“Attitudes speak louder than words”, as emphasised by Capt. Ed Verbeek in his article “BRM – back to the future?” published in Seaways, January 2019 edition. In the article, Capt. Verbeek, one of the first certified BRM Workshop Leaders, reflects on BRM and its development some 25 years after his initiation into “the wonderful world of BRM”.
The objectives and training concept of BRM (or MRM if you prefer) have not changed since BRM was launched in 1993. The focus remains on attitudes and behaviour and not on knowledge and skills, as opposed to technical training. The BRM/MRM facilitator should not teach and instruct, the facilitator should just lead the discussions so the participants find out for themselves what are appropriate behaviours in different situations. The participants should do most of the talking and if the voice of the facilitator is heard the majority of the time, “it might indicate that something is going wrong”.
Capt. Verbeek is worried that today’s BRM course has become “just another course” and deviated from how it was originally conceived. To put it on track again, we need to look back at the founding principles of the course.
To read the whole article, please click here or on the photo below. (The article is uploaded by kind permission and courtesy of Seaways.)
