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)

Leadership Structure

The structure of the GSD organization is very flat. The Board of Elders makes the strategic decisions for the organization. They solicit and encourage continuous input from the membership. There is a nomination and election process used to fill vacancies on the Board of Elders.

In 2013, the Board of Elders decided to add the level of deacon in recognition of longtime members of the organization who have demonstrated commitment to the program.

Everyone who has completed the class is a lead instructor, instructor, or intern instructor. Instructors continue to learn and must complete specific instructor training with each succeeding class. Intern instructors shadow instructors and lead instructors, and participate in instruction with greater and greater responsibilities with each class they attend.