Design of a Tool to Explore the Relationship Between Non-technical Skills and Resilience Capabilities

Abstract

Non-technical skills (NTS) training is an important part of frontline operator training across many high-risk domains. Within maritime education and training (MET), NTS are trained as part of Maritime Resource Management (MRM) courses. MRM represents the maritime adaptation of the original crew resource management training from the aviation domain. While the ambition of resource management training is to enhance team performance, research reports a strong focus on the assessment and measurement of NTS on an individual level, not always taking the team as unit of analysis into concern. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to a critical discussion of the relationship between NTS and team performance. It explores how to potentially analyze the relationship between NTS and experiences of operational resilience an presents an attempt to operationalize NTS and resilience cornerstones (REC) in a questionnaire for maritime trainees. While the questionnaire focuses on the maritime domain, the lessons learned from the construction of items may guide the development of further operationalization in other high-risk domains.