Work-Life Balance

Question two.As a pilot or manager, how do you develop emotional and adaptive intelligence in a high-pressure environment?

Answer A: by example.B: through training.C: through experience.

D: the Joker.Well, in this one, there's an answer I really like and that I try to apply in my daily life,and that is: leading by example.

I'll go with A: by example.All three first ones are true, but I'll choose the Joker.

You're talking about how we can do all of this within an activity.

Why did I choose the Joker for this dimension of adaptive emotional intelligence? For me, it's all the same thing.

The technical environments in which I operate — it's better to talk about adaptive intelligence, because when you talk about emotion, it's as if there's a little taboo around the subject of emotion.

But we are emotional beings and an emotion helps us adapt.

Except we grew up in environments that led us to code our emotions — and so we sweep them under the rug.

But when you have an emotion under the rug, you trip over the rug.

So the idea is really to understand that an emotion has a function.

It's there to tell us that we need to adapt to a situation.

So if we sweep it under the rug, we miss the opportunity to understand the need hidden behind the emotion.

Why did I take the Joker?Because of course, there are training programs to develop emotional intelligence, adaptive intelligence.

There are plenty of things you can do.But what I want to say is that what is most effective is what you do every day.

It's what you integrate into your daily routine that will make you a permanent self-learner.

And in aviation, almost intuitively — without necessarily having conceptualized it — we have put in place tools that are dedicated time-spaces for stepping back and reflecting, for animating collective intelligence, in order to then make a decision, act, anticipate, review.

Most of the managers I encounter or come across became managers by circumstance.

As we were saying earlier: you're very good operationally,so you become a manager — but you don't necessarily have all the self-knowledge that comes with it.

For me, as humans, we learn through imitation — and I find that really beautiful in this concept of: we see, we admire.

There are people who have marked and shaped our lives, and we try to become like that person.

There's also something very important in this leading-by-example dimension:the fact that that example can be positive or negative, and that a manager's awareness of their role and of the opinion and impact they will have on the people they manage must be very strong, because we are going to shape people, we are going to shape professionals, we are going to shape lives in a certain way.

We spend a lot of time at work.Particularly through example, because I draw on my past experiences.

I think that as human beings, we already learn through imitation.

From childhood, we learn a language through imitation.

We don't study grammar formally — we don't say: Baby, actually,you didn't conjugate the verbs correctly.

It really is imitation.For me, as a human being, we learn through imitation, and I find that really beautiful in this concept of: we see, we admire.

There are people who have marked and shaped our lives, and we try to become like that person.

There's also something very important in this leading-by-example dimension:the fact that that example can be positive or negative, and that the awareness of a manager in their role and the opinion and impact they will have on the people they manage must be very significant — because we will shape people, we will shape professionals, we will shape lives in a certain way.

We spend a lot of time at work.Question three.In high-responsibility environments such as aviation or management, which performance factor is still too often underestimated today?