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)

Conclusion

Either consciously or subconsciously, people naturally seek out flow experiences in their lives. Being in a flow state makes one feel authentic, giving the feeling that one is working at his or her highest potential. This is the essence of why flow matters. The stories collected in my research demonstrated a positive correlation between being in a flow state and making appropriate decisions. However, that correlation is dependent on training, preparation, and experience.

The firefighters I spoke with related that being in a flow state actually enhanced their abilities to respond appropriately. Training, preparation, and experience are staples in public service in varying degrees. The more leadership commits to training and preparation, the more likely the leader’s team will experience flow when the situation warrants it.

There is a great deal of discussion in public service about situational awareness. Being consciously aware of your surroundings, of yourself...