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)

Commit to a Stable Infrastructure

The very definition of an emergent situation refers to the sense of chaos and unpredictability on a moment-by-moment basis. Having a sound infrastructure enables the ability to focus on the changing environment without having to be concerned with tools, systems, and other operational aspects being in working order. Organizations cannot expect the best work of their people when the technology or the physical assets get in the way of efficiency.

In addition, people need to be trained to know what tools to use in a given situation. For example, firefighters need to be able to calculate water-flow throughput for the various nozzles and hoses at their disposal. In addition, they need to be able to recognize when the appropriate hose size should be used, based on fireground conditions. They need to know how to use the appropriate reporting systems, such as using the communication system to report fireground conditions, or using MS Word to write a report...