The cadet is watching

The cadet you dismissed today may one day be a Master or Chief Engineer. What are they learning from you?

How to handle a mistake. How to question something unsafe. How to treat the person with the least experience aboard. Those lessons are being taught alongside every technical task.

An officer who explains a decision is showing a cadet what good judgement looks like. An officer who hides an error is teaching a different lesson. The cadet can observe both long before they are competent to carry the same responsibility.

Name the behaviour you need to change

Using a phone during a safety-critical task, ignoring an instruction, making a careless entry and failing to prepare are behaviours to address. Describe the action, explain the consequence and set the standard for the next attempt. Calling an entire age group useless adds no useful instruction.

Experience also changes how we interpret a question. To someone who has carried out a task for years, the reason may seem obvious. To a person seeing that system for the first time, it may be missing. A question can reveal the gap before the cadet fills it with an assumption.

There are times when an immediate instruction must be followed to control danger. Explain that expectation clearly. Return to the reason when the situation allows. The distinction between an urgent command and a routine teaching opportunity is itself something a new seafarer must learn.

Correction has to leave something behind

After a mistake, a useful conversation establishes what happened, what the expected action was and how the cadet will practise it safely. Ask them to explain the next attempt. Understanding becomes easier to assess when somebody describes the job in their own words.

A training record signed without observing the task leaves the next officer with an unreliable picture of competence. Progress should reflect what the person has demonstrated. Honest limits help supervisors decide which work requires closer supervision.

The STCW framework places standards around training and competence. Amendments in force from January 2026 also introduce competence concerning the prevention of and response to violence and harassment, including bullying. ^[1] That is a clear signal that professional conduct belongs within maritime training. It cannot be left entirely to the personality of whoever happens to supervise a cadet.

The first response sets the next report

When a cadet raises a concern that turns out to be mistaken, explain the finding. Thanking someone for speaking up can coexist with correcting their understanding. CHIRP's safety learning discusses how a steep authority gradient can make questioning difficult, and encourages leaders to make it easier for concerns to be raised. ^[2]

This does not give a cadet authority they have not earned. The officer retains responsibility for the decision. It gives the team a better chance of hearing information before it disappears into silence.

A cadet also has work to do: arrive prepared, follow instructions, use the manual, make accurate records and take feedback seriously. Teaching is demanding when effort is not reciprocated. Set those expectations explicitly and use the company's training process when progress remains poor.

What we hand over

Today's trainees will progress at different speeds. Some will leave the profession. Others will carry considerable responsibility afloat and ashore. No sensible argument needs a guaranteed promotion date to recognise that the quality of their training matters.

A company can support its officers with planned learning opportunities, realistic supervision and a way to resolve training problems. Leaving mentoring to spare moments makes it vulnerable to every competing demand of a busy ship.

For the individual officer, the next useful step is smaller. Choose one task. Establish what the cadet understands. Explain the standard, supervise the work and check what they can now do. The record should show the learning that actually occurred.

Most of us can remember an officer whose patience made a difficult subject clear. We can also remember the person we were afraid to approach. The cadet beside us is building those memories now. We have a say in which kind of officer they remember.