Monday, July 4, 2011

Is there a link between golf and firefighter safety?

Could playing golf improve your fireground situational awareness? One study seems to suggest so. While playing golf with his son, a neuroscience researcher began to contemplate the nexus between what it takes to achieve success on the golf course and how that might apply to firefighters.

After all, the principles of situational awareness should be universal, he hypothesized. What would this look like? Based on previous research he had conducted with firefighters, he already knew that situational awareness was developed and maintained on three levels:

Level 1: Capture the most critical clues and cues (not ALL… just the most critical ones).

Level 2: Process those clues and cues (perhaps melded together with some less important things that are being observed) to form an assessment of the current situation.

Level 3: Make predictions of future events, by running mental models (mental movies) of various outcomes. Pick the one that has the best possible outcome and put that plan into action.

He was on the third tee box when he had this revelation. Consciously he thought to himself: “What are the most important clues and cues I need to gather for this shot – Length of the hole, hazards to avoid, wind direction, best landing spot to set-up the next shot. That’s the short list he thought as he surveyed the landscape. (Level 1 Situational Awareness: Capture clues and cues).

Then he began to contemplate what all of those clues and cues meant when they were put together. The hole was a par 4 which meant it was too long for him to reach with his first shot so driving the green was out of the question (option eliminated). There was a lake running down the left side of the fairway (hazard to avoid). The right side of the fairway was relatively open with a few trees that could present a challenge if the ball were to land behind one of them. The wind was coming from right to left at about 5 mile-per-hour. This was valuable information because a high shot (with a lot of hang time) might cause the ball to drift toward the left (where the water hazard was). Based on these factors and the green/pin location, he determined the best landing spot would be somewhere on the right side of the fairway. (Level 2 Situational Awareness: Putting together all the clues and cues from Level 1 to assess the current situation.

Finally, a club selection had to be made based on all the previous factors. Would it be the driver? No, too risky. Would it be a 9-iron? No, not enough distance would be gained to allow for the green to be reached on his second shot. The researcher settled on his 5 iron and he took a couple of practice swings. For each practice swing, he imagined the club striking the ball perfectly and the trajectory of the ball leading it right to the intended landing zone. He had ran a mental model – making a prediction of the future (Level 3 Situaitonal Awareness: Projecting future outcomes).

As he was in the middle of his backswing… “FOOOOORRRRE!” came echoing across the fairway. But it was too late, he was mid-swing and while he heard the scream and knew that it meant there was an incoming ball from another golfer on the course, he could not stop the momentum of his swing (even though he knew he should). But the yodel, nonetheless, drew his conscious attention to the possibility of being struck by the wayward shot. He had been, effectively, distracted… one of the leading causes of lost situational awareness on the fireground had reared its ugly head on the #3 tee box.

{{{ Plunk }}} was the awful sound made as his ball landed in the lake on the left side of the fairway, just as the erratically struck ball from the other fairway rolled right up on to the very tee box the researcher stood on. The golfer/researcher was overwhelmed with frustration, both at himself and with the other golfer who had been so discourteous as to yell right in the middle of his backswing.

Once I calmed down... er... once he... HE calmed down, he realized that developing and maintaining situational awareness on the golf course is more like situational awareness on the fire scene than he had ever previously imagined.

If there were ever a reason to play more golf, this is it! Happy Independence Day.

Fire Chief (ret.), Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Golfer/Researcher
Chief Scientist, Public Safety Laboratory
Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com


P.S. I picked the ball up off the tee box, put it in my pocket, and considered it just compensation for my pain and suffering.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

The value of having a personal mission statement

The best way to predict your future is to create it. It has been proven over and over again that we move in the direction of our most dominate thoughts. If those thoughts are of pessimism and failure, we will behave in pessimistic ways and drift in the direction of failure. Our mental voice compels our actions.

Conversely, if our thoughts are of optimism and success, we will behave in optimistic ways and be compelled in the direction of success.

Think about the inner voice that is driving your thoughts… and actions. Like it or not, you have become exactly what you tell yourself you are. I doubt many successful people see themselves as failures. Likewise, there probably aren’t very many failures who see themselves as successful. If you don’t like where you are in life you can change it. Start with your mental programming.

An excellent first step is to develop a personal mission statement – a testimonial of who you are. Or perhaps better stated, the ideal self you want to be. State it in the presence tense and focus entirely on the positive aspects of who you are. Here’s an example:

I am a highly respected and successful ___________ (fill in the blank). I am well-respected by my peers and professional associates. I am a loving partner and parent who respects the individuality of my family members and support them wholeheartedly.

You get the idea. There’s no limit to the size of the statement. The number of elements should relate to the most important aspects of your life: Spirituality, family, vocation, health, interests, etc. It’s not necessary to put the items in priority order so long as you capture all of them. Some aspects of your personal mission statement may not represent who you are today. It’s more likely going to represent who you want to become. Some parts of it may represent who you are today, so long as that is who you want to be.

As you do this, write it down, print it out and post it in prominent places – on your refrigerator, on your bathroom mirror, on the dashboard of your car, on your computer terminal. While you should memorize your personal mission statement, you should also write it and read it out loud over and over again. This stimulates multiple senses. Writing it is tactile stimulation. Reading it is visual stimulation. Reading out loud is auditory stimulation. The more senses you stimulate the deeper the message will be seated into your subconscious memory.

Your positive self-talk will lead you in the direction of doing things that achieve your personal mission statement and, best of all, toward becoming the person you really want to become. The best way to predict your future is to create it and that starts with a personal mission statement that drives your actions.

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Seek first to understand...

Seek first to understand…

Here’s an exercise you can do at an officer’s meeting to help your supervisors improve their coaching skills. Give them the following scenario:

“You have a subordinate who is misbehaving. In one sentence, write how you would handle it.”

Then have each of the officers report out on what they would do. As each tells how they would handle it, keep score by putting a hash mark beside one of the following three categories (though don’t share the categories with them until all the answers have been given).

Tell-Inform-Instruct-Advise

Ask-Understand-Discuss-Learn

Unsure

All of the responses will fall into one of the three categories above and if your session is like most I facilitate in my leadership develop programs, you’ll see that most of the responses fall into the first category.

If that happens, you will have a teachable moment. The best officers/supervisors are those who seek first to understand, then to be understood (from Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

All too often an officer wants to jump right into the solution to the problem… telling… informing… instructing… and advising… usually with a healthy dose of threatened disciplinary action for non-compliance to the officer’s demands. Talk about the set-up for a bad coaching session.

The best officers seek to understand why the behavior is happening and then try to work with the subordinate to develop an action plan to improve the performance to meet the acceptable standards of the organization. That, my friends, is the set-up for success!

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Situational leadership: Using the right tool

How to handle a particular personnel situation is often the topic of interview questions for promotion. These can be difficult to answer because the question rarely contains all of the information needed to make a good decision. This can work to your advantage or to you disadvantage depending on how you choose to resolve the use.

In most cases, the short answer to how you’d respond to a personnel issue should be “It depends.” However, if you stop there you’re probably not going to score well on the interview. Take the response to the next step and share with the panel what it depends on. What are the critical criteria that are essential to evaluate to make a good decision.

Say “It depends on additional information that provides the critical criteria that would help me make a quality decision. In this scenario, that criteria would include…” and then list the things you would consider when evaluating the situation and how you would respond. There are many ways to handle problems and each scenario is dependent on the situation.

The best leaders have many tools in their toolbox to help them build and maintain successful organizations. If their only tool were a hammer, then every problem would look like a nail. If a hammer is your only tool, you’ll end up using the hammer on a board that needed a saw. This will cause you expend unneeded energy because you used the wrong tool. You may eventually shorten the board by beating it until it breaks. Obviously, there’s a better way to get the task complete. Use the right tool, at the right time, in the right way, under the right conditions. That’s situational leadership!

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Control your reactions

Many times throughout my career I have been in a position to promote (or not promote) firefighters into positions of leadership. Sometimes the decision was hard because I was blessed with a number of highly qualified candidates. Other times the decision was easy because I had one candidate who stood out among their peers.

In communicating the decision to the candidates who were not selected, I have noticed the bad news presents an opportunity for a reaction on their part. How they react to the bad news is what I want to address.

Some of the candidates reacted in a way that was so positive and professional that it actually made me regret that I did not promote them. I saw a level of maturity that was absolutely impressive. When I have witnessed this, I have gone out of my way to give this candidate personal time and attention to help ensure the next time I have an officer position open up, they will be the leading candidate. In the bad news I saw their potential shine.

Some candidates, on the other hand, reacted in a way that was so negative and so unprofessional that it confirmed to me that I had made the right decision. I saw a level of maturity that was very unimpressive. When I have witnessed this, I have assured myself that the right decision was made not to promote this person and affirmed this person will likely never be promoted to a position of leadership. A little bit of bad news caused them to self-destruct. That’s not the kind of leader I want on my team.

If things don’t go your way, maintain your professionalism and fashion a positive, supportive response, even if you have to fake it. Being a loser hurts but you should invest great effort in ensuring you use your pain to compel you to address your shortcomings and to become a better qualified leader. If you take that pain and decide someone needs to pay a price for the injustice you faced, your behavior will only affirm to the boss the right decision was made. You may not control what happens to you, but you are in complete control of how you react to what happens to you.

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Managing up the chain of command

Anyone, in any capacity in any organization can display the qualities of leadership. To be a leader is to influence others to see things in a different way or to use influence to compel change.

One of the best ways to influence change in an organization is to bump the ideas up the chain of command. How you do this will have a significant correlation to your success. Many bosses don't like their underlings telling them what they should be doing or what direction they should be leading the organization. So, best to avoid being so blunt with the boss.

A better approach is the soft sell. Wait for the time to be right and then float the idea past the boss. If you're really coy about it you can actually do this in such a way that the boss thinks the idea was his or hers. If you can do that, it's far more likely to get traction. If the idea doesn't take hold. Don't become too pushy. Rather, be patient and wait for another opportunity for the idea to be floated. This time you might say "The solution to this problem is very similar to the ideas we were talking about a few weeks ago." Notice... you don't say "MY idea..."

You'll be amazed how much you can get accomplished through your boss when you don't care who takes the credit. If you want a better organization, let go of the credit and let all your good ideas become your boss's ideas. With some finesse, it is possible to manage up the chain of command.

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Gasaway Consulting Group
www.RichGasaway.com

Monday, January 17, 2011

Reflections on the Utah Winter Fire School

I just returned from presenting three days of leadership and safety programs for the Utah Winter Fire School, hosted by the Utah Valley University. As professional speaking is my vocation, I have many opportunities to present at fire schools each year around the country. This allows me to see fire schools that are amazingly well organized and some that are, well, scary.

The Utah Winter Fire School falls into the category of the former. The hosts were easy to work with and clear and timely with all their communications with me. They picked me up at the airport, took me to dinner, and made sure I got checked into my hotel room without any issues. These are especially nice gestures for out of state instructors that I appreciated very much.

But the thing that amazed me most about the program was the briefing the instructors received in the morning on the first day of the school. There, the Incident Commander provide an Incident Action Plan to the instructors and school support staff. They had all the bases covered and personnel were asisgned to attend to every detail.

I had two minor problems in my classroom, one involved the size of my projection screen (too small) and the other involved needing a cable to connect my computer to the overhead sound system. For both items my issues were treated like the school's top priority and were resolved within minutes.

At lunch time, there was a buffet provided for the instructors which kept me from having to wonder away from the convention center to areas of town that were unfamiliar to me. This also allowed me to eat quickly and get back to my classroom to meet with students who may have questions about the morning program.

There were no details overlooked by the staff. They had a professional registration area set up, distributed name tags on lanyards, gave out copies of the state's training magazine, and had a really nice vendor area (and the vendors sponsored meals and snacks).

Above all, everyone was amazingly nice and accomodating. If I was asked once, I was asked a dozen times if I needed anything or if everything was ok for me. And when they asked, it was genuine, not just something to say. The students were equally impressive. They were engaged and eager to learn. They asked really good questions and were good sports when I joked with them.

This was my first time ever presenting in Utah and for the Utah Valley University. I feel as if I returned home from one of the best experiences an instructor could have. In a word... impressive.

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
http://www.richgasaway.com/