Flow-Based Leadership Empowers Others
As we have seen in these stories, flow-based leadership is amorphous. It might be autocratic one minute, and collaborative or transformative the next. When executed with grace, humility, courage, and an outward focus, it instills trust and respect in followers, and empowers followers to be leaders themselves by example. This way of being demonstrates and encourages ethical character.77
Helen Graham‘s commitment to the establishment of a national policy on how firefighters are treated when they receive burns while fighting wildland fires has resulted in the empowerment of firefighters in the field. In one instance, when a firefighter received severe burns to his foot, the captain of his hotshot crew asked Graham if they needed to follow the new protocol, which was to transfer the injured firefighter from the rural hospital to an approved regional burn center. Graham said, “Yes, you do.”
“The captain knows me and...