The Response Force Multiplier
Welcome to The Response Force Multiplier, the OSRL Podcast. On The Response Force Multiplier, we explore all aspects of emergency planning and response, through conversations with compelling experts and thought leaders, providing a fresh take on key issues and cutting-edge techniques in this field. In each episode, we’ll dive into one aspect of emergency planning and response using OSRL’s unique pool of experts and collaborators to gain new insights and to distil these down into actionable tools and techniques for better preparedness and response to crisis incidents and emergencies.
Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Emergency Planning
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The Response Force Multiplier
Crisis Leadership: Making Decisions in Complex Situations
In our latest episode, we delve deep into the world of crisis leadership and the complex context it operates within. Our guest Dean Wasche, Global Learning and Development Manager at Oil Spill Response, offers valuable insights and definitions of leadership. He highlights how leadership in crisis situations differs from day-to-day leadership, emphasising the immense pressure crisis leaders face.
Through real-life examples, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and oil spill responses, Dean demonstrates the challenges and nuances of crisis leadership. He emphasises the importance of acknowledging complexity, recognising the role of experts, and making informed decisions in the face of uncertainty.
Join us as we explore the dynamic world of crisis leadership, providing valuable insights for leaders in both emergency response and everyday contexts. Whether you're an experienced leader or aspiring to be one, this episode offers practical wisdom to enhance your leadership skills under pressure.
Please give us ★★★★★, leave a review, and tell your friends about us as each share and like makes a difference.
Hello and welcome to the Response Force Multiplier, a podcast that explores emergency planning and response. On the Response Force Multiplier, we bring together compelling experts and thought leaders to provide a fresh take on key issues and cutting edge techniques. In each episode, we'll dive into one aspect of emergency planning and response and we'll use OSRL's unique pool of experts and collaborators to gain new insights and to distill these down into actionable tools and techniques for better preparedness and response to crisis incidents and emergencies. My name is Paul Kelway, we are OSRL and this is the Response Force Multiplier. In this episode, we continue our journey looking at the tools and techniques to effectively perform under pressure in crisis incidents and emergencies, by looking at the role of leadership.
Speaker 1:Leading a team, an organization or even a country during intense, uncertain and chaotic events brings a unique set of challenges for any person, especially when the consequences are real and potentially far-reaching.
Speaker 1:But are the abilities to survive and thrive in these environments traits we are born with or can they be learned? And how important is the type of situation we're leading in to the way we should respond and the expectations we should place on ourselves and others in being able to achieve the best outcomes? To explore this, we speak with my colleague, dean Walsh. Dean, a former British Army officer, is the Global Learning and Development Manager at OSRL. Dean has been a lifelong student and practitioner of leadership theory and practice and brings his wide-ranging experience to the role of training and developing our response teams and members on how to lead through crisis and uncertainty. Hi, dean, and welcome to the show. I guess the first question is really just to ask you to describe a bit about your background personally and professionally and, I guess, currently, your relationship with emergency response, crisis management and training leaders in that field. So yeah, a bit of background on that.
Speaker 2:So I've been a learning and development practitioner for the last 18 years. My interest in human performance, I guess, started at university. So I studied sports science at the University of Birmingham and as I began to take my elective units at birmingham I became really interested in sports psychology, which of course at its heart is the psychology of performance. I'd ended up doing a third year dissertation looking at the intersection between the physiological and the psychological and in particular how the body responds to stressors mental stressors in certain conditions. So so that was really interesting and it really sort of got me into the importance of psychology on physiology and on performance generally.
Speaker 2:I then joined the army and I went through the War Militia Academy, santas and trained as an army officer. And then I realised during my training that I loved developing people. It was a real passion. So I joined the learning and development branch of the British Army and spent eight great years serving as an army officer. I worked with lots of different units, lots of different teams. Some of them I consider very much meet the definition of high performance. So I got really interested in what made these teams special, what made them a high performing team.
Speaker 2:And then when I left the army at the end of 2012, I came to work for Spill Response. I came into the role of global learning and development manager shortly after joining, so my remit then and now is all around how do I support our responders and preparedness professionals being the best they can be ultimately and, of course, part of that is dealing with pressure, responding to crises or incidents, and I can come on to the distinction that I made between those two shortly. But my remit very much today, my passion, is about how do I enable people to perform at their best when it matters most, ultimately.
Speaker 1:So obviously we're going to dive really deeply into the emergency crisis context of leadership. But before we get into that, if you were to think about leadership in general and almost sort of offer a definition of what leadership is and what is the role of a leader, what would come to mind for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think I mean you know, you Google a term, I think you get upwards of 15 million definitions. So it's a well-defined term, isn't it? We all know that. But for me, if I was to offer a synthesis of the best definitions I've heard and also overlay my own experience with that, I think the essence of leadership is about uniting people in a shared cause or goal and ultimately enabling them to achieve something that they probably wouldn't have done on their own, ultimately so. So for me, the fundamental role of a leader is to push the edges of conventional thinking, whether that's organisational culture, whether that's the art of the possible, and ultimately unite people in moving forward with a common cause or goal.
Speaker 1:So if we're then thinking about a particular context of a crisis, an emergency response, an incident, I'm assuming that in a way, it's all of those things with bells on. But would you offer day-to-day leadership and incident crisis leadership?
Speaker 2:I think the raw components are the same, but I think what really changes is the amount of pressure that a crisis leader is under. So, just to define a few terms, they said for me, an incident is an unplanned event. I think that's a fairly common definition of what an incident is. To me, an incident moves into the realms of being a crisis when the effects of that incident are potentially catastrophic for individuals or the organization itself. You know it potentially will exert an existential threat on the organization itself, and I think a mnemonic that is often used in incident crisis management is that pair mnemonic, you know so people, environment, assets and reputation. I think whenever an incident has the potential to or has resulted in the loss or significant injury of people, damage to the environment, loss of assets and or, as a result of all of that damage or complete loss of reputation, I think that's when we start to get into crisis territory. So, with those two definitions in mind, I think crisis leaders have to operate under extreme pressure and I think andy couch's perspective on pressure is really useful. If we look at pressure and having three components expectation, scrutiny and consequence if we think about any crisis, you know that we can.
Speaker 2:Expectation is always massive. You know that the leader is going to sort it out ultimately. You know they carry the expectations of, often a nation state on their shoulders, if not the world. They're under massive scrutiny. You know from government politicians, the world's press, you know the 24-7 news cycle and of course, the consequences are real.
Speaker 2:You know if it's a real crisis, then often people's lives are in danger. Maybe some people have lost their lives. You know financial ruin may be in the mix, environmental damage, loss of important assets that will ultimately affect people's livelihoods. There are real consequences in crises. So I think all of those things have the potential to come together and create extreme pressure on particularly crisis leaders. So for me, that's the key distinction. You know, I think the core components of leadership, which I'm sure we'll get into, I think are the same and therefore the core behavi of leadership, which I'm sure we'll get into, I think are the same and therefore the core behaviors are probably the same. But I think the ability to operate under extreme pressure is what differentiates an incident or crisis leader to a everyday sort of business as usual leader.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned Andy Couch, of course, he spoke to us about performance under pressure, he talked about some of the techniques and tools and he talked specifically about how we develop structure, skill set and mindset that ultimately, all of those things have to come together. And I guess, particularly when the stakes are really high lives are at stake, or there's real consequences for how we act, how we make decisions, for how we act how we make decisions, where does the role of leadership or the practice of leadership fit in in relation to that structure, skill set and mindset trifecta, as it were?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really useful trifecta in a whole range of contexts so we can use. So how we most frequently deploy the structure skill set, mindset Trinity is thinking about external. So okay, so, as a leader, externally, what structure do I operate in? You know what system am I in ultimately. So, for example, we typically think about you know what are the governing principles of that system, policies, procedures, what's the organizational chart that I operate in, what is my role in relation to others' roles and that's really useful stuff. You know important stuff, which is why we do it skill set. Similarly, you know what technical behavioral skills competencies do I have versus what I need. You know where's the gap and how do I develop those. And then, equally, mindset again really important. You know people's ability to deal with pressure, but you know growth how do they come at things with a mindset of curiosity as opposed to a closed mindset. All really useful and useful from a leadership perspective too. But I think it could also be useful if we turn the lens on ourselves as leaders. So, for example, you can also consider structure not just as an external thing that exists outside of the leader, but as an internal thing, and this is where I think it becomes particularly useful for incidental crisis leaders. So, for example, internal structure what is the leader's internal operating system? Okay, if I was to coin a tech term. Okay. So what is the leader's fundamental value system? What are their beliefs? What are their beliefs, what are their attitudes around the world? Ultimately, how do they make sense of the world? Which I think is really important, and here I'd link to the work that you know, robert Keegan, looking at stages of adult development and an acknowledgement that actually, as adults, we have the ability to move through different stages of development, essentially how our sense-making evolves, potentially through our lifetime. You know, some work that they have done has concluded that actually, the vast majority of adults don't transcend beyond the first stage that is available to us as adults. Yeah, they don't progress beyond what Keegan and his team call the socialized stage of development, and why that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Interesting, I think, particularly for leadership under pressure, is that if you have a socialized form of mind, you are predominantly sourcing your sense of self-worth from external factors around you. So, for example, you might source your sense of self-worth from the relationships that you have. You might source it from the results that you achieve in the world. Well, of course, the challenge with those things, particularly in a crisis, when you're under extreme pressure, is that those things can quite easily fracture. You know, relationships can become strained, can even fall away. The results you achieve aren't easy or elegant, you know. They're often hard won, so that can make you as a person very volatile because, of course, if you don't achieve those things, then you run a you run an operator system which causes you to conclude that you are less worthy as a person ultimately.
Speaker 2:So for me, here structure is really useful. So I think, ultimately, when we feel we're lacking something as a person, ultimately. So for me, here structure is really useful. So I think, ultimately, when we feel we're lacking something as a person, we fall back on more emotional responses to things, more reactive behaviors. You know we become triggered by stuff.
Speaker 2:So, going back to andy's podcast, here this is very much we go into sort of redhead territory. Yeah, so fight, flight, freeze type behaviors which, as leaders, can be very detrimental, you know, to both the instant and response that we're leading, but also to our teens. You know we can create a really dysfunctional culture, you know, at its worst, a toxic culture around some of this reactivity. Ultimately, so I think structure internally is really interesting because leaders can start to examine and often they can only do this through either deep reflection or through sort of coaching type relationships, but they can really start to examine what are some of their fundamental beliefs and values which ultimately govern how they show up, because they will show up more like that when they're under pressure, because I think we resort more to type.
Speaker 1:But you know, then and habits, so are there any frameworks or systems that we use to help people to build that awareness of their behaviours and to grow and develop the ways that they interact?
Speaker 2:I think it's useful when we go to skill set for leaders to look specifically at what skills and behaviours do they have. And you know, know, a really useful framework which I use and we use here at hospital response is the framework by the leadership circle, who acknowledge some of the reactivity that we all have as human beings. You know, it's just a function of being human. You know we all have the ability to sort of go into the basement, which is a term that I like from another book called um you it, if any listeners have come across that. So that's a great book by Leonard Marcus, eric Minolte, joseph Henderson and Barry Dawn, I think called your it. So all about crisis leadership and effectively, their term for becoming emotionally hijacked or triggered is going into the basement. Ultimately and you know, know, I think as leaders we all have the potential to do that the leadership circle call it reactive tendencies, so they acknowledge those emotional responses as well. But ultimately, the behaviors that I think we want to see and we can train as crisis leaders are both relational and task-focused behaviors, because in my experience we need both to navigate any incident or crisis. So we need related behaviors, we need self-awareness behaviors, we need authenticity behaviors. We need systems thinking behaviors and we need achievement behaviors, ultimately, so we can learn those things and we can do some sort of quality thinking about how we do those things to achieve better when there's when we're under pressure.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing, mindset. You know, here I draw heavily, as many people do, on the work of Carol Dweck around growth mindset and actually how do we ultimately cultivate in ourselves and in the teams that we have the privilege to lead More of a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset? So growth mindset, you know, as I know, you're aware, paul one that failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. It doesn't define me, you know. So then we open up a whole area of how do we fail fast, how do we learn quick, how do we move on. All of that mindset and the potential there, as opposed to failure, defines me. You know, failure is my limit and therefore it it invokes more of a closed mindset as a leader as well. So I think structured skill set mindset is useful, both through an external lens of what's around me as a leader, but also from an internal, what's within me that I can ultimately cultivate that's great and it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You talk about operating system, which obviously you say is a very sort of computer technology term, but actually, in a way, what you're talking about is the very human quality of being a leader which is essentially having to build in these elements structure, skill set, mindset and really, I suppose, develop and take that journey as someone who is developing, maturing, expanding your viewpoint on the world and your role in it and, I guess, ultimately so that if you're in those circumstances where which are quite groundless, that you have the ability to stay centered and you've done that work beforehand so you're not having to do that work in the middle of a crisis, you can be more present and be more familiar, I suppose, with the feelings that it's going to evoke in a high pressure situation absolutely, and I think it's important that I note that no stage of development is bad, no operating system is bad, but it can be limiting ultimately.
Speaker 2:Just like you know, if we cast our minds back to the very first smartphone we all had, you look at what we could do on that device with the operating system it had back then, versus what we can do on our current devices with the operating system that it has now. It's radically different. You know we can do more, we can process more from a technology perspective. So I think about our own inner operating systems as human beings as similar to that. I mean, you know, as I alluded at the start, you know I'm on my own journey. I know you are paul.
Speaker 2:You know I hope every leader is holding this. I think the danger for any leader is when they think they're done. You know I have worked with leaders in the past. You know very senior leaders who view development as something that's for everyone else. I think that's a really dangerous perspective to take because, of course, the minute that you think you're done learning and developing as a leader, you shut down curiosity and then you become subject, potentially, to sort of some closed thinking which can both limit you and others.
Speaker 1:And if you're looking at an emergency team, there is generally a very clear incident command or emergency management structure. So often there is literally an incident commander. So when we think about leader or leadership, we think about the person at the top of that tree, so to speak. But just to clarify, when we think about leadership in relation to emergency teams, how does that differ? Are we talking about specific roles within that structure? Are we really talking about everybody's responsibility in that team to really show up as a leader and, I guess, potentially as a good follower, to optimize the way that team as a whole performs?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think everybody that has responsibility in an organizational chart for at least one other person, I think, should very much see themselves as a leader. So you know, in instant management terms, you know I'm thinking, yes, not only about the instant commander, of course, but also about section chiefs, branch directors, duty managers, instant managers whatever terminology the organization uses to define people in roles that are responsible for others anybody, anybody can be a leader. I think leadership is largely a mindset and you know, I often go back to the rumored quote of Sir David Sterling, who was, I think, the founder of the British SAS. You know, back during the Second World War. You know he talked about best leaders don't require rank, but those that require rank don't deserve it, type thing. You know the whole essence that actually anyone can be a leader and you don't need to wear an epaulet on your shoulder or a badge on your chest or a colored tabard to be a leader. You can still exhibit the qualities of a leader. But equally I mean you mentioned the followership is equally as important. You know, we can't have a system where everybody wants to be a leader, so of course everybody's then potentially climbing over each other to be in charge, so to speak. I think it's important to recognize, but not be constrained by, any organizational structure that we're working in. But also, you know, everybody should be thinking one up sort of thing. You know, what does my leader need from me? How can I support that as a good follower? Because then what that allows is, of course, we're anticipating One of the things I think most militaries do well, certainly most NATO alliances and certainly the British army always teaches you know, one up, you know so what happens if your boss isn't available.
Speaker 2:You know who can step into that role, because of course, on the battlefield it often happens. You know a leader is injured, maybe killed. A follower you know, in military parlance, a subordinate has to then step up and take on. There are many stories of extreme valor where exactly that has happened. You know a key leader has been killed or seriously injured, but the mission has gone on and has often succeeded because subordinates, followers, can step up and still achieve the mission. You know I think that's important in a crisis or incident that you have the ability to step up, for example, something the key leadership role is taken out for some reason. Yeah, maybe they suffer personal crisis. Yeah, maybe a prolonged incident. You know they're away. Other people can step.
Speaker 1:The other bit that we've talked about a little bit, which I'd love to go into more, is the environment in which we're leading, the unique environment in which we're leading in a crisis which you've alluded to already. But what do we need to know about the context of this type of situation, as you defined it, and how does that influence the role or perhaps the challenges of leading in that kind of space, that kind of environment?
Speaker 2:so I think context is incredibly important. Actually, I've only come to appreciate just how important it is probably in the last five years or so. Prior to that, I was of the view that actually you, you can pretty much use the same playbook, you know the same kind of behaviors in any situation, and what I've come to learn about is sort of this whole area of complexity theory really, and there's a framework that I think is really useful here and it's a sense-making framework by a gentleman called Dave Snowden, called the Kenefin Framework, a gentleman called Dave Snowden called the Kinefin framework. And what Dave Snowden has done is he's basically sought to define different systems at work, so ordered systems and disordered systems. And I recognize earlier in my career where I sometimes fell short is I failed to appreciate what system I was working in. I'll give you, I'll give you some examples. So in his work with the conifera framework, dave Snowden has identified five domains essentially. The first is a disordered domain, a disordered system. So in this system you actually don't know what domain you're in because you're disordered. So the predominant state is one of confusion ultimately. And it's an unhappy place to be. So here when you're in because you're disordered, so the predominant state is one of confusion.
Speaker 2:Ultimately and it's an unhappy place to be so here, when you're in a disordered state, I would say the leader's role in a disordered system is to create the conditions so that people can work it out and bring some order to the situation.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, and if I think back on my military career, if you were, for example, in a situation where, let's say, an improvised explosive device had just gone off, one of the first things the incident commander you know, which will be a tactical commander typically on the ground does is, in state, accordant some kind of perimeter around the device. And, of course, what I now recognize is that's the first way as an individual on the ground in a disordered, maybe even chaotic state, you can impose some order on that situation just by simply using physical space. You know, put a hundred, two hundred meter cordon around either a known device or a suspect device, you know, and you start to control access in and out through that cordon. Then you know that's a very simple way of how we can take and influence a disordered system and start to introduce some order. Just recognizing when you're in a disordered state and actually knowing, as a leader, that actually one of the first things you need to do is try and create some order.
Speaker 1:I think is a useful starting point, because a disordered state can become very overwhelming to anyone that's a great example, and I'm also thinking about, within the context of wildfire response and wildfire response and many other emergency elements, that within the incident management system or the incident command system, they often have that process, often referred to as the planning p, but just that idea that in the structure, no matter what the crisis or emergency is, there's a structure and a process that you continue to follow, irrespective of the scale and the size, and really that's a similar approach in the sense that you're trying to at least bring some kind of order, some routine to the business of dealing with something that's actually quite chaotic and challenging definitely.
Speaker 2:This is, I think, where, yeah, principles, guidelines, checklists to an extent as long as they're not too prescriptive necessarily all really help us, because they help us make sense and start to put in place constraints that will help us ultimately to create some order out of what is disorder, absolutely so. We then move into one of the ordered domains, which is, say, you know, the simple or the obvious domain. Okay, so generally senior crisis leaders probably won't spend much time in this domain because people lower down in the organization will work at this level. But in the obvious domain, essentially everyone can see the relationship between cause and effect, you know. So it's stuff that's clear to most, if not all, people. So therefore, at every level, the leaders sort of key focus should be on sensing what's happened, categorizing it and then responding accordingly. I would say this will very often be done by leaders lower in any organization. Yeah, this kind of stuff I don't think will bubble up to the level of the incident commander very much, you know, and it's the area of best practice ultimately, you know things are anticipated, their probability is almost assured. We know what we need to do.
Speaker 2:So in the world of incident crisis management for me, an example of this is a routine search and rescue operation. Okay, so you know something like a mountain rescue in the lake district. You know, here in the uk, for example, yeah, there will be search and rescue teams all around the Lake District that are practiced and drilled in various situations and if something comes in which meets those guidelines, we know what to do. You know it's been drilled, practiced, rehearsed time and time and time again. It's sufficiently evolved, it works consistently. You know what you're doing. So it's very much for me. Me, the realm of standard operating procedures and every incidental crisis will have areas. That, which is why I like the connefion framework so much, because I think you can find all five domains in pretty much any crisis. I think so.
Speaker 2:The next domain within the ordered part is complicated. So this is where cause and effect aren't obvious to all but experts. So I put most technical aspects of a crisis probably fall in here. Certainly up and what oil spill response? So you know. So how skimmers work, how beams work, how dispersants work, it's not beyond the realm of anyone, but it does take some technical expertise to grapple with it. You know, a lay person just wouldn't pick it up and run with it. So here the leader's role is around sensing, analyzing and then responding. Okay, so you can't categorize because it's not so clear cut, but you can analyze and it's the realm of good practice. Okay, so it's not best practice, but it's not so clear cut, but you can analyze and it's the realm of good practice. Okay so it's not best practice, but it's good practice and there are governing constraints. So certainly all spill response largely in this domain.
Speaker 2:Listening to some of the interviews that were done in the wake of the macondo or deepwater horizon incident, you know know how I think you know you listen to Admiral Tad Allen speak and some of the other senior crisis leaders. What I deduce from listening to those interviews is that they were probably put the technical aspects of capping the well into the complicated domain, of which most of, if not all of, the expertise resided with BP to do that. They had the technical expertise incredibly complicated stuff that they were trying to do to cap a well what? 3,000 meters below the ocean surface. They had the expertise to do that and I think, if I'm making sense of it correctly, that probably Admiral Tad Allen and his senior leadership team would put those technical aspects of that incident in the complicated domain. But when it came to liaising with stakeholders, you know, at the federal level, state level, local government level, other interested parties, he would put that firmly in the complex domain which I'll come to shortly.
Speaker 1:Okay, just to clarify then. I mean, basically, it's that in a way, the decision making is just more nuanced, there's more information, there's more variability or there's more permutations of the causes and effect that are having to be analyzed. So you're sort of taking that expertise and you're bringing in that ability to synthesize and analyze and essentially make decisions based on a sort of very nuanced situation.
Speaker 2:Yes, so key for senior crisis leaders, I think, in the complicated space is that they are unlikely to be an expert, so they will need to call upon experts to ultimately solve the problem, which is solvable.
Speaker 1:Got it and ultimately the complicated element is that you might need a whole variety of it and ultimately the complicated element is that you might need a whole variety of experts chip in a particular element of that challenge. And then your job is then obviously to try to synthesize what you're hearing and sort of make a decision accordingly yeah, because of course those experts are unlikely to agree on everything, so they'll be conflicting opinions there.
Speaker 2:But yes, absolutely to synthesize the output of all of that. So, one, to make sure you bring the right people together. Two, you create the right conditions for them to collaborate effectively. And then, three, you can then synthesize the output of that into something that you can operationalize in a coherent way.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, got it Right, so that's complicated, so yeah, so then moving on to complex, yeah, so complicated.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So then moving on to complex yeah, so complex. And this is where the real fun starts. Yeah, there's no linear relationship between cause and effect. So the best experts can do is hypothesize, and this is why I think it's really important for crisis leaders to recognize when they're in the complex and when they're in the complicated, because the danger is here, or one of the many dangers, is that in the complex domain, the best experts can do is hypothesize, whereas in the complicated they can predict with quite a high degree of reliability. But if you don't recognize which space you're in as a leader and an expert hypothesizes, but you think it's a prediction and it's wrong, you lose faith in all your experts ultimately, which can then trigger you. So then we go into the basement, we get some of those redhead behaviors. So this is where you can see it all starts to overlay on each other at this point, and then we get a very different crisis response ultimately.
Speaker 2:So the best we can do as leaders in complex is probe, sense and then respond, and often you know it's managing polarities. There are no obvious right or wrongs. You know you're in an adaptive system. You know things are changing. As I say there's no clear linear relationship between cause and effect. So this is the domain of what snowden and his team call enabling constraints or principles. So how do we establish governing principles and then move forward on those? Yeah, it's also the realm of emergent practice as well, you know. So if we're in a complex space, there is no easy, clear answer. So it's how do we continually probe for information and then respond to what we get?
Speaker 1:Obviously you've alluded to an example there of the complex when you talked about the stakeholder engagement following the Deepwater Horizon. I'm also recalling the conversation I had on the first podcast episode with Dave Rousen and Dr Elle Parker. She talked about the example of preparedness for a pandemic and how a lot of the preparedness focused on as well as influenza type situation and it had drilled and practiced the sort of hospital emergency services element, but obviously in relation to COVID-19 pandemic, the implications on home learning, schools being closed and all those other connected cause and effects elements which ultimately were perhaps less considered because they were more complex and their focus was a bit too heavy on the complicated side. Is that a good example?
Speaker 2:I think it is. Yeah, I think it is a good example and, of course, it's one that I'm sure all listeners can relate to. The COVID-19 pandemic is a great example of complexity in action. You know, we've got volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity all wrapped up. But, of course, what governments are having to do the world over is balance off public health and trying to keep as many, if not all, of their populations alive as possible, whilst also keeping their economies open, because people die from poverty and it's a wicked problem, of course.
Speaker 2:What's interesting now is, I think, the world reflects on our response, because, of course, every nation state did it quite differently. Really, we've got a whole spectrum of different responses. We can hopefully all reflect on that and look at our national preparedness to a potential future pandemic. You know and again I think there's samples out there, obviously without naming any country specifically, because I don't feel I'm qualified to, but to my mind, as a lay person, when it comes to fighting, you know, dealing with pandemics, there are countries whose leadership, I think, very overtly sought to simplify the issue and put it very much in the, in the simple domain, the obvious domain. Leaders, countries that went the other way, dealt with it as a complicated issue and were too fixed by that as well. I don't think there was any country that got it perfect, because every government, irrespective of your politics, was trying to work through what is inherently an incredibly complex situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. If we're in a situation, in general, that is we rightly deem to be complex, do you have the ability, as a leader in that situation, to attempt to move it into a different domain, or is it more about accepting that it's complex and adjusting what's possible or how you act and make decisions accordingly?
Speaker 2:I think you just have to acknowledge that it's complex, but then for me, that sets you up differently as a leader. So if you can acknowledge that it's complex, you can then actually accept that there is no perfect solution here. There is no right or wrong. By virtue of being a complex domain, you can also bring in experts, as you will undoubtedly have to do, and actually, as most, if not all, governments did during the pandemic, lots of governments followed the science, which I think is all you can do. But I think it's important to acknowledge, as a crisis leader, that they're just hypotheses, that's all they can be, because it's uncharted territory. Ultimately, you know you're balancing all those things. You know the cost of closing an economy or severely limiting an economy or closing schools and the social consequences that that has, versus people becoming suicidal or dying. Is that there's no perfect solution. So you're managing the tension between polarities ultimately. So I think, as a crisis leader, just acknowledging that can actually bring some relief, but it also helps you work with and collaborate with people in a different way.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of a quote that Dave Rouse offered when he talked about the role, in a crisis, of a leader having to essentially make precision guesswork based on questionable information. And you know, I think, as you say, it's a sense of somehow recognizing that and I guess, perhaps that recognition allowing you to sort of avoid some sort of analysis paralysis recognize that ultimately you've got to take that next step with whatever information you have, and you've got to be confident enough to recognize that there is no right answer, but you have to essentially sort of take what you know and what you've experienced as a leader and then, you know, make that difference in actually being willing and courageous enough, I guess, to make that decision or that next step yeah, absolutely, and I think you know and this brings us right back to when you asked me at the start you know what's my definition of leadership.
Speaker 2:I think certainly, within that it's about how do you create full momentum and keep moving forward and keep, you know, unifying people to keep moving forward and keep, you know, unifying people to keep moving forward. Ultimately, you know and I go back to a Winston Churchill quote you know so that in any moment of indecision, there's three things a leader can do. The best thing they can do is make the right decision. Of course, you know we all like to be right all of the time. The next best thing they can do is make the wrong decision. The worst thing any leader can do is make no decision at all. So I think the wrong decision, the worst thing any leader can do, is make no decision at all. So I think it's really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as leaders, we keep moving forward, acknowledging, particularly when we're in the complex and complicated domains, that we're not always going to get it right, particularly when we're in the complex domain so, building on that, because you also talked about the importance of failure, failing fast, the principle of sort of iterating and learning and growing through that, that makes a lot of sense, something I try to practice as well. Obviously, in a crisis that failure has much more serious implications, you know. It literally could be sort of life and death situations. So how does a leader find that balance in a complex crisis where, to a certain extent, there is going to be this sense of we're not going to get it right and we're going to have to iterate on the decisions that we make? But how do we find that balance between almost giving ourselves permission to say there is benefit and failure, but ultimately here we've also got to make the best decisions we can, because the risk of failure in this situation is is much more consequential?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think, use experts, accept that the best I can do is hypothesize, use your team to make the best decision that is available to you in the moment, but then, I think, actually, as a leader, demonstrate some infallibility, some vulnerability and acknowledge to the stakeholders that this is the best we've got with the information that we have right now, and actually we'll continue to evolve that.
Speaker 2:And one thing that concerns me, you know slightly, in the modern era that we're currently living, is actually, you know, leaders, in an effort to come across, as you know, strong and dominant, they oversimplify often, and I think it almost does, you know, the people that are following them, whether they're a political leader or another leader. It almost does their followers a disservice in that they almost assume that we can't handle a level of complexity ourselves and actually, I think, where particularly very senior leaders can be vulnerable, say, look, this is what we know, this is what we don't know, this is what our intuition says, this is where our values take us and therefore, this is what we're going to do, acknowledging that we're going to have to test and adjust potentially, you know, and keep evolving. I think that goes a long way.
Speaker 1:So, essentially, that role of a leader is to understand the context that we're having to act within and to deploy ourselves in the best way in relation to the particular demands of that situation and what it's calling on from us as an individual and as a team.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I'd like to come back to this. I think we need to bring this back to behaviours ultimately and I'm a big fan of the work that the Leadership Circle group have done here about those five creative competencies Because, as I said at the start, with my definition of leadership, I think the competencies are largely the same. I think what the differentiator is in a crisis the pressure is amplified significantly. So I think what we can all be doing now as potential incident or crisis leaders of the future, is exploring our inner operating systems. So by that I mean, you know, exploring, reflecting on our own values, belief systems, what our attitudes are, how we perceive ourselves in the world. And in my experience, most people can't do that on their own. They need some kind of setting whether it's a coaching framework, some kind of spiritual meditation to work through, but that people need often a vehicle to do that kind of deep, deep reflection. But it's, I think, well worth doing, because then you will start to see, as a leader, what your own potential limiting beliefs are, what are we subject to and how can we make that object of our own attention and focus. But those five competencies I'm just going to say them again with a bit more detail this one. I mentioned them at the start of our conversation, paul. So one is relating. So this is all about the ability of the leader to connect with others in a way that brings out the best in them. When I work with groups of people in various contexts and I ask people to think about and then describe to me their ideal leader, that ability to relate to them in a way that brings out the best of them is always in the mix. So relating, we know, is really important. Self-awareness, you know the importance of emotional intelligence or EQ, is fundamental. Authenticity so this is a large part about integrity. But the Leadership Circle and indeed others have broadened this definition.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about authenticity, I don't just mean integrity, I also mean alignment with values and sort of energetic wholeness. I think, as human beings, if we're more aligned with our values and acting in accordance with our values, it just has the effect of generating more energy in us ultimately. I don't quite profess to understand exactly how that works, but it just seems to be that way that and I think this is where you know as a, as an instant leader, a crisis leader, if you can galvanize people around a common purpose, which is often easy. If there's lives at risk, you know, the common purpose very quickly becomes how do we save these people? It's almost doesn't need to be spoken. Amazing stuff happens, creativity emerges. So I think authenticity is really important. How does a leader align? It's not only honest and trustworthy in their character, but how do they just align with people's values and enable that Systems awareness? So, big picture thinking.
Speaker 2:I think red to blue is really helpful here. So again, going back to andy's podcast, you have the ability of a leader to stay more blue and therefore be able to access some of their higher level cognitive functions that allow them to really use their intellect and that of others, rather than going to red or in the basement, because of course, that stuff shuts down. When we're emotionally hijacked, even to a small degree, we just can't access some of our high-level thinking. It's just not available to us in the moment. You know, and I'm sure we can all relate to that I certainly can if I become in any way emotionally hijacked, stuff is no longer available to me and it becomes available to me after the moment. But I think, oh, why didn't I say that? Why didn't I respond in this way. We aren't just because I reacted in another way. You know I went too red for the situation, that's not to say as I know andy explained in his podcast.
Speaker 2:You know, red isn't bad. We need emotion. We can't be devoid of emotion. But if we have too much red, if we become triggered by something which is very easy to do when the pressure is on you, when expectations, scrutiny, consequences weighing down on us, it's very easy to become triggered. So systems awareness is key and maintaining more of a blue head will help that. Then the last one, of course, is achieving results. You know most definitions of leadership that I come across speak very clearly about the relational skills of a leader and the ability to get stuff done. So I think this is key and, of course, in a crisis or incident, we need leaders that get stuff done. So the ability to offer compelling vision and cultivate a deep sense of purpose which ultimately inspires people to go above and beyond. You know all the best leaders I've worked for, both in the military and civilian sectors, have had that ability to inspire you.
Speaker 1:Inspire me to go above and beyond we've talked a bit about the development of a leader through the techniques and the practices, and so I suppose it's it's always the question that's there which is sort of our good leaders born or made? I guess from from your perspective would you suppose it's always the question that's there which is sort of are good leaders born or made? I guess from your perspective would you say it's a bit of both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd say some are born, but I think most are made. And what I mean by some are born is I think some develop the attributes. I think and again I'm going to come back to those five creative competencies, you know. So some leaders just have developed IEQ by the time they get into a leadership role. They're aligned with their values, they act in accordance with their values, they have integrity, they are honest people, they have that ability to take the bigger picture and they can get stuff done. So some leaders, I think, just develop that stuff.
Speaker 2:But I think, absolutely, leaders can be made. Indeed, the whole ethos around military leadership training is selecting individuals through a rigorous selection process with the key core attributes, and generally it's around character traits and then training the behaviors, training the mindset. Ultimately and again, that's what I had the privilege to do between 2009 and 2011 the raw military academy centers, which is the british army's leadership academy. So I can absolutely testify to great leaders can absolutely be made. But I think some are born as well, and you know, and some are just right for the time. You know, I know there's been lots of historical role models. Who will actually, would they be a good leader now? Well, possibly not, because they were put a product of their time. They were the right person for that time. In in a nation's history.
Speaker 1:They wouldn't necessarily be the right leader now is there any other sort of, I suppose, tools or techniques or practices that we as individuals can employ, that that allow us to develop our ability to sort of unfreeze ourselves in those situations and to act accordingly?
Speaker 2:Yes, there's a very practical one actually that I've taken from Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton. If you haven't come across Sabrina, dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is the chief fire officer, I think, of West Sussex and she's written several good books, and one in one of those books she talks all about decision tools and decision traps that we can all fall into, particularly when we're under pressure. And one point that she makes which I think is is really true in my experience, is that we often assess a situation based on how we have already decided to act. So, whether that's been a fully conscious process or not, often it will be at least part unconscious, but we've already assessed the situation based on how we've decided to act. So that then starts to build in bias, cognitive bias and the like Decision inertia papers, which I wish you spoke of a little while ago, paul. So what Sabrina has done, I think, with the other senior leaders in the fire service bias and the like decision inertia papers, which I wish you spoke of a little while ago, paul. So what sabrina has done, I think, with the other senior leaders in the fire service, they've introduced these decision controls which you apply after a decision is made but before you implement it at that key space between the two, and so after it's made, but before you implement.
Speaker 2:So there's three simple questions you ask yourself or you ask of each other. First one is what's my goal and will this action get me closer to it? The second is what do I expect to happen if we do this? And then the third one is how does the benefit of doing what we've agreed outweigh the risk of doing it? Okay, so what I think this does actually is it slows us down in that critical moment where, particularly if we were in the disordered or chaotic spaces, there's an impulsion to act. It just gets us to think, actually, is our situational awareness where it needs to be to make the best decision in this moment?
Speaker 1:so I think those decision controls can be very useful one of the things that we covered off in the last podcast episode with our colleague, liam harrington missin, was the evolving role of artificial intelligence and, in particular, in relation to crisis management, emergency response.
Speaker 1:You know we talk about these sort of large language learning models and various other things, but Liam was giving some examples of to what extent certain decisions or actions in an emergency response could actually be left to artificial intelligence to to solve, and and the benefits of that, and the question I, I guess, ethically, philosophically, would humans allow or leave those decisions to AI? What I'm wondering, because I think a lot of what you've said obviously speaks to the human quality that we bring as leaders, that we essentially embody all of these things that have brought us to that place, all the learning, all the experience, all the work on ourselves. Would you say that, in a way, it really is that human element that makes the difference in a complex situation, that that, ultimately, ai is very good at maybe giving us more analysis in these complicated environments? But perhaps that role of of leadership, that sort of role of the sort of human dimension, as it were, is really kind of a key or critical aspect of that complexity and dealing with highly complex situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'm curious about what opportunity exists with AI. Ultimately, where I am today, which of course, may be different tomorrow and the next day, but where I am today is I think I can absolutely see a role for artificial intelligence in clearing the way out of the obvious and the complicated. I do think that complexity requires a human touch ultimately, but it's interesting. I mean it's yeah, really, but I think that there's great potential there in that actually, ai can clear a lot of the noise. Initially, you know, can just execute demands to make stuff happen very quickly. So I guess you know, if we come back to what's the leader trying to do, so they're trying to take in information, orientate themselves, so make sense of it, make decisions and then compel people to act on those decisions.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, that's, I guess, the fundamentals of crisis leadership. So I think AI can really help leaders to observe and orientate and do some decision making for them. But of course, you know I'm learning, like everyone is, all the time, about AI. I'm struggling right now to see the role of AI in complexity. I don't think there's a problem to be solved in complexity because it's adaptive. I think ultimately, that needs more human.
Speaker 1:As you say, it's an interesting question and, as you say, it's maybe an evolving one, but certainly that's one of the takeaways listening to everything that you've shared for me is that there is something that's sort of hard to put your finger on, that that an individual brings to a situation in terms of, as you say, everything from their values to their experience, to the way they've trained that ultimately can be, you know, extremely unique and, as you say, it could be just the right fit for the right kind of situation or a challenge yeah, because I think in the complex space, what you then need to be able to pick up is those, the nuances of human behavior.
Speaker 2:It's the non-verbal expressions which I mean. Maybe ai be able to do one day I simply don't know, but I think it relies more on that adaptive system. That is a complex domain. I think it relies more on human connection. Again, I think the kind of leadership we need ultimately in complexity.
Speaker 2:Some authors have called it the integral leadership, the ability to really exercise those creative competencies. You know the authors I spoke of before, who wrote that great book that I'd recommend, called your it. They talk about meta leadership, which for me is very similar. Your other authors call it networked leadership. I think, ultimately, what they all have in common is the ability to bring people together to get stuff done under extreme pressure. But all of them, to my view, speak about the importance of creating connections, seeing the whole system, which I struggle right now to see how ai can do by taking the nuances, but we'll see how it evolves is there any sort of public figures that you look to admire or even just you think is a great example of somebody acting well as a leader in a crisis situation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually and I mentioned this because I watched the Netflix documentary on it relatively recently but do you remember, paul, the 2018 Thai K rescue of that boys football team?
Speaker 2:So I think this is a great example.
Speaker 2:Now, I can't pin this on any one leader, but just having watched that and having followed it, as I'm sure many people did avidly in the news at the time, you know, for me that was an incident always going deep into an underground cave system that turned, of course, into a crisis when it flooded great example to illustrate the distinction, I think, between the two and how an incident can evolve into a crisis. But for me, that was a excellent example of how leaders came together. Subject matter experts came together from around the globe, collaborated, presumably under a unified command they didn't speak a lot in this documentary, but I'm sure there was some kind of unified command there and ultimately navigated the complicated space, which, you know, I'm delighted to say, led to a wholly positive outcome all of those boys, which is sadly, I believe, one time navy seal lost his life, but all of the boys were rescued, which was an amazing outcome. I think. That is, I think, a really good example of how the amazing can happen when people come together it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that I, I think when we were talking I for some reason that one came into my mind as well. But it is interesting, as you say, even the sense that actually some of the decisions or the approaches that they ended up taking obviously had a certain element of risk to them and ultimately they had to at least assess that and then have the courage to say you know, this is actually the sort of the best choice we have in in a very difficult situation. And it makes me think back to three questions to ask yourself the situation from the fire service. But I think that sort of highlights in that sense that ultimately you know you have to make a decision and you're trying to bring in the right skill sets and the right experience to then be able to sort of say well, in our judgment this is, I think, how we can affect this most significantly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for me, yeah, the element of risk in that, the particular risk was, you know, the decision to sedate the boys, to bring them out. For me, I think it is complicated, but verging on complex, amazing is there anything else then you want to share.
Speaker 1:I mean, is there anything else that comes up for you that you just feel is, I suppose, just a reflection or a takeaway that we haven't covered, that you think would be worth sharing or that's coming up for you?
Speaker 2:I think leadership is tough. You know, leadership at any time is tough, but I think particularly an incident of crisis is particularly tough. So actually, we shouldn't expect to be good at it if we don't invest the time and developing ourselves. And I think what seems to be often true is that we thrust people into leadership roles because of their technical expertise, know, expectations, scrutiny, consequences, all in play. We shouldn't wonder if we haven't developed them at all and they haven't developed themselves, because it's incumbent upon them as individuals to develop themselves as well. We shouldn't wonder if they do fall slightly short. So I think, as part of our preparing this effort, it's really key that leaders develop themselves and also organisations take the time to develop their leaders, because then they're more likely to be able to inform when they are under pressure. Ultimately and again as I said at the very start, I think it's constant we're never done developing as leaders and again, the best leaders I've worked for see themselves very much as an ongoing project. They are constantly curious, they are constantly open. But how do they get better as individuals?
Speaker 2:The example I always give is I often, you know, get asked to support leaders from a coaching perspective. You know who just don't listen very well. They don't collaborate very well. Now, typically these individuals are often very smart people. Now you can send them on all the active listening courses you like. You know your company can spend thousands of pounds sending these leaders away on.
Speaker 2:You know how to be a good active listener and they will learn all the skills there are about. You know how to listen with senses that aren't just your ears, how to pick up non-verbal cues, how to respond empathically. But fundamentally, if they come away from that skills-based course still believing that they are smart enough to solve most of the problems that they encounter, they're never going to listen actively because they already go into a conversation thinking they've got at least half of the right answer. So you've got to do the inner work as well. You know skills-based leadership development alone. I don't think we need to do the inner work as well as the outer work thank you for listening to the response force multiplier from osrl.
Speaker 1:please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to explore key issues in emergency response and crisis management. For more information, head to osrlcom. We'll see you soon.
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