1. Overview
LIVINGSTONE, Grant H.; LIVINGSTONE, George H. Shiphandling, the Beautiful Game — Volume 1. London: The Nautical Institute, 2025. Chapter 12 — Managing professional conduct (ego; managing conflict and 'meeting half-way'; taking the con and early intervention; challenge versus question and the PACE model; psychological safety and emotional intelligence; the early-intervention simulation study; situational awareness; passive/active listening; professional observer; conclusion).
Anexo 2-B, Seção VII (Conhecimentos Gerais), item VII.6 — LIVINGSTONE v.1, Caps. 1, 3, 11, 12 (Cap. 12 prescrito). Anexo 2-A, Seção VII — fatores humanos: conduta profissional, gestão de conflito, comunicação no passadiço (BRM/CRM), consciência situacional.
There is no place for poor conduct on the bridge of a ship. Conducting ourselves professionally is far more than good manners: unchecked poor conduct is reckless and frequently produces human-error accidents. Operating the largest — and smallest — floating objects on the planet demands a professionalism that checks and regulates uncontrolled emotions. The first practical step is self-awareness: understanding our own emotional triggers so that unprofessional conduct can be caught before it influences a manoeuvre.
The chapter moves from the individual to the team: it starts with ego as an obstacle to good decisions, works through managing conflict between Master and pilot, examines when and how to take the con, reframes "challenge" as "question", and closes on the team disciplines that hold it all together — situational awareness, listening and professional observation. The unifying thesis: managing emotions and pressure is as fundamental to shiphandling as managing wind and current.
2. Ego and Managing Conflict
2.1 Ego
Ego is a major obstacle to effective decision-making. Experienced shiphandlers advise putting aside pride and ego to reach the best options and decide objectively. Knowing one's emotional state, and choosing to stay calm through self-awareness, prepares the handler to absorb the stress that critical decisions carry.
2.2 Conflict Is Disagreement Fuelled by Emotion
Disagreements are natural and expected. Conflict is simply unresolved disagreement fuelled by escalating emotion — and emotion tends to displace or distort facts. The chapter's governing rule is therefore short: facts, stripped of emotion, are the key to resolving conflict. The illustration is a Master–pilot dispute on a final approach to a dock: one believed the ship would clear an obstruction, the other did not; the disagreement continued until the ship hit it.
The recommended discipline is to replace opinion with verifiable fact. If the Master doubts the ship will clear, the Master must speak up — not with an opinion but with a measured statement the pilot can immediately check against instruments.
Example of a fact-based intervention: "Pilot, the ECDIS projection shows the ship is not going to clear the obstruction. According to the ECDIS we will hit the obstruction in X ship lengths. We either need to stop the ship or increase our rate of turn dramatically. According to the ECDIS and radar, we have 7 cables and X minutes to execute."
Presented with facts, a conscientious pilot looks at the ECDIS and radar while the Master takes distances off the bow and stern; the new information corrects a positive bias and the pilot adjusts speed or rate of turn to clear. The hard case is when the other party does not respond to the facts: voices rise, emotions heighten, and the exchange turns confrontational — all of it recorded.
2.3 Meeting Half-Way
At the point of escalation the prescription is to put egos aside, take a breath, call a timeout and restate only the facts as calmly and quickly as possible — at minimum agreeing to stop or slow the ship and reassess. "Meeting half-way" is borrowed from aviation, where it has prevented catastrophes when pilot and co-pilot could not reconcile: being half-correct often averts the catastrophic outcome of being 100 percent wrong. Where professional opinion is the only option left, agreeing to meet in the middle may be the last chance to avert a collision or allision.
The legal backstop remains the Master's: the Master must step in and, if necessary, take the con — though that may be impractical if the ship is already in extremis, and is a great deal to expect mid-manoeuvre, in a foreign port and unfamiliar language. That difficulty is precisely why learning to meet half-way is paramount, and why it can be built into routine simulator training and role-play.
3. Taking the Con
The scenario: you are the Master, the pilot has the con, and the manoeuvre is not going well. That alone does not mean it will end badly — most manoeuvres do not end in accidents. With an estimated 55,000-plus ships at sea at any moment, each leg of a voyage producing one berthing and one unberthing, roughly 110,000 such manoeuvres occur over short periods, and only a tiny fraction become accidents. But accidents are often preceded by manoeuvres going wrong, so the question stands: should the Master take the con?
Taking the con is a shiphandling decision with a timing trap on both sides. Wait too long and the Master may be taking over when allision or collision is already unavoidable; take over too early and the Master may be hijacking a manoeuvre that was going to end well. The book's stance is that we would rather be early than late — yet earliness brings its own complications and near-misses, so how to intervene matters as much as when.
4. Challenging versus Questioning
If early intervention makes sense, how is it best implemented? Many shoreside management policies tell the Master to "challenge the pilot, and challenge often" — and vice versa. But in the Master–pilot relationship, "challenge and challenge often" easily provokes confrontational, emotional responses. A short word study shows "challenge" is closely kin to "confrontation" and often elicits a negative reaction that hinders communication.
Current assertiveness training uses the Five-Step Assertiveness technique and the PACE model. Two observations matter: PACE does not begin with challenge — challenge is only the third step — and within PACE "challenge" means stating the problem assertively and unequivocally, though many mariners hear it as "confront."
| PACE step | Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Probe | P | Question — ask to clarify. |
| Alert | A | State the problem. |
| Challenge | C | State the solution directly (third step — not the start). |
| Emergency | E | Take the con and execute the solution. |
The authors' recommendation: when not in extreme circumstances — about 95 percent of the time — Masters and pilots should read "challenge and challenge often" as "question and question often." A Master who says "Pilot, I don't understand the manoeuvre" invites "What don't you understand?", and "Pilot, I am very nervous" invites "Why are you nervous?"; turning either question into a challenge instead makes the average pilot defensive, surprised and distracted from the number-one priority, safely manoeuvring the vessel. The book notes that Masters and pilots internationally report challenges as often confrontational — flagged as an element for future BRM study (see The Nautical Institute's Bridge Resource Management Volume 1: The human element, 2025).
| Aspect | "Challenge" framing | "Question" framing |
|---|---|---|
| Kinship of the word | Close to "confrontation"; often heard as "confront." | Neutral request for clarification. |
| Typical response | Pilot becomes defensive, surprised, distracted. | Pilot answers and stays focused ("What don't you understand?"). |
| Recommended use | Reserved for extreme circumstances (≈5% of the time). | Default mode — "question and question often" (≈95% of the time). |
Underpinning this is psychological safety — the shared belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with questions, concerns or mistakes. In a psychologically safe bridge, members admit errors and ask for help, raising creativity and performance. Leaders build it by encouraging open communication, actively listening and responding positively. The best captains the authors sailed with combined management skill, emotional intelligence and self-awareness — the four EI skills being self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skills — and used early warning signs to act early.
4.1 The Early-Intervention Simulation Study
The authors researched and tested training in early intervention between Master and pilot (Du et al, 2021), using simulations of real incidents, berths and conditions near or beyond operational limits. The pilot conning was instructed neither to sabotage nor to save the manoeuvre — the object was to test the Master's response: would the Master act early to avoid needing the con, and if not, take the con non-confrontationally in time to stop or bale out?
On the first runs, even veteran Masters lost situational awareness just enough to end in collision: under pressure, awareness erodes. After debriefs focused on situational awareness and on setting and communicating safe limits of speed, direction and position early — during the Master–pilot exchange — all Masters succeeded in the following runs. In the second series they gave the pilot facts only and clear operational limits; when the (instructed) pilot took no action and the limits were breached, the Master took the con and executed the rudder and engine orders to stop the ship, with no raised voices.
Lessons learned through the simulation exercises: a cool head in extreme situations requires practice; early action and clear communication are needed to circumvent taking the con; Master and pilot should listen to the emotion behind the other's words; calm behaviour can be as contagious as panic; both parties should take time out to breathe; "you"-phrased messages are best avoided; and both should identify common mission goals, assuming positive intent — no one wants the manoeuvre to go badly.
5. Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is a key decision-making skill, especially when quick, accurate action is required. It answers three questions: what is happening, what does it mean, and what is going to happen next? Crucially, it is not an individual task but a collective one — to achieve it, personnel use every sense (vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste) plus intuition built on learning and experience.
New navigation systems — the integrated bridge system, ECDIS, AIS, radar and more — were introduced to lower the risk of human error and have improved shipping safety, and seafarers must adjust and learn to use them properly. But they must not harm the mariner's role on non-autonomous ships, and they must not become distractions and should be suitable for their purpose: not being distracted by technology is the individual mariner's professional responsibility. To keep awareness intact, tasks are shared so that someone is always on the lookout and sees the whole picture.
6. Listening and Professional Observation
6.1 Passive Listening
Excellent listening is a core shiphandling tool. The handler must multitask — concentrating on shiphandling orders while monitoring and vetting every communication: traffic, the ship's radios, calls to the ship, calls between nearby ships, and bridge-to-bow-to-stern and deck-crew exchanges. Passive listening is monitoring all of this without necessarily responding, using triage to decide quickly what needs immediate action (a ship arranging a passing, an assist tug or mate asking for instructions, an engineer reporting a problem). Most messages need only an acknowledgement, but all must be heard so the action-critical ones are not missed. The skill is likened to hearing through each ear independently and takes much practice.
6.2 Active Listening
Just as important, active listening means giving the speaker undivided attention to fully grasp and remember their meaning — whether arranging a passing with another vessel or a tug, or in Master–pilot and crew communications. It is the CRM principle of "thinking aloud" to ensure a shared mental model. Asking questions aids understanding; the best way to confirm you heard someone is to repeat what they said, which also commits it to memory. Verbally clarifying and double-checking every order should be habitual, and questions from the bridge team, crew and tugs should be encouraged.
6.3 The Professional Observer
Excellent shiphandlers observe so well that little gets past them. The professional observer remembers detail, scans horizons, decks, channels, berths and assist tugs, builds mental pictures of current conditions and files them away, notes discrepancies that do not fit, takes early preventative action to correct or adjust, then takes fresh mental pictures and cycles through the process again.
7. Conclusion
Half a century ago it was common for Masters to handle their own ships, and shiphandling skill was the professional standard. Changes in ship size, technology and liability have left many Masters well behind that curve. The tradition of the Master handling the ship has changed; the Master's legal responsibility for the safe manoeuvre has not. Size and liability may keep Masters from routinely berthing their vessels, but that does not relieve them of the knowledge without which they cannot fulfil their legal obligation to oversee the manoeuvre.
This volume is deliberately not a comprehensive shiphandling study; its goal was to illuminate areas that have changed, been displaced, or would benefit from new study, drawn from questions Masters and mariners shared in interviews and surveys. Its central insight is that successful shiphandling depends on much more than shiphandling skill — it depends on managing fundamentals, strategic thinking, effective commands, managing pressure and much more. Indeed, managing emotions and pressure is as important as managing speed, momentum, wind and current. What is conspicuously missing from conversation and study on ships at sea and between professional mariners is the debilitating effect of negative emotions — anger, fear, panic, anxiety — which, by tradition, ego, liability and fear, mariners do not discuss, having normalised such behaviour as a condition of life at sea. These emotions are natural and helped humans survive, but ignored or hidden they become long-term issues.
"But, ignored or hidden, these emotions can become long-term issues, blocking access for opportunities to learn and grow personally and professionally." Understanding emotions and pressure is as foundational to shiphandling as understanding wind and current.