of human behavior from books,
studies and of course daily observation of other human beings. I personally believe
that the importance of a acknowledged manager in this case officer is an extremely
important part of producing quality results as a team by making the overall
experience not only easier but more pleasant and friendly.
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Table of Contents
Personal Construct Theory ……………………….………………………………..………………… page 5
Crew Divisions…………………………………………..………………………………………………… page 14
Personal Ship Experiences…………………………………………………………………………… page 17
The importance of management ………………………………………………………………… page 21
History of bad behavior………………………………………………………………………..……… page 25
The Hardstand Prison Experiment………………………………………………………………… page 27
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The Current Merchant Navy………………………………………………………………………… page 32
The Community of the ship………………………………………………………………….……… page 35
The Milgram Experiment…………………………………………………………………..………… page 40
My Approach…………………………………………………………………………….………………… page 46
Bibliography……………………………………………..……………………………….………………… page 50
Personal Construct Theory
Before we commence analyzing the management and psychology in merchant
navy, we will need to have an idea about how human psychology works and how
humans function in a general sense.
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Through my research I have found that the personal construct theory is one of
the most accurate theories about how the
human mind works, this theory was is a
theory of personality and cognition developed
by the American psychologist George Kelly in
the 1950s. The summary of this personal
construct is that it suggests that people
develop personal constructs about how the
world works. People then use these
constructs to make sense of their
observations and experiences.
Through my own personal experiences and observation I have ended in similar
conclusion to that theory. At the early stage of a child the baby is driven by primal
drives and feelings such as hunger or pain rather than logic and facts like adults but
in time as it grows it will experience different events in its life and such events will
begin to shape its world view and understanding of how the world works, why we do
that? According to the personal construct theory Kelly suggests that one of the most
important reasons for such a thing is because we have a primal drive for anticipation
and predicting future events which can very easily be translated into a feeling of
control and understanding, by knowing how the world works, by being able to
predict what will happen, we are in a sense in control of our lives and that brings a
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sense of safety and security which is fundamental for all humans according to
Maslow’s pyramid of needs.
But throughout history humans have shown something deeper, a very big need
to avoid being ignorant, to avoid saying something as simple as “I don’t know” as if
admitting your own ignorance is somehow a bad thing, especially if you have noticed
that many people when asked about something will often times always have a hunch,
or an idea about why something is happening even though they might lack any form
of objective data about what they were asked about. That is also why statistics are
used so much in politics, people like to use statistics because it lets them generalize
about something and turning it into a simple, absolute view that makes them feel
knowledgeable and in control instead of admitting that the world is complex and
their mind will never be able to grasp or fully control how the world works.
In the early days of humanity when science was not prevalent people believed
gods were responsible for many events around them, from natural disasters to
thunderstorms to unexplained events.There was no science to teach people what
causes the rain for example, people would suddenly see water falling from the sky
and have absolutely no idea why that is happening or how, YET instead of admitting
their own ignorance and trying to research or learn about it, they came up with
things like gods, gods were responsible for things they couldn’t understand, gods
were behind everything they couldn’t explain and without even a shred of real
evidence to back this claim up the world accepted it as a fact minus a few bright
minds.
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With this example we can clearly see that people in order to avoid admitting
their own ignorance and feel without control, powerless, in the mercy of the
unknown they decided to accept ANYTHING as long as it would fill the gap of their
ignorance. It wouldn't matter if there was no evidence of factual proof, as long as it
explained what was happening the masses gladly accepted it because they needed
to fill the void of their ignorance. This clearly suggests that there is a primal drive
behind our behavior which can lead to many people having false world views which
in turn can cause conflict with different world views and cause terrible pain and
suffering on this world. And even worse, it will make some bright and intelligent
people suffer by becoming outcasts for simply saying the truth and having a correct
world view based on facts and truth, one of the most known examples of this is the
the execution of Socrates, a philosopher who was able to realize that even though
everyone accepted god as a fact, nobody actually had proof about it, and it was a lot
more reasonable to think that the reason people created gods was because their
own human nature lead them or better manipulated them to such a false conclusion.
He was right, yet he was executed for simply being more self aware and not letting
his own nature blindly make him accept whatever belief was out there just so it can
fill his ignorance and satisfy his own human nature.
This becomes an even bigger problem once politicians learned about this specific
part of human nature and would abuse it to get people to their side by giving them
answers to all of their problems, usually answers that profited the people who will
accept this world view such as for example, during a war the leaders would often say
how superior his own people are and how inferior his enemies are, and sadly even
something as simple and obvious as this worked quite well because when someone
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tells you how great you are, most people wont question it and will gladly accept it
without any analysis or questioning(Unless they are depressed)
, and they would also gladly throw people they don’t like under the bus if it
meant that this makes them “superior”. One of the biggest reasons behind Hitler’s
rise to power was unquestionably expect the political and economical situation the
fact that it made his people feel proud about themselves, to feel better about
themselves for being “superior” to their inferior enemies and even though that was
most probably a lie to get them to do what he wanted like all politicians the masses
gladly accepted it and followed him after that, because when a person compliments
you, he gets on your good side, you need to have a positive opinion of that person so
his compliment will be meaningful. If a person who you considered utterly stupid
and lacking of intellect the compliment wouldn't feel the same or as valuable, and
through that way politicians have learned to manipulate people to their side.
Once this positive opinion connection has been established the person who was
told is great will try very hard to keep the politician that said that in a very good light,
even if negative things are revealed about the politician that person will try to ignore
those things or excuse them, because he needs to keep the positive image of the
politician in order to feel better about himself through him. This has lead to many
“blind” voters and people who long term are causing more harm to this world than
good even though they haven t done anything evil consciously.
I gave these examples because I wanted to showcase the extreme importance of
how the world view people have is no joking matter and it is actually something
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extremely important and in my opinion one of the most important things for
humanity.
Of course it doesn't always require a politician with a profit for the world views
to cause conflict, one of the most important reasons people are different is because
everyone is raised in a different way and has been surrounded by different events in
their lives, and thus have different world views. World views that can often times be
opposite of each other simply because people grew up and had opposite events
happen around them, for example a person might have an extremely happy and
caring family while the other person might have an extremely angry and terrible
family, these 2 people will grow up to be very different. But is either of those world
views right? Or accurate?
They are not, because many world views are based on anecdotal evidence,
situational events that could be of the type, the wrong place and the wrong time, we
cannot trust those events if we are to have a more accurate and realistic world view
and this task becomes even harder when we have to face our own ignorance and
more importantly the thing hiding behind that, our own self destructive human
nature.
With this in mind we can start creating a more accurate world view by trying to
focus on facts, our knowledge about human nature and human behavior and never
truly fall for our human nature’s traps such as absolute “facts”, that might make
people feel better by being in complete control but this delusional way of thinking
will cause conflict in the future, conflict, pain and suffering when escalated to bigger
things.
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The world views we create, these “constructs” as referred to by Kelly can of
course change in time when a person is presented with proof about why he is wrong,
but that depends a lot on how attached someone is to some belief of his. For
example a patriotic person will be extremely attached to his belief of pride for his
country, that belief will make him feel better, will sustain him in a way and might
even be a fundamental belief of his view of the world. In such a case the person if
presented with proof that patriotism is wrong for example, because he is so severely
attached to that belief/construct of his the most likely response would be to ignore
the proof, attack the credibility of the person showing the proof by saying things
such as “you aren't a scientist, you are too young, you are from x place, etc” and
sometimes even attack this person(Hate crimes work in a very similar way) because
he needs that belief of his to be intact, if something happens to it then that person
might crumble because it would be like destroying the column that holds his entire
world view. That is what we call denial, another part of our sad nature, because we
might be too attached to some belief of ours admitting we are wrong is extremely
hard and painful and in order to avoid this pain it is far easier to ignore the facts or
attack the person who says the truth. So if you want to change someone’s false view
it is clear that telling it to their face will not work, nor trying to force your views upon
them by abusing your own position of power whenever higher up or parent, instead
you have to gradually let his mind see and accept the proof in time, thus slowly
changing his inner belief construct instead of throwing it down and building it back
up. Though there have been a few rare cases of complete one eighty degree turns
which could be explained in a complete reversal of a world view to reflect the
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opposite of what they believed, suggesting that this also is another way the mind
works when it comes to changing beliefs.
You can visualize this entire theory as a building, with columns and rooms, each
column and room is a different belief created by the person’s life events. Some
rooms or columns might be bigger than others, and some could actually be the
foundation of the entire building. If you destroyed that foundation or some of the
bigger room the entire building would crumble down because oftentimes a column
might support a room that later on can support another room above it, so some
beliefs can support others and if one falls, everything falls. That is why in my opinion
a healthy person world view would be visualized as a pyramid, if something happens
to one piece nothing will crumble, but an unhealthy person’s world view looks more
like a pyramid upside down, if the blocks that carry the weight of everything above is
destroyed the entire thing will fall apart.
Change is a very hard process that requires us to admit that we were wrong and
that requires us to change a room in our world view building, sometimes it is easy,
sometimes that room is far too important for everything above it to be changed, at
least fast. This is why people often times say “time heals all wounds”, because we
need time for our mind to comprehend the events around us, accept them and move
forward. If we analyze events to their root, we can often see that the emotional pain
we suffer can be described as us having a false construct/world view. For example
when someone is emotionally attached to someone else as in love, the view of the
person they love is an almost perfect on in their heads, they believe that this person
is nice, caring, perfect etc which might be completely unrealistic but it makes us feel
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good to believe this. It might feel so good that the person w ill ignore obvious flaws
and problem the person they love has or will try to excuse them in any way possible
in order to keep that view of them perfect and intact, but once something bad
happens and they break up and they are “heartbroken” that terrible ugly hurtful
feeling can be translated as their view of that person being wrong, and when faced
with absolute proof that they cannot deny, that “column” is destroyed and as a
result we have this utterly unbearable pain. After that the person will have to go
through the 5 stages of denial.
First being denial itself, trying to keep the belief intact in any way possible,
sometimes by even ignoring proof in front of your eyes, next step is anger you
believed in something false, you did that because that person made you believe that
and you feel manipulated and angry at them even though it was your fault for letting
yourself fall for such unrealistic views of them, after that we have bargaining, one
last attempt to try to preserve our view through excuses of the type “what if” and
when that fails we move to depression, with the complete loss of a core belief of
ours we feel empty and only through time we can fill this empty room with some
better and more realistic and that is when we finally move to the final stage,
acceptance.
To summarize, we are being that heavily rely on personal experience which can
often be false because those are just situational and anecdotal evidence but it
doesn't stop people from using them to fill the void of their ignorance. People can
also accept views because it profits them to believe such views of the “superiority”
type thus really showing that human nature often will affect our world views, and
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without control over it, we have no control over our world views, and without
control over our world views we have no real control over our actions since most of
them are based on our views about how the world works.
Now we have talked about politician using this as a tool of manipulation and
personal profit, it can also be used as a tool for management. Because by
understanding how humans work, you are able to pinpoint exactly what is the root
of a certain action which can lead to the belief behind the action and when you know
what that person believes in, the easier it is to get to their good side, make them feel
better and improve their performance on board.
People management relies heavily and knowing about the people you manage, when
your goal is to improve performance you have to know them in order to make them
feel better working with you and pandering to their needs.
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Crew Divisions
Before I move to my own personal ship experiences and important of psychology in
the management of the vessel I would need to talk about how the crew is divided
inside a vessel.
First we have the captain who is the biggest authority on board a ship and is
supposed to be the person you will go to if a problem hasn’t been fixed after talking
to everyone else below him. Sometimes the captains are approachable and friendly,
some others times they might be a little too bossy and rude which might make
people try to avoid them instead of bring their problems to them. He is usually an
entity above the rest of the crew, officers and the lower crew.
Then we have the officers that is the group exactly below the captain in hierarchy,
usually they are of the same nationality and are the people you would go to discuss
ship related things because they are far more approachable and less intimidating
compared to some captains. They are often together as a unit since they have to
work together for most of the tasks on board so you will often see them discuss
things together.
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After the officers we have the extras as I like to call them, such people are the ones
who are officers technically but very specialized and only have power over certain
things like for example the electronics or electricians which often times have also
been of a different nationality than the rest of the officers, they are usually between
the officers and the lower crew in hierarchy.
Then almost lastly we have the lower crew which consists of usually able seamen, a
bosun and oilers/fitters. They are often times from Philippine since their country is a
big source of able seamen for the entire world’s merchant navy since they are quite
cheap due to their lifestyle being simpler and less expensive like many poorer Asian
countries. They are often quite united with each others and seem to have their own
culture and rituals which can often time cause even more division within the ranks
but thankfully I have met quite a few of them, mostly of the younger generation that
are more progressive, we had many similarities and interests such as gaming,
animations and internet related things. In hierarchy they are often at the bottom
and only being above the catering department of the ship which consists of the cook
and his assistants.
Sadly this division in ranks can sometimes also lead to some level of racism, because
you have one nationality being on top and the other below many times the people
above wouldn't treat the people below the same way they would treat people of the
same nationality. And i will explain this further in more detail but in such cases it is
easy for the people’s nature to create delusions of the type of national superiority in
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order to make themselves feel better by using the situational fact that his nationality
is the officers and their nationality is the lower more subservient crew, by twisting
the fact that different nationalities in that ship happen to have different ranks they
make themselves feel superior and better but that comes with the cost that they will
be treating the lower crew in a less positive manner since they believe them to be
inferior. I ve sadly seen quite a few people who were hidden racist within the officers,
not openly admitting they are because that would cause them problems but
admitting it within the company of other officers of the same nationality which again
is a problem because if you are racist, you will subconsciously not treat the people
you consider inferior as well as the rest and people can easily pick that up and start
being less cooperative and friendly. And the fact that even after so many years the
lower crew and the officers have different dining rooms doesn't help reduce the
division between us. The world is currently focusing on uniting each other, reducing
conflicts and bringing people together, that is something that should also happen
with the merchant navy for the profit of all, we are all simply people who work on a
contract for a specific job for a specific reward, we work under the same roof, with
the same rules applying to all, we should try to reduce our differences by doing more
things together instead of letting each other in their isolationist world that often
times can make them even more distant.
Parties are often a great way to get everyone together because we all usually
celebrate the fact that we do not have to work that day outside of navigational
watches obviously. But this mutual celebration can be used a way to get people to
talk more with each other while enjoying the good food and drinks.
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Personal Ship Experiences
Below I will write down my experiences with the captains of the three vessels I
have been into, and I am sure many Captains wont take kindly to a “lowly”
apprentice officer analyzing and judging their behavior, but I believe that my skills of
observation and knowledge of human behavior will let me create compelling
argument about the positive and the negative.
My first vessel was a bulk carrier from a smaller company, as a first timer I had
very few clues about how the environment would be so I had no real expectations
when I first joined, the vessel’s captain was quite old and quite stereotypical by
Greek standards. He was a good person, who did want to help others and make
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them better(Of course obviously better according to his views) but was quite rush
and loud person which really were not good traits for a person in a management
position. That has lead to him many times shouting and angrily dismissing other crew
members, or even fighting with someone which not only made that person way less
productive but it also worsens the climate on board the small community within a
ship.
Being commanding and shouting orders is an acceptable management system to
some but the days of such systems are slowly being abandoned outside of the
military. Some people find value in such systems because they believe they are able
to more effectively control others and keep a “tight ship” but often times the
negatives severely out weight the positives. This kind of behavior has been taken as
a norm many times to the point some people defend this systemeven though it is
utterly ineffective, especially when most of the people who are using it are not using
it because of its advantages but because of the emotional satisfaction they get from
it.
A person might shout for many reasons, outside the few times that shouting is
used as a tool of command, the majority of the time it is used as a tool to relieve the
person who uses it because they might have lost control of the situation and acting
bossy and quieting others down makes you feel in control, to release their
frustration over something which usually was caused by their own false expectations
but instead of admitting that, it is easier to shout at a person than admitting you are
false. And that many times becomes painfully clear when you can see a person shout
and be angry one day because of some bad personal news, and another day being in
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the same situation but being calm and happy instead because his personal life is
good at that moment. That clearly undermines the authority of the person, because
many people are able to realize that the person in command, is actually affected by
his mood swings, making many crew members simply be unable to take their
“leader” seriously because they know he isn't a consistent Captain that means what
he says and knows what is the best course of action for a situation since his
emotions affect him heavily, making the crew not only not take him seriously but
also have no real respect for that person and just pretend to agree and listen to him.
And when the crew starts pretending, in my opinion that person has failed as a
manager, and management is the most important skill for a master of a vessel.
Now the second ship I have gone to work in was quite different, it was an LNG
carrier by a far bigger and reputable company, and the difference in management
skills was simply mind-blowing. The captain and everyone else were quite friendly,
calm and open creating a very relaxing and friendly climate for the community of the
ship which lead everyone to be far happier and far more productive because of it.
The Captain never shouted or was commanding because he had control from his
knowledge of the situations as well as his knowledge of people’s behavior, because
of that he was actually loved by his crew and everyone was able to speak openly
about how they feel and even offer their ideas of a situation or how they could
improve something, and he was often smiling and laughing making everyone feel
really comfortable with him. Unlike the first vessel, there were barely any accidents
and a major reason for that I believe was the quality management of the master of
that vessel.
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”Gaslog Salem, on board during and on thebridge during the momentthephoto wastaken”
Finally on my third and last vessel as apprentice officer I was actually on board
another LNG carrier with a quite serious Captain, a person who was clearly
knowledgeable and in control. The climate in the vessel might not have been as
bright due to his management skills but the ship worked quite efficiently because he
knew how to behave. He was from the school of thought that the captain is the
distant boss, but unlike many “bosses” he had no need to shout or act like one, his
presence alone was quite commanding and respectable because it was clear that this
person knew what was doing, he was calm, serious and quiet always talking when
needed instead of wasting words in chit chat, his behavior was consistent and it was
clear he didn’t let his moods affect his behavior as a Captain.
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His systemwas more tight, people wouldn't really talk to him unless they had an
important matter to discuss, which unlike the 2nd vessel’s captain made his life quite
easier since there wasn’t much pointless chit chat that he didn’t enjoy. He wasn’t
loved by the crew, but he was respected.
The Importance of Management
The human race along our knowledge of it has evolved exponentially in the last
few decades, making many advancements in the field of psychology and of course
management since that is a very profitable side of psychology. For most 1st world
countries gone are the days where the boss is this angry tough guy that shouts
commands and acts bossy at every turn to make others do what he wants fast, most
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bosses know the important of being open and friendly, even when that might be a lie,
the projection of a friendly and welcoming image can do great things for the moral
of your employees. Sadly there are still many countries who are stuck in older ways
of thinking, and it is actually quite worse in the maritime industry because bad
management has often existed for so long that it has become the norm, and there is
nothing sadder than to watch young people who get into this job accept this kind of
terrible management behavior as acceptable and normal, and at times even worse,
follow that kind of behavior in their career because it is always easier to accept the
mistreatment and verbal abuse one has suffered as “normal” and inflict it in others
when it is your turn, than break from this cycle of abuse. Many times it has been
observed that victims of abuse have a chance of they themselves becoming the
abusers and using the same kind of abusive behavior that they suffered, usually
many studies were focused on major abuse cases such as child abuse and haven't
bothered as much for such “smaller” things like verbal abuse but it makes sense for
an abused person to do the same to others, because that “nullifies” the suffering he
has gone through by making it something normal and usual instead of having to
admit what it truly was.
I think one of the best examples I can give against some of those traditional and
outdated “bossy” management systems are my very own feelings and thoughts
during the times I was working under those 3 captains.
With the first captain, I really didn’t feel comfortable talking to, even when he
would refer to me during breaks many times I would just laugh uncomfortably and
avoid saying anything because I had no interest in opening a conversation with him
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since I knew that it could often end up with him saying something negative, and
arguing with such a captain was quite pointless since “he is the captain and cant be
wrong”, instead of making people feel valued he treated them negatively by having a
really condescending attitude even when one produced good result and sometimes
downright insult people, and whenever he meant the insults or not because mood
swings, the damage is the same. I actually really disliked him and many under him
felt the same, there were times he would just throw insults towards the clouds or
the sea because the weather wasn’t that great, and honestly, if you work under a
person who treats you negatively, what reason do you have to produce quality
results for him? Outside of following what your contract says and being on time you
have no obligation to go the extra mile or inform him of something negative.
That situation was completely different on the 2nd and 3rd ship. On the second
ship the captain treated everyone with respect and as a valuable member of the
crew, that alone was enough to make everyone be more relaxed and happy that they
work under such a person. He would praise you when you did something well and
not scold you when you did something wrong because for most professionals in the
industry they already feel bad when they do something wrong expect a few really
bad apples. With such a person, it is very easy for the majority of the crew to feel
“yes, I want to help this person and will gladly do what he ask”, “HELP” being a key
word here, because it shows a different relationship between the two, it no longer is
this cold emotionless work where you have no reason to do more than your
contract’s requirements, it becomes a different kind of relationship, a closer and
more emotional one that makes people want to go the extra mile to make that
person happy and be praised for their work instead of fear being scolded.
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The praise is an extremely important part of this, because just like dogs, people
feel better when praised for when they believe they produced a good result, it is
simply instinctual and really hard to control or even notice for people not proficient
in the field. So whenever the captain means the praise or not, the result is the same,
a great climate for the ship’s small community and high productivity for the vessel
and its company. Now merely praising every good thing everyone does can get quite
repetitive and obvious, so there are more ways to get people closer to you in order
to make them go that extra mile, many times when someone was beating
themselves up for a mistake they did he would try to comfort them by saying it is
fine and that it isn't that big of a problem or that everyone makes mistakes every
now and then, making others feel better because of HIM and thus feel closer and
more defendant and wanting to “pay back” the help they received. That is why I
believe this form of management is the most effective, because you get close to
people and get them to be more productive by simply being a nice person to them
whenever you really are or not. That kind of system also makes people feel more
open about reporting problems to the captain or suggesting improvements for things
since there is no fear of them getting insulted or patronized from captains like the
one in my first vessel.
Now on the 3rd vessel the system worked a little differently, the captain was
really as open to everyone, and his constant silence and commanding gaze would
many times make people fear what he could be thinking, but everyone respected
him as a captain since he was clearly knowledgeable and knew when to say
something and when his silence would do the work for him. He didn’t use praise as
much unless he truly meant it, which actually gave it way more value than the 2nd
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captain’s ship for the ones who could identify the use of such management system.
His behavior also made sure that nobody would bother him unless they had
something important to say that would worth his time. The crew worked effectively
but this time, it was less about the praise and more about the worry that what could
the captain been thinking when you announce a failure to him, there was no major
negative reaction and many could be worried about what he could write in their final
sea report since his reaction often gave no clues about positives or negatives. So this
time, you wanted to provide quality results for a far more logical reason, to be in a
good standing with the captain and get a positive sea report when you disembark.
I personally find both management systems to be quite effective and good since
both produce quality results. I believe the friendlier system has a slight edge since it
makes reporting things and offering suggestions a lot easier as well as making
everyone in the ship happier, but for that system to work, you need to have a
captain that will also spend time with his crew and be a really social person.
History of Bad Behavior
Historically captains were extremely important due to their skills and knowledge
being extremely limited to few individuals, that made them invaluable to companies
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and they could often get away with some levels of bad behavioral problems or issues
that the crew might have with them, especially since the company personal and the
captains themselves would try to cozy up to each other for the mutual profit of
having a “friend” in the company or for the company, be on the captain’s good side
so they can ask him for favors later on. It was more informal because there were few
people capable of doing that job, and because there weren't as many regulations as
now limiting the captains power, the power the captain had in the past was
immense, he had the power of life and death if some crew member was being
dangerous or he simply didn’t suck up to the captain which was quite the stupid
thing to do in these times. Because of that many captains also created a ton of
wealth by cooking the books when it came to ship provisions, making personal deals
with ship chandlers for mutual profit ignoring the crew’s well being.
That issue was even more prevalent during the time convicts were send to work
as able seamen in the merchant navy, during those times captains developed a very
false and immense sense of self worth to the point of calling themselves gods of the
sea since throughout the voyage they were the god of the ship that had immense
power, and because convicts were considered to be “bad” people the captains not
only were able to easily let themselves free to enjoy hurting the people they
considered “evil” but also felt justified when doing so, and by doing that they did
make themselves feel better because they were in a position of power “smiting
down” the terrible people of this world never realizing that this behavior wasn’t
because of some valid justifiable reason like they want to believe to, but for their
own sadistic enjoyment through a power fantasy. This behavior is often seen in cases
of abuse of power, the person in power starts to enjoy and fall for the fantasy of
28. 28
being far more important and capable than others, that I turns leads to him
considering the people below him to be “inferior” and not as important as him, more
so as something they use and can dispose of and you can realize that such a behavior
can be quite dangerous on board a ship where team work is extremely important.
People who abuse power are not bad per se, it has been proven that ordinary people
can become terrible authoritative figures if given the power and there was no better
proof to showcase this behavior than the Stanford prison experiment.
29. 29
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford prison experiment was a great
example of how the average and nice person can
become incredibly authoritative and hurt others
simply because they are give then authority to. The
experiment was conducted at Stanford University on August 14–20, 1971, by a team
of researchers led by psychology professor
Philip Zimbardo using college students. It
was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval
Research and was of interest to both the U.S.
Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation
into the causes of conflict between military
guards and prisoners.
The experiment would take take a number of male students students and these
students through the random method of coin toss would be divided into two groups,
the prisoners and the prison guards, this was an actual psychological experiment so
it was important to for the participants to act as if they were in a real prison so they
gave the authority to the prison guards to do anything possible to keep the prison
and prisoners safe, physical violence of course wasn’t allowed based on the contract.
The professor and his research team had planted cameras and microphones
30. 30
throughout the “prison” in order to monitor the experiment and see how it proceeds.
The professor’s expectations of this experiment were that it could be a really long
and boring experiment yet at the end he said that it was inconceivable since there
was no strong sense of precedent that the experiment could go this far, but there
were signs, even within the first day of the experiment there was a small case of
physical violence due to an emotional outburst from a prisoner which was being
mistreated by the prison guards. The
prisoners were forced in to deal with
verbal abuse that would become more
and more common since the guards
slowly would realize that there were no
real limits to what they could do since
the research team wouldn't come to
stop them, they started abusing their
position of power more and more,
forcing the prisoners into doing
humiliating acts, putting them in
isolation for not following their outrageous demands or forcing them to repeat
saying or doing the same thing ten times or more just because they said it wasn’t
“good enough”. The abuse started becoming worse once a more rebellious prisoner
appeared, and with the guards being reassured that they can do whatever they need
to in order to stop the “rebellion” they took extreme measures from stripping down
people naked to taking away their beds and forcing them to sleep on the floor.
Because of this extreme abuse a prisoner broke and had to leave the experiment
31. 31
after just 2 days, and even after that because they were given the authority from the
research team they kept being abusive, they would use their authority to force the
prisoners to do whatever they demanded for their own entertainment and more
specifically feeling of control and domination, and every time a single prisoner would
slightly object or show a sign of discomfort they would take it as a sign of rebellion
and would force him into way worse things, just because he challenged their
authority.
The professor was forced to stop the experiment just within the first 6 days of it
even though the experiment was supposed to last for around 2 weeks, he realized
that many of the prisoners started to break, feel like they were losing their
individually since they were assigned numbers instead of names and were forced to
do whatever the guards demanded and be in a position of complete submission. One
very excellent event throughout the duration of the experiment was the parole
request board, in which the prisoner would go in front of the research team as they
are the parole board and say why he believes he should be allowed parole. Within
the research team there was a person who was in the past falsely convicted and
spend years in a prison, his experience was the reason he was there and that was
valuable for the main research team. He was in the parole board with the rest of the
research team, and he acted exactly how he was treated by his own parole board in
the past, that is being told that he is a terrible person and what he did no matter
how small was a terrible thing and twisting all his words against himto the point of
saying that he would be the last person that they would give parole to. He acted
exactly like that to the student prisoner, and after it was over he admitted that he
hated what he did, because he acted just like the people he hated even if it was for
32. 32
the sake of the experiment, and worse of all, he realized that at that moment he
enjoyed the power and control that position of power gave him. Due to his own
personal self awareness he was able to see that, to see that there was something
that made him feel good when he did that terrible thing, and that is extremely
important for people to understand, that our very own primal nature still is able to
affect our behavior, and unless we have more self awareness in order to see how it
tries to manipulate us and stop it during some situations the result would for most
people be just to justify their behavior with some form of excuse such as “he is a
terrible person and he didn’t deserve parole”. And because of this you can rarely
trust people’s “reasoning” or “arguments” when it comes to certain emotional
subjects that can easily be affected by our nature because they are so ignorant of
their own nature and lack self awareness. Even the students that participated in the
experiment at the end of it where surprised that they were capable of such vile acts
of abuse, that they were capable of becoming that person and that they didn’t know
that before they were given that power of authority, for them it became a valuable
life experience because it showed them that you can never be truly certain what
someone would do once they acquired power.
These students weren't criminals, and they weren't bad, angry or hateful people,
they were ordinary every day students like the vast majority of people out there, yet
the ones who were chosen to become guards evolved into such ugly monsters of
authority that would abuse their power for their own personal entertainment that
MASKED as “keeping the order”.
33. 33
Now imagine this happening on board a ship, with the lower crew being real
convicts and the captain having all the power in the world because not only there
was none one supervising the captain’s behavior, captains were in demand and also
had often personal connections with the company they worked for. In such a case
there is no doubt that the abuse of power would only be described with the word
“legendary”, they are exactly the same situation only the lower crew is even more
powerless and the figure of authority has absolute control over what happens on
board the ship. The reason I talked about the experiment and the history of people
abusing their power is because I believe there is a strong co-relation between what
was happening back then in merchant navy and what is happening now, yes
throughout history until now things have improved tremendously yet there are still
quite a few issues with some terrible captains abusing their power.
34. 34
The Current Merchant Navy
Now in 2016 things have changed immensely for the merchant navy and it has
mostly been for the better. But outside of the merchant navy advances in the field of
psychology and by extension management have also done many things for making
the world a better place and because of them, many regulations were created in
order to protect workers from abusive bosses and such bad behavior from people of
power. Executives are taught about psychology and management, police officer are
taught about how to correctly handle situations instead of using the brute force of
their authority to deal with all their problems and merchant navy officers are being
taught about effective teamwork and communication upon a vessel.
Now merely teaching people about psychology and teamwork isn't enough,
especially in countries that haven't progressed enough and what they are being
taught isn't reflected as much in their every day lives and their national teachers
because their society still is quite behind and has a “toughen up” type of culture. As
if this wasn’t enough of a problem I have talked about the history of abuse in the
merchant navy, and sadly some people still carry parts of that in the current
35. 35
merchant navy. That is because our job is one that heavily relies on experience
rather than studying and research and because of this many current captains have
adopted behaviors of the captains they were under because they believed such
behaviors were effective. Like I have said before if you are abused there is a good
chance in order to avoid feeling you were mistreated to consider the abuse as
something normal and acceptable and inflict that abuse upon others since you
believe that is how the world works and how it should work because it is a lot easier
to accept the beliefs and world views of others instead of sitting down, analyzing the
facts and trying to find what the best and most accurate world view is, especially
when abuse is in play and you NEED to believe it is something normal and acceptable
in order not to feel bad.
So because of this people have adopted some very authoritative and bossy
attitudes, truly believing that they do that because this is how the ship should work
and ONLY way it can work effectively and can get quite annoyed if you ever
challenge that notion of theirs. They have a very rigid construct/belief, one that can
be foundational for them because it was created during their early days in the
merchant navy and without it they would be forced to reconsider their entire life
since without it they could collapse. They would try to hide behidn arguments of the
sort: “This is how a ship should work, if I am not bossy everyone will start doing
whatever they want, the ship will stop working if I stop acting like a tough angry
boss”. Yet those things never truly seem to hold true because they simply never tried
anything different, and most people I have met in the merchant navy from officers to
able seamen were quite professional and never really had to go against some order
because they knew what they job was, the ship can work just fine without an
36. 36
authoritative bossy captain but because they had to suffer through their life
experiences they created a very foundational construct/belief that made them
follow this terrible attitude and keep enforcing it to others.
Luckily you will meet quite a few people who have broken the circle of abuse
and are actually trying to become better people and better managers, yet there are
still many people who fall under such behavioral traps and accept abuse as a normal
or acceptable things, even young people who went on their first training voyage.
Luckily because you cant expect all the people to learn and escape that cycle the
world has created many regulations about labor rights, regulations that reduce the
captain’s power and control and many companies are starting to have specific
anonymous whistle blower/report options in case someone is abusing their power.
The captain might still be able to do many things because he is the boss of the ship
but he is thankfully no longer the supreme authority in it and actually has to have a
good relation with the crew to be an effective one as well as to avoid being reported
for abuse of power alas that is not always possible because some smaller companies
still follow the older systems and trust their captains a little bit too much and a
report from an able seaman wouldn't be too much of a problem to ignore unless it
was a major ILO violation and of course he could prove that in court, and from the
able seaman’s side such a move is dangerous since his career could be destroyed if
he isn't careful with it and prepared to take an entire company head on.
Nevertheless there has been an enormous improvement for the industry
compared to the past maritime industry, that can be attributed to the fact that the
world is becoming less ignorant and more progressive and because many people
37. 37
choose to question outdated cultural beliefs in certain industries and revolutionize
them with their own ideas by making the workplace a better environment for all.
The Community of The Ship
The ship is a closed community, through time the crew becomes familiar with
each other and can create a bond between each other like any small human societal
group. Successful captains try to make the crew feel like they are part of a team, the
team that is the crew of the vessel and everyone is equal and working together for
the common goal of keeping the ship safe and productivity high. That way you create
a far more comfortable and friendlier atmosphere where the officers can easily make
jokes or talk to the crew as an equal, and that creates a bond between the members
of any group which makes them work together far better and more efficiently. They
are able to trust each other more and be open about their problems and how they
feel instead of hiding that which could be a problem psychologically long term since
it could build up and explode on a bad situation.
Being a small community means the cultural differences of each group are
slowly let behind or ignored while the members of said community focus on things
38. 38
like mutual interests and discussions, that I believe is quite important because it
reduces the amount of possible conflict within a group of people and that is why I
always try to remain open and helpful when on board the ship for all the crew
members whenever they have a question about something related to the ship to
something related mostly to our way of spending our free time such as an issue with
the internet, a question regarding some common interests, games etc. That way
people will regard you in a more positive light compared to some person who is
quite “tight” and avoids being open about things to lower crew for whatever reason,
and that is quite counter productive on board a merchant vessel.
An example of such a negative behavior would be a 2nd officer I had met, which
sadly for the world was quite young and had adopted such bad attitude through his
worse experiences as an apprentice officer. He would often consider the Filipino
crew as “inferior” in his mind, that he was simply better. He would also disregard
them as human being and the few times he would talk to them during the watch
would be to make ironic jokes about them. That of course made him quite unlikable
within the Filipino crew, and that of course lead to the obvious issue of bad
teamwork, because when someone
who you don’t like starts ordering
you around your mind will
immediately start second guessing
them and trying to find a flaw in
what they say to justify your dislike
of them even more(Even if your
39. 39
dislike of them is justified for past events).That is something that happens often but
it is not so easy to realize or observe because like many other things about our
human nature, it is primal and it is extremely easy to bypass and avoid seeing
because you are accepting it as normal and never really questioning it or trying to
analyze it because everybody does the same and accepts it without question. And
that is what psychology and in general science focuses on, to get what is obvious,
analyze it, understand it in a fundamental level and then through that be able to
control it and achieve great things with that kind of knowledge.
Now as you can imagine during mooring operations and cargo handling
procedures, the last thing you want is small delays caused by the animosity with the
the crew, especially during important moments that require the crew to be fast and
do what must be done without question, and when there is an issue between the
crew and some officer this could lead to problems, and sometimes to quite serious
problems if the situation requires fast action and there are delays. So clearly that 2nd
officer was quite bad at his job as a manager, and an officer’s job always requires
some management skills since even as an apprentice officer you will be required to
work with the crew, instruct them and tell them to do a few things, and commanding
angry behavior doesn't help at all in this department. And of course a person who
considers someone else to be inferior would be infuriated once the person he
consider “inferior” would question him or not immediately follow his order because
it would ruin that false sense of control and superiority that he had which has
sometimes lead to fights with the crew and like most unhealthy people the 2nd
officer would simply use the fact that he is an officer to shut down anything that a
lower crew member would say. As if this wasn’t enough he would often refuse to
40. 40
give casual unimportant details about things to the Filipino crew such as information
about the port we are going or new crew members saying that the crew “didn’t need
to know about that” and refusing to answer. The truth is that yes, the crew does not
need to know about the information they could be asking but that doesn't mean
there is a reason not to give the information they are asking, there is actually no
logical reason to withhold such irrelevant pieces of information, but he did.
Why would he refuse to give the answer to a simple question? In combination
with the above racist facts and his own sense of false superiority, by withholding
information he would feel in power and in control, the person who knows things has
more power and control compared to the clueless person that does not know things.
And that feeling of control can easily make someone feel better about themselves
and often at the expense of others, so that person was clearly abusing his knowledge
about things for no other reason other to feel better about himself possibly to deal
with with the bad feelings that come from certain insecurities. That person is a
failure when it comes to management and could be the core reason of an accident,
even if an accident would cite the able seamen mishandling something as the reason
it is highly likely that that could have happened because of the issues between them
and the officer in charge yet the person who would be blamed for the accident
would be the lower crew and not the 2nd officer that if someone investigated
in-depth would find him to be the root cause of the accident. That is why psychology
and knowledge about human behavior is so vital, not only it could help us avoid
accidents, it can also pinpoint the real root cause of the bad things that happen
instead of the obvious front everyone sees and accepts.
41. 41
Now if such a person would become a captain he would be extremely divisive
with the crew, he would create a very “us vs them” mentality by being extremely
nice to the officers and being quite negative towards the lower crew and sadly many
officers would easily accept that as something good since like we said before, it is
really easy for people to accept that they are great and superior because someone
told them that without question, it is simply in our nature and since most people do
not have enough control over it they can easily let themselves become part of his
delusions of superiority and mutually support each other in order to feel better, but
that ALWAYS comes at the expense of someone else, in this case the lower crew. In
order to make this delusion of theirs feel more real, they would unconsciously
become more and more commanding and bossy, that way every time others would
follow their orders since it is their job to do, their brain would like to twist that fact
into following their orders because he is better than them and they should obey him.
So within just a few months, people who lack self awareness or have strong beliefs
against such kind of behavior can easily fall victims to such ugly abuse of power, and
I would like to say there are many people with strong personal values that would go
against such abuse of power, but I am afraid saying that is letting my own hopes for
humanity interfere with my realistic world views.
42. 42
The Milgram Experiment
We like to believe in positive things about the things we are connected to
because in a sense by saying positive things about a certain group we belong to we
are complimenting ourselves and making ourselves feel better if we follow the
compliment to its personal root.
People have varying degrees of connections, they can range from weak to
incredibly strong. Since humans are social creatures they connect with each other in
some ways, an example of a strong connection for some would be a connection to
their family or to their friends. They are a group, a small society that cares about
each other and we often have better views of the people inside our family or friends
43. 43
rather than people outside of it even if that might not always be true because we
could be blind to someone’s flaws due to our connection.
This strong connection is understandable because in small societies it is easy to
know about each other and feel close but the issues begin once people begin to have
connections to enormous things such as every person of their nation or every person
of their skin color etc. These are the kinds of connections can be dangerous because
they create conflict and fights within two different groups of people while the said
people have absolutely no idea about the other group of people outside of few
unrealistic generalizations created from their incredibly narrow and limited
experience with a tiny percentage of members of the other group. That leads both
groups to start becoming unable to keep realistic and logical beliefs about
themselves and about their “enemies”, that means that the group will consider
themselves great, believe they are the greatest thing humanity has to offer while at
the same time considering the other group as “subhuman” or “Degenerates” in
order to justify their emotional dislike over them and like we said before, to uphold
the belief that they are “superior” at the expense of someone else. This form of
mental “self masturbation” is the reason behind many conflicts and problems
because the core reason two groups could be fighting would not be because of the
paper thin arguments they use to justify their behaviors but because they just want
to make themselves feel better and feel superior but like most people who fall for
such primal human nature traps, they lack self awareness to see this and instead
believe they are justified and are on a “holy crusade” to make the world better
which is their excuse for their terrible actions.
44. 44
Now it is clear that connections can lead to people being unable to have realistic
and accurate beliefs about certain things, because their ego might depend upon such
things thus they cannot be objective when creating beliefs based on their
observation and instead could lead to in the creation of very negative and dangerous
constructs/beliefs, this is called confirmation bias which is the tendency to interpret
new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
But the connections we create do not stop on things like nations, religions, skin
color etc but can be even bigger, to the entire species, yes most people are
connected with the entire humanity but it is a small and fragile connection that can
easily be cut if they choose that x person or x group of people is “unworthy”. That is
one of the reasons people can be empathetic towards others even though that
person could be living on the other side of the planet and they are seeing him only
through a television or computer, a reason as to why we care about others because
it is clear that the moment people decide someone is a “bad person” they will
immediately cut the connection and wish him death or worse as if that person is no
longer human.
We have seen this happen million times, criminals, pedophiles and to all sorts of
people who did something wrong, you would see people from caring about everyone
to cutting down the connection they have with such people and revealing enormous
levels of hate and bigotry towards them even though they might not even know the
person, that display of such emotion and hate definitely suggests something is
happening and based on my previous points it could suggest that the people want to
believe that humans are nice and caring people, most of us at least, they have
45. 45
created this construct/belief in their head that says that and also includes
themselves so technically they do want to believe they are nice and caring people,
and when they see a person hurting someone else or being everything they despise
that belief of theirs in their head is assaulted, it is THREATENED because it is proof
that what they want to believe is wrong and that is possibly the real reason behind
all this hate and bigotry towards anyone who is a criminal and did something wrong.
I am not defending the criminals or people who are hated like that, but the fact
that people care so deeply as to openly hate and say incredibly negative things is
something that we should be looking at because people shouldn't be getting this
emotional over an event that might be on the other side of the earth.
With that being said we can clearly see that we as humans, want to believe that
we are good and nice because we are part of humanity and we unconscionably have
connected ourselves with it yet the fact of the matter is that we simply cannot know
all of humanity to believe something like that, we don’t even know a big percentage
of the entire population to have realistic data about such things, yet we choose to
believe in such an illogical unrealistic belief. And that is why I before this chapter I
said that “I am afraid saying that is letting my own hopes for humanity interfere with
my realistic world views.”.
The students that took part in the Stanford prison experiment fell for the same
trap, they believed they were nice and good human beings but were utterly
surprised when they show what they were capable of doing when they were given
authority. And the fact that we like to believe in unrealistic “romantic” ideas is
shown perfectly in the Milgram experiment.
46. 46
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social
psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of
occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who
instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. The
experiments began in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale
University three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf
Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the
popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million
accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all
accomplices?".
The experiment had three people in it, the
researcher who was the authority figure [E] that
would instruct the volunteer [T] to administer
47. 47
specific levels of electric shock to the person L who is actually an actor pretending to
be hurt by the electric shock. The researcher would tell the volunteer to administer a
specific number of volts of electric shock to the actor which could be up to a massive
450-volt shock. The volts would gradually increase in order to see when would the
volunteer refuse to administer the shock that was demanded because it would go
against his conscience. The actor would after certain shocks start acting like he was
seriously hurt, he would ask for mercy and point out how painful his suffering was,
the researcher though would demand from the volunteer to keep administering the
shocks, each time bigger than the one before it.
Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University
senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical
volunteers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of
teachers (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100) would be prepared to inflict the
maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they,
too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock. Milgram
also polled forty psychiatrists from a medical school, and they believed that by the
tenth shock, when the victim demands to be free, most subjects would stop the
experiment. They predicted that by the 300-volt shock, when the victim refuses to
answer, only 3.73 percent of the subjects would still continue and, they believed that
"only a little over one-tenth of one percent of the subjects would administer the
highest shock on the board.
Yet the result shocked all of them, his experiment ended with 65 percent (26 of
40) of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt
48. 48
shock and for confirmation Milgram and other psychologists performed variations of
the experiment throughout the world, with similar results.
All these people, including reputable intelligent scientist failed to anticipate the
accurate and correct result of this experiment, because all of the unsconsiously
wanted to believe humanity and themselves by extension are better than this, yet
reality proved them all wrong. This is a great example that showcases how even the
most intelligent of people can fall victimto their own nature and create false
unrealistic beliefs, and if said beliefs are divisive and can lead to conflict, things
become far far worse. So yes, to come back to my initial point, I don’t believe we
have enough people willing to go against authority and speak up against the abuse
people suffer under authority figures such as captains or officers no matter how
romantic it would be to believe most of us would do that when we would see it
happen.
My Approach
So with all the things about human nature and behavior that I have pointed out I
have painted quite a dark image of this world and the species upon it to the point
that it might look our nature cannot be escaped even when we try to be good.
My first and foremost goal would be to use the knowledge I have over our
human nature to control it and not let it cause conflict and problems to other for my
own sort term emotional profit, one of the simplest examples of this would be
during tight situations where an officer or even a captain is unable to control all the
variables and does not feel in control of the situation and that could easily lead the
49. 49
person to lash out on others as a form of taking back some form of control. That not
only damages the view the crew has of you but also can make them want to avoid
you and be uncomfortable around you, so first you have to be able to have control
over yourself and your own behavior.
Now personally if I were a Captain throughout my experience on board vessels I
know very well that from the moment the current Captain resigns and asks for a
replacement the crew starts being a little more uneasy, there are discussions about
who the captain might be, who is a good captain and who is a bad one and everyone
is trying to fish for information about the new captain from the officers. That is
happening because even now the captain has tremendous effect on the psychology
of the crew and the ship’s climate, a good captain will create a perfect friendly
productive climate while a bad captain would create a more paranoid and quite or
scared climate even before he arrives on the ship. On the other hand if the current
captain is terrible and the new one is known to be good there is a more hopeful and
happy climate.
Unlike what many captains like to believe, they are judged by the crew below
them and the crew has every right to have a positive or negative opinion of them
because the way they feel and act is directly related to his management skills, if the
crew does not work well and they don’t enjoy the climate then their opinion that the
captain is bad is quite credible contrary to the popular belief among captains that
“Only other captains can judge me”.
So with that in mind first impressions are paramount, the moment I would board
the vessel I would be smiling and look approachable and friendly so the crew can feel
50. 50
that I am that kind of captain and spread this information to the rest of the crew
when they meet for break in order to create a more hopeful and happy atmosphere.
It would be best to carry my own bags in order to show that I don’t send the crew for
minor tasks only for your own convenience and am able to do my own work when
needed as well as stop anyone who could be trying to suck up to me a lot.
Once I get in the ship and arrive to the main office I would focus on greeting
everyone around before moving to ask about the current loading operation and
work details because I wouldn't want them to think I am someone obsessed with
hard work. After that me and the other captain would move to the office to discuss
about the handover procedures and things that would need to be done before I
would take control.
Because the climate during cargo operations is a little hectic and everyone is in a
rush there wouldn't be much time for formal meetings with the crew so after the we
would depart from the port, and unless there was some job that was extremely
important I would call that day a break so the crew can relax after their hard work
during the cargo operation but stating clearly that this is happening because is
something I do always when I take command of the vessel for the first day and it isn't
something that will be happening after every port departure.
During that day I would call everyone on board the ship on the bridge, that
includes officers and the lower crew together in one room in order to give the sense
that I do not value the officers more than the rest of the crew. In that meeting my
goal would be to inform all of the crew of my work ethic, my beliefs about how we
should work and how I intend to run the ship in order to help them understand what
51. 51
my goals are as well as tell them that that I believe in fairness and that I will always
be open if they need me for something.
More importantly I would focus on dispelling possible stereotypes about me due
to previous authoritative captains and inform them that I am not like them and my
focus would be in making everyone be happy and work together as an effective team
and I would specifically point out that I would not tolerate any form of power abuse
and that if they believe someone with power often an officer is mistreating them,
then they should come to me and inform me about it and what happened. The
feelings of the crew are not wrong, they are caused by something and that is why
people should be open about their feelings in order to talk about them and find the
root of their problem.
Of course after that I would need to remain on my course and not do anything
that could go against what I said and make me look hypocritical, so it will be
paramount for cases that are more “grey” to inform them of my reasoning and why I
do the things I do at the moment of my action so the crew member that will have to
carry out that task I asked will inform the others and anyone who has a doubt about
the task I asked to be completed, in time that helps the crew build trust with you so
in times that require fast action the crew would trust you and do what you asked for
knowing you have a very good reason for your choice.
And when I require someone to do a task for me I would always try to use words
like, “please”, “could you”, “would you” in order to make it feel like less like a
command and more like an informal request, and if I am doing my job right then the
person that I told that will happily try to do what I asked not because it was a
52. 52
command but because he feels happy that he is helping me and wants to be helpful
to a person like me.
In time this kind of behavior will build a certain reputation among the fleet of
your company and when you are about to go to a ship the climate will be even better
the moment you arrive because some members of the crew will have experience
with you and will spread their experience they had with you to the rest of the crew
that doesn't know you.
Of course that is just my current view on how an effective manager/captain
should act, some things could change throughout my experience as an officer but I
believe I have a very good starting template for this job.
Bibliography
"Personal Construct Theory" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 June 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.
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Kendra, Cherry. “What is Personal Construct Theory” Verywell, About,
Inc., 09 may 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.
"Stanford Prison Experiment" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 September 2016. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.
"Milgram Experiment" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc. 23 September 2016. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.
The Stanford Prison Experiment. Dir. Kyle Patrick Alvarez. Perf. Billy
Crudup, Michael Angarano, Moises Arias, Nicholas Braun, Gaius Charles,
Logan Miller, Nelsan Ellis. Amazon.com, 17 November 2015
