Workplace communication and teamwork are essential to pilots and their crew. When everything is going right workplace communication in the cockpit of an airliner is not so important, but when things start to go wrong it is omnipotent. Consider if you will the perfect flight gone wrong; consider bad weather, heavy traffic, in flight equipment failure and poor visibility.

All these factors add up and make things more difficult. You can ask any NTSB crash scene investigator and they will tell you that aircraft accidents happen through a comedy of errors. It is not just one thing that brings down an airliner or an aircraft and generally workplace communication or cockpit miscommunication plays at least some of the blame.

Workplace communication skills are not just essential to an efficiently run office building. When you're flying in an aircraft you are playing for keeps and workplace communication is key.

Any military aviator will also tell you the same thing. During the heat of the battle or in a wartime situation communication can also mean life or death.

These professional pilots both in the military and the commercial sector take this very seriously and if you consider this point philosophically you can see how high the stakes are made in workplace communication, which can cost the company money and the destroy the efficiency of the team, when work place communication leads to animosity or miss communication. I certainly hope you will consider this in 2006.