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)

Communicate

Millsap was a master communicator. GSD leaders often play the video of one of the last speeches he gave, which expresses his thoughts about what it means to lead. This serves to communicate Millsap’s vision for the program, even though he is no longer around to implement it. His vision is sound, outward facing, and something that resonates in those who hear it.

Communication is the master key to successful, effective leadership. Communication permeates every aspect of leadership, whether it involves communicating with those who report to you, communicating with peers, or communicating with those to whom you report. Communication can be verbal or non-verbal; it can be face to face, or it can happen across communication systems. Communication is how we convey information from one person to another. For example, we use it to praise, show respect, reprimand, give instructions, show love, and convey intention.

How information is communicated can depend on many...