Toxic Masters: The Bully on the Bridge

Published Dec 4, 2014 7:30 PM by The Maritime Executive

Op-Ed by Bob Couttie, Marine Accident Casebook (MAC)

Recently an account from a former master of a close encounter that under other circumstances could have led to a collision sent MAC scrambling to Google to find out what information was available on toxic leadership at sea resulting in an accident.

There were precisely five results, out of a potential of 132,000 hits on maritime accidents and of those one the top of the list was MAC’s post on the Maria M incident and the IMO model course on leadership and teamwork. That drilling into the remaining three results produced nothing on maritime accidents and toxic leadership suggests that it is an under researched area of maritime safety.

A member of MAC’s LinkedIn maritime accident investigation group provided this account of a close call:

“…we were passing Manila and second mate calls me just after midnight to the bridge were I was informed vessel was overtaking us but CPA was 0.0 using AIS we identified ship and called asking what their intention was. The mate on overtaking ship advised us that he had strict instructions not to deviate from RED line. When I asked him if he was aware that we will collide in 15 minutes he reiterated that he must stay on the red line and the captain does not like being called to the bridge after midnight. I asked him if he was aware of his obligations under Colregs as an overtaking vessel. He recited them verbatim but was still not prepared to deviate from the RED line.

The vessel in question was a tanker and I am sure this is not an isolated case.

MAC enquired further with the following response: “I remember the conversation clearly. He made a decision to alter course by 2 degrees, I informed him his action will delay the collision by 5 min and unless he alters course by at least 15 degrees until clear, I would make sure the (certification) authorities are made aware of his actions and the master’s standing orders. He made the alteration and then proceeded to cut across my bow to get back to the red line I assume.”

Basically, chief officer was more afraid of upsetting his vessel’s master than he was of a catastrophic collision. When a subordinate is so obedient he’d prefer to be obedient and knowingly risk the vessel and crew than question orders that endanger the ship, that’s a case of toxic leadership.

One often thinks of ‘poor leadership’ as weak, ineffectual leadership, a master who does not keep his crew in line, for example. Toxic leadership is, in many ways worse because the toxic masters appear to be, well, masterful, in charge, at least to those that hire them. Toxic leadership is a poison that hides itself in expectations.

IMO’s model course on leadership and teamwork says: “(toxic leaders) abuse the leader-follower relationship.

“Common traits of toxic leadership are:

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Callous/lack of empathy
Shallow emotional affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.
Many are authoritarian (control freaks) tending to use micro-management, over-management and management by fear.
Micromanagers usually dislike a subordinate making decisions without consulting them, regardless of the level of authority or factual correctness.

“A toxic leader can be hypercritical of others in trying to hide their own faults. They can also be both frightening and psychologically stressful to work with.”

Toxic masters bully and brag while demolishing team coherence and initiative.

Consider this: “the master was a man with authority and a commanding presence who, on at least two occasions, called someone on the bridge an idiot. Consciously or unconsciously, the Italian master with his authority did obviously not take in the information and knowledge from his … officers about the equipment on the bridge.”

That was not the master of the Costa Concordia, it was the master of the Maria M.

Toxic leaders are often admired: Captain Fredrik Van Wijnen, the general secretary of the Confederation of European Shipmasters’ Associations says of the master of Costa Concordia: “The biggest problem is not his seamanship, it’s his personality. He has come over as a bit of a playboy and a joker. He’s not. He’s a very capable seafarer.”

Toxic masters are a personality problem, one that seems largely unaddressed within the industry. When an instructor at a maritime training facility asked a master what he would do if a junior officer challenged a decision the response was: “That would be the last time he’d be on my bridge”.

There are a lot of toxic masters out there and they poison every bridge they stand on.

Bob Couttie has been involved in communicating maritime safety issues for more than a decade. He has administered Maritime Accident Casebook since its launch in 2007. He is also an ambassador for the CHIRP/NI MARS joint reporting project.

Source: Maritime Accident Casebook