Book Image

Flow-based Leadership: What the Best Firefighters can Teach You about Leadership and Making Hard Decisions

By : Judith L. Glick-Smith Ph.D
Book Image

Flow-based Leadership: What the Best Firefighters can Teach You about Leadership and Making Hard Decisions

By: Judith L. Glick-Smith Ph.D

Overview of this book

There comes a day when we have to make a tough decision under stress. That decision might change the course of our life. Flow-Based Leadership helps you improve your decision-making skills through the use of some great real-life stories of firefighters. The book first introduces the feeling called ‘flow’—teaching by example its importance in decision-making. Next, you’ll explore various techniques to initiate flow in critical situations and how to respond when flow doesn’t occur as expected. You will learn how to implement flow-based decision making and flow based-leadership within personal and professional circumstances. You will next encounter an extreme, experiential training program called Georgia Smoke Diver (GSD), and how it helps special military forces like Navy Seals and Army Rangers to maintain a calm focus in chaotic situations. Towards the end, the book uses the GSD program to describe the flow-based organizational framework and how it can be integrated into your life and workplace to achieve better decision-making skills. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use flow-based leadership in your personal and professional life maintain clarity and confidence under duress.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Spreading the Good Word

The GSD program is not just for Georgia firefighters. There are quite a few out-of-state members. However, this wasn’t always the case. Only recently has the program allowed firefighters from outside of Georgia into the class. This policy changed when David Rhodes was hired to manage the logistics at the Fire Department Instructors’ Conference (FDIC) in Indianapolis every year. As time went on, other Georgia Smoke Divers began to assist in the logistics effort. They would wear their GSD t-shirts while working at FDIC. This got the attention of Captain Matt Stewart, of the Wayne Township, Indiana, Fire Department, who was assigned to be the local logistics connection.

Indiana Smoke Diver Program

Stewart became friends with the Georgia Smoke Divers while working with them at FDIC. He was impressed with their work ethic and their strong sense of community. Stewart asked Rhodes about the program. Rhodes told him this was a Georgia program that...