105: Team Culture with Chris Ruch, VP of the MRA

How do you intentionally build a strong team culture? And why?

Chris Ruch (VP of the Mountain Rescue Association and chief of Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group) discusses how culture can impact team performance, the importance of defining and assessing team culture, and the need for a shared mission. Together, we explore practical strategies for addressing conflict, ensuring safety, and fostering a sense of belonging within teams.

Today's Guest

Chris Ruch: MRA Vice President and Chief of Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Incident command to field team, sending in mutual aid.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to SAR Mutual Aid, the podcast where search and rescue teams share lessons, tackle challenges, and find real solutions.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

We bring together leaders from SAR teams across the country to discuss solutions to universal problems.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

I'm Till Harbitt, Base Medical CEO, a wilderness paramedic nurse, and a SAR volunteer in New Mexico.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

And I'm Lauren Skinechny, a wilderness EMT and SAR volunteer based in Portland, Oregon. Join us as we cross county lines to find new ways that you can empower and strengthen your team. Presented by Base Medical. Hey, Lauren. Hey Teal, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

I'm doing well. A question for you. How is the culture on your team?

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Oh, wow. That's not something you have to think about that often in those terms. Um, I think it's great for us. We work together really well. But um, yeah, I'd be curious how someone really defines that in a concrete way.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yeah, exactly. I mean, culture is one of those things that it can be difficult to talk about, especially if the team culture is not great. It's hard to talk about, but it's also so vague and difficult to measure and to grasp. And yet it's so important for every search and rescue team.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Yeah, that's so interesting. Because you think about like, you know, when you're making policies and procedures, it's easy to write them down. There's precedents to look at, but when you're talking about how people interact with each other and how they treat each other, it's a little more ambiguous.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

It is definitely ambiguous and it can be difficult to mitigate potential conflicts or to maybe help the team be more cohesive. And so today that's what we are exploring. A few years ago, I attended the Mountain Rescue Association conference in Colorado. It was at the YMCA campus. And there was a presentation from Chris Roosh, the current vice president of the MRA. He gave a presentation on why team culture is so critical to search and rescue teams. And yeah, I'm excited that we get to interview him today.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to listen to that. It's uh it's always so interesting when people take these uh concepts that can seem a little hard to nail down and really build out a conceptual framework for thinking about them. So this is going to be a good one.

Understanding and defining team culture

SPEAKER_00 2:31

In search and rescue, you're not just a volunteer, you're a professional. Your team and your community expect you to deliver. That means being ready for more than patient care. You need skills in navigation, communication, helicopter safety, and incident command. With Base Medical, you can train like a pro. Our individual subscription gives you unlimited access to over 25 search and rescue courses for just$12.50 a month. Or choose our team subscription to standardize training across your entire team. Stay sharp, stay ready, learn more at base-medical.com.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I am here with Chris Roosh, the vice president of the Mountain Rescue Association, and we have a very thrilling topic today, uh, something that I'm very passionate about, and that's team culture. And so uh before I go any further, I will go ahead and let Chris introduce himself. So, Chris, please tell us uh your involvement in search and rescue and with the MRA and how you became interested in team culture in regards to search and rescue.

SPEAKER_04 3:38

I'm Chris Roosh, Vice President of the Mountain Rescue Association. Uh I'm also the chief of Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Uh, and I'm also an instructor for uh National Association for Search and Rescue. Uh, I've been involved in search and rescue for uh now this is my 25th year. Um and during that time, right, I've I've seen um my team um grow a lot, uh, go through some growing pains. Uh I've seen other teams come and go, often because of you know culture and performance reasons. Um and you know, over the course of my career is becoming a a leader um within my own team and then representing my team to the Mountain Rescue Association, becoming a leader at the national level um with the MRA. You know, this is something that I see every team have to work through, right? And uh and it's going to the MRA conference every year, the presentations about uh team culture, how to build strong teams, you know, though those are always very well attended. It's something that uh that many teams are looking at how to improve.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and you you know, you summed it up so well. Like team culture is something that impacts every team. Every team has a team culture, whether they want to consciously accept that or not. Um, and so I think you made a great point in the sense that culture really can make or break a team. It's what determines if a team can weather all of the ups and downs and challenges of being a SARA team, whether those are internal or external. But before we get too much further, what does culture actually mean on a search and rescue team? Like why, you know, we talked a little bit on why it's important, but if you could elaborate a little bit more and what culture actually is.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

Well, yeah, uh culture is kind of the shared understanding that the members of that team have around uh the norms, the expect uh, the the acceptable behavior, the accepted level of performance, and kind of the shared goals, right? And those can be really clear or they can be really unclear, but you know, they all have them. Um, and you know, I uh I think there's a couple of different ways to think about it, right? Culture is that when somebody new shows up and you know walks into a team event, what are they presented with? Right. Is it uh a uh uh a professional kind of put-together organization? Is it really loose? Is it built around humor? Is it built around insults and negativity and right? And you know, from that first moment, it kind of lets people know, hey, what's acceptable in this group of people? How do you act? Right. Um, the other way I I think about it is how will people act in the middle of the night on a call out when the leaders aren't there? Right. Yeah, very true. And you've got, you know, your your first year, second year people without supervisors there, right? Are they making it up and doing whatever they want to do? Or have they been infused with a way of acting and uh a set of kind of norms and policies and procedures that kind of make sure that what the the law enforcement and and what the families and the injured people that we're dealing with, you know, are they getting the experience of the team, which is what you would expect, or are they getting the experience of a bunch of individuals that are kind of making it up on their own?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah, that that's a really great point. And you know, we mentioned just before starting the recording for this podcast, the performance triangle a little bit. And I think this is a great time to mention that because just as you said, middle of the night, leadership isn't there. You have these new members that are on a mission. And so what's going to prevail? What are they going to hang on to and operate by? And that's where that performance triangle kind of comes in, where uh, you know, you have your people, the the talent, right? The people that can actually go out there and do these rescues and join the team for that. And then you have the systems and processes they're going to rely on in the middle of the night to get the job done. And then, of course, the third leg of that is culture. And so do they have the right culture that they need to truly succeed? And ultimately, of course, the the purpose of the search and rescue team is the the mission, right? To to save lives, to to go out there and be that safety net for the outdoor community. But yeah, if you don't have the right people, the right systems and processes and the right culture, it it's just not going to be as effective and and could even be dangerous to an extent.

SPEAKER_04 8:33

Yeah. And and part of that's built into your selection process, part of it's built into your training process. Um, and part of it is built into that what are people experiencing on a day in, day out basis at those trainings and at those events. Because, you know, my team has a policy manual that's you know more than a hundred pages long. You know, the MRA has uh policies and bylaws that's huge. And uh you want people to remember those things, but not everybody is gonna memorize everything. And kind of that the difference between the culture and you know, having in-depth policies and procedures is you don't need to go and look up the culture, you don't need to go and say, Oh, what's the what are my notes on what the policy procedures are, right? Culture is just infused in the way people are acting. And if you run across a situation where it's like, well, I there is no policy for this, or this is a weird situation. Like, are your people gonna do the right thing, or are your people gonna do, you know, some random thing or some crazy thing that that you're not expecting?

Quantifying a strong culture

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Yeah, no, that that is true. Um, I mean, I I also feel like it's important to know what are those indications of a strong team culture versus maybe not such a strong team culture, um, or I guess in other terms too, healthy versus not so healthy team culture. Um, so so yeah, like that's where um, you know, again, before we dive too much further into kind of like how is culture created and what teams need to understand in regards to culture, I think it's important first to establish uh some sort of gauge for maybe someone listening to be like, hmm, where is my team culture right now? Is it maybe more on the healthy side? Is it maybe uh more on the unhealthy side or the side that we can we need to improve? So yeah, can you just talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Yeah. Um, well, I'll say almost everyone, every organization has room for improvement, right? That that I don't think there's anybody that I my team's not perfect. There's room to grow, everybody has room to grow. Uh it's probably if the leaders of an organization are like, uh no, things are really good. We don't have any anything to improve here, that's probably a red flag that there's actually a problem in the culture. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

You mean it's not just a checkbox, right? Like, oh, culture.

SPEAKER_04 11:04

Cult culture is um it it's it's hard to quantify, right? Because there's not one single culture that's the right fit for an organization, right? Teams need to decide what their culture is. Um, and um a good high-performing culture can look different uh in different teams. But the what a bad culture is, you know, you feel it and you feel it really quickly, right? Uh what I see a lot in uh volunteer teams, especially, you know, there's a really wide range of teams in the United States. A lot, some states, the sheriff's department is in charge. There is one search and rescue team for the county, or there's kind of a set of search and rescue teams that are approved by the sheriff. And, you know, the the sheriff's department is setting, at least to some extent, the tone for that culture, right? And your search and rescue team is probably going to have a similar culture to the sheriff's department because your your expectations for how you act and and uh is gonna be dictated by uh by that agency. Um, but in a lot of other uh parts of the country, uh there are states where you know it's not closely overseen by any county or state organization, and you just kind of have nonprofit organizations that kind of spring up and we're gonna do this thing, and you know, maybe we get certified in whatever way we think is is the right way to do that. Um, and there's nobody other than the team leadership that's defining the culture. And in that case, um, what I often see is just there's no attention to the culture, right? The leaders have not intentionally said, here's the kind of culture that we want, and um, and now we're gonna build systems and processes and lead by example to do that. It often just becomes kind of a, you know, we're we're a group of people that kind of works together and has uh uh a way of of interacting that's based off the personalities that are there. And that can lead to a really good culture. If you have people that are really open and really care about each other, maybe that's a maybe that's a good uh culture, but still probably has limits if you don't have the systems in place to uh to kind of grow that out into to new ones. But you know, what what I've also seen happen is you just have people that act really badly, right? They're just people who are rude, people who are insulting, uh, people who are not professional. Yeah, if you have kind of those negative things happening and you don't have a system of kind of correcting the culture, that becomes your culture, right? So sometimes it's just that, you know, that lack of attention to culture leads into kind of uh kind of poor things. Um, you know, the others that don't, you know, the other things that can kind of be a a sign that there's a problem is that that it's a closed leadership, right? Leader leadership isn't taking in, isn't providing a venue for people to provide feedback or or contribute to things or grow to things. And uh, and then that's kind of indicating that you know the culture there is to perpetuate somebody's vision for something, which is not necessarily, you know, uh perhaps the the vision that's going to attract a whole lot of people.

Leadership's role in building culture

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah. You know, I want to kind of back up to what you said in the beginning, which is culture can look different. A good healthy culture can look different based on the team. And I think that's important for teams to understand is that there's just not one prescribed, oh, this is what a healthy culture is. Um, there are definitely things that are that indicate a not so healthy culture. And for me, I've often used gauges just as you mentioned, like, okay, how involved are team members on this team, right? Are people not showing up to trainings, maybe only showing up to missions, doing the bare minimum? That's usually indicates that there could be a culture problem. And then uh I also kind of like to assess there was there was a team where we did a internal team survey, and I focused very much on how team members felt about the team and tried to objectively capture their emotions. And then we even turned it into a word cloud where you know most of the feel in whenever it's like the larger sentiment was what was the bigger word, and then there's smaller words, and it creates that beautiful word cloud. Um, and so those are kind of my my gauges of like uh actually I have three. I have team, team involvement, team member involvement, team overall team sentiment, um, member sentiment to the team. And then the other one is communication. How open is the communication on the team? And you alluded to this as well, where if it leaders are not providing different venues of communication back and forth, do I feel comfortable just going directly to leadership about it? And so that's where, you know, again, I kind of use that to gauge too of like what are the channels of communication? Are there channels that are appropriate based on what the team members might be experiencing? Um, and then finally, you uh mentioned something I just thought just kind of so mind-blowing for me just now is uh if if a team is not conscious about creating their culture and creating systems and processes that support that culture, then the default is most likely it's becoming a personality-based culture. So it's based on the personality of those leading the team. Leadership does have an impact. Members that are um supportive of a healthy team culture versus maybe not as supportive, right? Do have an impact on the team. But if you don't have any other systems and processes in place, yeah, it's going to be completely dependent on those personalities. And that could be quite dangerous. It might be fine if you have the great personalities, but that means it's not going to last. As soon as someone else comes in with a stronger, dominant uh personality that doesn't support a healthy team culture, it's going to start to derail.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

And that's, you know, that's very hard to change, right? If you've been going, if for years you've had a couple strong personalities who've been allowed to just they're just being themselves, and that's the culture of the team. And then that's limiting the growth of the team, and you're you're losing members and and those sorts of things. And you and you make the decision of that's not how we want to be. We want a different culture, we want a more professional culture. Now it it becomes an attack against that person's personality, right? Hey, I've at I've acted this way for 10 years. Why, why do I need to act differently now? And that's really difficult. And yeah, uh, speaking from experience, we've gone through that in in my team, and it's really hard. Uh, and things that you have to work through very carefully, or there's gonna, or, or there's gonna be blow-ups that are yeah, potentially um very ugly.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

And I I think every SAR team has that issue, every organization had just any group of people, right? Norm has some issue with those lines. And that's and that's fine, but that's again where um kind of goes back to the basics of setting boundaries, professional boundaries. Just as you said, when the someone first joins the team, that's the perfect time to set boundaries and expectations of like, hey, this is our team culture, this is what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

Yeah, and 100%. And in in my team, we we use kind of a cohort-based approach to bring in new members. Now we have a very strong culture and we have people that really want to join the team. And um, so we need to bring them in kind of once a year as a group. And um, and that allows us one to kind of you know set expectations right up front. And in that kind of first orientation meeting about, you know, you've up you've applied, we're kicking this off. Do you really want to continue? Right, here's what it really looks like. Here's everything you need to do from background checks and training and physical fitness and behavior and professionalism. And we we hit the culture aspects very directly and very hard. Wonderful. There's wiggle room for if you don't meet the physical fitness requirements, we can train more and you can get there. That's great. If you you know struggle with the technical stuff, we can that that get there. But if you uh if you have trouble agreeing with the culture part, that that's It's right, like you probably shouldn't come back because those are kind of the non-negotiable parts of things. If you if you can't act professionally and work with other people, let's cut it off now. Let's not. But you know, trying to address problems with volunteers, you have to do it just like you do in a workplace, you know, or they say we're MRA teams, MRA members are unpaid professionals, right? And so we have the same expectations for kind of workplace. Um, and part of the part of the challenge with volunteers is you start going down the the route of addressing performance issues, providing performance feedback, and um, and often they'll, you know, they'll just quit, right? It's like, I don't need this, I'm a volunteer, I don't need it. And ultimately, that's you know, what I think is is most important is you figure out what what culture, what kind of performance do your customers want? And our you know, in our case, the our our customers are the law enforcement agencies that are gonna say, we need help. Uh, we have a you know, we have a missing person, we uh we have an injured person, we need help. You know, we're gonna we're gonna call your organization or we're not. And that's based on um are they getting the uh the type of response that they want, or are they getting something that doesn't align with what they're looking for?

SPEAKER_05 21:29

Yeah.

Community and culture

SPEAKER_04 21:30

And so uh the the culture of a search and rescue team can't just be about what do the volunteers want and you know, what do the leaders want? It's what does the community need and what does the community want, and you know, do we have the culture that's delivering on that?

Creating a unified vision

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, culture is what connects everything. And and I like what you mentioned too, about like, you know, what how are we showing up for the client or for those that we are serving? And it does directly tie into our us being utilized, right? So, like if the sheriff is calling a team and they are always hours and hours late and showing up looking unprofessional and lazy, like they don't want to be there and complaining. Well, you're probably not gonna be called out as often as you would like, right? And so, yeah, and that's why I'm always stressing to um, you know, to our communities like you you have to show up even for just those calls that you're like, oh, it's another search for in this area. It's just gonna be like, is this worth my time in the middle of the night? One, you never know how that mission's going to turn out. You know, there's there's been so many call-outs where it's like, oh, this seems fairly straightforward and it's it's not, and it becomes very interesting and spicy right away. But um, but it's also us showing up, us showing the community, showing, you know, the other agencies that we are here, no matter what, you can call us. Is you you you alluded to this already, but it does seem like the team first and foremost needs a purpose, needs one mission, one clear objective that they're all uniting under. Because if you don't have that, then the everyone's gonna going to try to figure that out themselves and it's not going to be yeah, right, connected. And so, yeah, I mean, search, we're a search and rescue team, that's one thing, but what is the actual purpose? And so, uh, can you speak to that as well as like any other basic concepts that need to be understood?

SPEAKER_04 23:30

Yeah, I think ultimately building a culture isn't complicated, it's a prel pretty straightforward endeavor, it's just incredibly difficult and uh and takes a long time and takes a lot, and and you need and you can lose it really quickly. So you need to keep reinforcing it. So, and I and I also think that you for sure you need to have a a shared mission and a shared purpose. Uh, one of the challenges in search and rescue is that search and rescue can mean so many different things and often isn't just one thing, right? So certainly one of the things that often needs to happen is kind of how do you figure out what the mission is when it go can go in so many different directions? And you want to have, you know, people who are interested in technical rescue and also people that are interested in canine rescue and search management, you know, all on the same team. Um, and and so you can certainly do that, right? You but you need to have that clear mission statement. But I think, you know, the the specific steps to getting there are being intentional about it, right? Leaders need to sit down as a group and say, what kind of organization do we want to have? What kind of culture um uh do we want to have that really should also be driven with your law enforcement part partners, your elected leaders, right? The people who are gonna call you, make sure that aligns with what they're doing, and then write it down and say, This is the culture that we want, this is the performance that we want, make some slides out of it, talk to your team about it, let them provide input um on it and evolve it, and then keep reminding people about it, uh, right, have it in that orientation. Um, you know, in our monthly meetings and our and our mission reviews, we when we talk about the missions, we tie it back to all our cultural principles, right? And we call people out for, you know, hey, hey, we we did a, you know, uh specific members did a really good job of um of representing the team and showing up and doing what we uh what we want.

Safety and belonging in team culture

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Exactly. Exactly. Well, and you know, you it is hard to build culture, to correct culture, to maintain culture. It's one of those things, though, too, that your culture is going to be set for the future if you don't consciously do something to change it today, right? And it's probably not going to be a good culture that, you know, that you're setting your team up for in the future if you're not consciously trying to correct it today. Um, so it's like today is the best time to start, you know, if it's uh you have to start at some point. Today's the best day to do it. Uh, I was on a team where, you know, again, every team goes through its ups and downs. We were in a pretty down in a valley, that's for sure. And it was determined that yeah, we needed a culture reset. And how would we go about doing that? Um, we decided to actually put together a committee focused just on that and analyzing and identifying the problems. That's how that survey came about of like how does the team feel? Do they feel safe? And it kind of goes back to the masless hierarchy of needs, which we'll mention in a moment. But um, you know, one of the first things we did in that committee was we created a vision of what we wanted our team to be in the future. And that vision included a unified purpose that we were all able to come under. It included how would team members feel, how would team members act, who would be on the team, um, and and how do we attract those individuals? Because we did want individuals from other diverse backgrounds. And I thought it was a really good exercise where everyone just kind of had the same vision of what they wanted the future of the team to be. Um, and then when it came to designing the survey and to being intentional about our team culture and identifying and prioritizing the problems that existed, we did fall uh heavily on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, um, which is, you know, just very basic of like, okay, everyone needs to feel safe. And that's psychologically safe, that's physically safe, which you do have to factor in with a SAR team, right? Um, like, do they physically feel safe to be the one that goes over the edge first and totally rely on their team members with their life, right? Like that's that's a huge concern. Um, do they feel psychologically safe to speak up when they are feeling uncomfortable or there's a dangerous situation? And so, like, that's that's I think number one. And then um also with Maslow's hierarchy needs belonging. Everyone, it's just us as humans. We need, we, we need to have a purpose. We need to feel like we belong somewhere. And I know there are some teams where they they I think they kind of skirt around that of like the whole sense of belonging, because it is kind of hard and very abstract to be like, well, what does that mean? How do we make people feel like they belong and appreciated? But there are ways to do it. And um, you know, hitting those two aspects of like safety, focusing in on team safety, physical and psychological safety, and team belonging, you're gonna do pretty well just focusing on those two things, right? And then that's where you have systems and processes that can come out of the focusing on those two things.

SPEAKER_04 28:59

Um yeah, I I think you hit on the fundamental building blocks. Um, I think the other kind of big part of it is understanding where the team is now, understanding where you want to go to, and what's the what we would call in the professional world the organizational change management plan for getting there, right? Because you can't just tomorrow start saying, well, here's a whole new set of rules, everybody get on board, right? You you have to come up with how are you gonna transition there? How are you gonna provide coaching and feedback to people that you know are not acting the way you want it uh too? That that's not just well, we have a new policy and you you need to follow the policy, right? That that doesn't work. And so, and then how are you gonna introduce new people, bring them in and enforce that over time? It it needs to be realistic and it needs to be uh it needs to move at the pace that the organization can kind of accept new ways of working, especially for volunteer organizations, you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Especially for volunteers, yeah, with people who normally have full-time day jobs and then are doing this as extra on the side. Yeah, completely agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 30:11

And where potentially the SAR team has a different culture than their day-to-day job. And we sometimes see that, right? Like, you know, if if people are coming from a professional work environment where, yeah, that aligns to kind of what we want in our team, no, no problems. If people are it their day-to-day world is an environment where throwing around jokes and making fun of each other and being less than professional is acceptable, then it becomes a lot harder, right? Yeah. Uh, which is another consideration and where where what are the other cultural influences that uh that people are coming from?

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, I I completely agree. Um, for me too, I've found again, part of running any group or organization is just understanding that you will have personalities. Leaders, leaders definitely have an important role. They do set the tone for the team culture. But the individuals, responders on the teams, they also contribute to team culture. And if no one's taking accountability for culture and for how they're contributing, then again, that that kind of is an issue as well.

SPEAKER_04 31:18

Yeah, excellent points that you know the the culture leaders are responsible for defining and and building the culture, but that culture can't just be what the leaders want, or it can't just be to kind of satisfy the power trip of the leaders, right? Volunteer SAR organizations, a huge component of what we do is train new members, right? Develop skills in people, give people the opportunity to grow into leadership roles. Um, and uh, and I think that's one of the things that we often see are you know, do you have enough kind of promotion paths for people so that they can get progressively more responsibility and kind of you know, develop skills, uh take take on new roles, get new experiences that helps people kind of thrive within that.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Exactly. And again, it goes back to that Miles Lowe's hierarchy of needs. I mean, at the top of the triangle is self-actualization, uh, actualization, excuse me, uh, enlightenment slash growth, you know, however, however you want to phrase it. But that's where, yeah, providing that path where individuals can actually grow on the team, start to lead the team, take over trainings. That's again just going back to that kind of like the basic needs of that individual on the team. And so I think that brings us to uh the next part of the discussion that I want to steer us is uh tactical takeaways, right? Like, okay, what are things that we can do as a team, those systems and processes that that help us go beyond just the personalities of the team that we can put in place to meet the needs of our team to help set that healthy team culture? Um, so let's go ahead and just maybe start with safety, the psychological and physical safety. What do you think are some tactics teams could deploy systems and processes that could help um meet that need of the team?

SPEAKER_04 33:14

Yeah, certainly in search and rescue safety is something that we're always conscious of, and having a clear safety standard, both for physical rescue activities as well as for psychological safety and you know, at missions and how people are uh interacting with each other and and having a consistent approach to safety, that it's something we talk about. It's something that we appoint a safety officer to when we're uh when we're doing a technical rescue, we're big fans of kind of the psychological safety and the 333 protocol uh for you know if we have you know critical incidents and we up and we appoint, you know, we we have a a procedure for how we appoint somebody who wasn't involved in an incident to follow up with everybody, right? So when you think about safety, you have to have those things in place, and then you have to be consistent about how you apply them, right? Are you actually doing uh a green, amber, red, guar safety assessment before you do something um significant? Um, in our team, we track near misses and we and we talk about them. In uh, we have a safety committee. It's one of the as an ambulance service in in our state, we're required to have a safety committee. Um, and we kind of really embrace that. And from a so from a tactics perspective, safety needs to be more than, hey, you know, safety's important or safety first or safety third or whatever you're saying is. Um, you need to have specific things in place that drive a safety culture. And it has to be not just on the mission, it has to be for the organization as a whole. And you have to have those times to reflect and say, hey, let's let's talk about how we're doing with this. Let's talk about near misses, let's talk about things that people are struggling with.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Yeah, I like that. So, you know, I heard a safety committee. I think that's that's amazing. That's um, I love that. I mean, everyone is responsible for safety and in charge of safety, but having a dedicated safety committee to actually do some of this work is is incredible. Um having, yes, the the near misses and analyzing near misses, that means you have to have that's a channel of communication, right? To to be able to capture that, um, discussing it in a constructive way that that promotes growth instead of just um um punishment, right? I I think that's that's good. Um, so yeah, I I love all of that. Uh what about in regards to um sense of belonging and esteem? What are what are things we can do to improve that area of the team culture?

Onboarding considerations

SPEAKER_04 36:02

You know, sense of belonging is also very specific to a team that uh, you know, how closely located is a team? Is the team able to kind of come together and socialize because they all live very close to each other, or are they distributed? You know, it's also really different of, you know, are you a are you a six-person search and rescue team that kind of trains together and does everything together, or are you a 50 or 75 or a hundred-person mountain rescue team? And kind of what does that look like? So there's different kind of challenges there on what kind of belonging looks like, but people need to know their role. And it goes back, I think, to the mission that if everybody, if you have a shared mission and you feel like you're part of that mission and you're part of executing against that mission, um, then you're gonna feel like you belong. It can also be part of reinforcing the culture and reinforcing the standard, right? You know, most MRA teams have some sort of probationary period. You, you know, you need to go through, you need to get a set certain level of training and certain level of experience before you become mission ready, right? And you can't you can't respond to missions until you have all the equipment, all the training. Um, and part of that training is also, you know, do you understand the culture? And you know, part of the function that that probationary period has is it's saying you don't belong. You're you're working on becoming a member of the team, and you've got to do these things, right? There's expectations before you really get there. Um, and so that's where you're embedding the culture, it's where you're embedding the standards, and that's it, so you have to have that trade-off of um of what's it take to become a member and you know, and get the jacket or get the MRA patch and and those sorts of things. Like those things are important to to driving the culture and driving the performance.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Yeah. No, I completely agree with having uh a very solid onboarding process and right and how you train those new team members and set the expectation. Um, it's it's kind of the foundation of everything. And then, yeah, it might be a rigorous process, but that's also what makes a team member feel like they belong. Just as you said, they know that they don't quite belong yet. They're working towards that. And when they actually get through everything and they've joined the team, they feel like they belong on that team, right? They feel like they, you know, and that's a sense of accomplishment, and that's great. There's one team that I was speaking to that they have truly embedded, like, okay, do you fit well within our team culture? Here are the expectations, here's our code of conduct. And they they actually graded individuals based on their technical capabilities, their um cultural capabilities of the team. And if someone did not pass the cultural expectations um of the team, then they they weren't allowed to join the team. And it might, it has they they admitted that they've turned away some very skilled, very technical people who would have contributed to the team in that sense, but would have ultimately been probably destructive for the team. And and the individuals that I spoke to on that team were they loved their team culture, which was amazing. And that's also how you bring more diversity, right? More of those, the different groups. And because I do feel that overall, search and rescue is a bit more of the of the privileged community um because of just the way it's structured and bringing in a bit more diversity is is important. But that's how you you do it is by setting some of the um of kind of like the the better, the better culture that's also a bit more accepting. But yeah, so you know, a solid onboarding process. Um You know, I think clear policies that that like codes of conduct. Um, I've heard of some teams doing written agreements of like this is the code of conduct. And if you don't comply, there could potentially be removal from a team. You know, I think that that's also a potential strategy. The other thing though, I think is really important um when it comes to just like belonging and appreciation is yeah, having that structured path of how you move up to the team through the team, the ranks, because yes, it does help with like self-actualization and and all that, but it does give them validation of like, hey, you've you are now rescue leader.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

Yeah. And yeah, uh, volunteer management is whether it's in search and rescue or anywhere else, it's the same thing, right? You know, you people need to have an opportunity to make suggestions and say, hey, I have this idea. Um, can we do it? Does it align with kind of you know how we want to spend our time and those sorts of things? Um, but also when uh other ideas come out, whether it's from the board or other leaders or other people, it's you know, get that out and say who wants to help with this, right? You you need to create those opportunities where people aren't just working on things in isolation or people don't have an opportunity to um uh to talk with each other.

unknown 41:20

Yeah.

Managing conflict

SPEAKER_02 41:20

What about uh tactics though, for because I think this is really important, right? This is how you help the culture not derail and start to go in a way of becoming a little bit more on the unhealthy side. How should teams go about dealing with conflict, whether it's external or internal conflict?

SPEAKER_04 41:38

Well, the first thing is you need to deal with it and and deal with it quickly. I think you know the biggest problems are where it just gets swept under the rug and like uh we don't want to don't want to deal with it. It's gonna be hard. Um, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. It doesn't um resolve itself. Um, so if there's conflicts, we need to um to to kind of get in and look at that. Not all conflict is bad, right? It it if it's people with differing ideas and suggestions about what we should should do that can be healthy and and can generate new ideas and um and new suggestions. But uh if it's just people that can't get along or are arguing with the policies or procedures or just have personalities that uh that don't get along, you know, that those are things that uh need to be um addressed.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

So I like that. Like I I love the point that you made. Just I I love it so much. You need to address conflict. Do not just sweep it under the rug. It's going to get worse if you do. Um, so yeah, address conflict. Um, be ready to address conflict. I actually I think just as a leader of the SAR, of a SAR team, of an organization, of just any group of people, you should just assume that there will be some form of conflict at some point that needs that will need to be addressed. Like it's not all rainbows and and roses. But yeah, so it's like address the conflict, um, determine who is going to address the conflict, how it's if it, you know, if there is a agree through a larger team, how does it actually go about like being escalated? Um, what are the routes of communication, like the initial kind of like, oh hey, this is a problem. Uh, I also think that there are many ways you could avoid conflict in like entirely by setting again those policies and procedures and having being very clear on those. And I know the MRA has um a few policies and procedures that SAR teams can utilize um to look at and maybe adapt. But yeah, one of those would be like gender discrimination policies, um, um, those types of things. Having those in place proactively instead of reactively can really save save a team a huge headache.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

For sure. Yeah, and some of those things, you know, when you were talking about yeah, harassment and and discrimination, like those are those are just clearly things that need to be addressed right away and and taken care of in a, you know, there's no really no gray area there, as far as I'm concerned. Um, the ones where kind of the more insidious conflict that I see happen are, you know, you've made decisions about your standards around rescue or your equipment, or on the canine side around certifications or the way you're going to train the dogs. And then there's people that want to push the boundaries for that or didn't agree with it and want to do things their own way.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Well, and also I do think there's a uh something to be said about maybe team leaders preparing themselves and maybe taking whether it's learning more about conflict resolution, taking a leadership course around conflict resolution, because ultimately, even though it's a volunteer nonprofit, you do you do have a professional service to deliver. And if you're stepping up as a team leader on that team, you should be prepared to be the leader that is needed for that team, which could be different for every team. Um, but you know, I do think conflict resolution is one of those key skills that leaders should have. Um, and and recognizing how to validate team members when they're upset, uh, what how to respond when they come with a new suggestion or and not just shut them down right away. And so, yeah, I do think that's something too, to worthwhile to explore for team team leaders.

SPEAKER_04 45:19

Yeah, part of that is also making sure that there's a time and place to make those suggestions. So sometimes the conflict that I see happen is because, you know, people are like jumping in in the middle of a training and so and saying, oh, well, there's this other way of doing things, or you know, you know, complaining in the middle of a training evolution about the way that it's being structured. And you say, like, you know, the person who's running this has put together a plan and they've spent weeks working on the plan and right, they're not changing it in the middle for because of your suggestion, right? If you want to, if you want to make a suggestion for next time, but you have to create the time and space for that. Like, where's the right time to make suggestions? Where's the places where it's gonna be disruptive and don't do it there? And and how do we all agree that we're gonna address those sorts of things?

Closing thoughts

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Exactly. And that's also again where when you do have individuals that are doing things like that, like interrupting the training with their own plans or whatever it is, I go back to hmm, what failed here, right? Leading up to this point. Why does this person feel like they have to interject now? Oh, that's because they didn't have the capability to do it beforehand, or they weren't, you know, we didn't communicate enough to allow more participation before, you know, in planning this training. So yeah, those are things leaders need to ask. Um, so to wrap it up here though, uh, do you have any advice for teams that are maybe wanting to um correct their team culture? Because yes, it's hard, it's worth it, but where do we start? I think that's probably the biggest question. What would you say to teams on where to start as far as correcting team culture?

SPEAKER_04 46:57

Yeah, I think uh coming up with a plan for how you're gonna address it is, you know, there's uh you know, hopefully we've given some ideas here. There's a lot of good information out on the internet about building culture and how to think about it. And so spending some time, you know, doing the research and thinking about the approach, um, and then start with a team meeting or a survey. You mentioned a survey earlier. Uh, surveys are uh are often really good input to a team meeting, especially if they're anonymous. Especially if they're anonymous. Um, and then we can sit down and we can, you know, and have a um uh a discussion or a workshop. Um, how that happens is uh I think really important. So thinking about how that's gonna be facilitated, thinking about how you're gonna work through it, how is everybody gonna, you know, um, you know, it that's not gonna be valuable if a leader comes in and and says, we're having this big team lead meeting, so I can tell you what the new culture is gonna be, right? That that that doesn't work. You have to get everybody um together and um and and really have shared ownership on uh of it. Uh and you have to be prepared for it over the long haul. As I said before, this isn't gonna happen quickly. You can make progress, but it's really reinforcing it uh over time.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Um, well, Chris, thank you so much for having this discussion today. I think that it's something that's very important and useful, and every team has to address, um, whether they have a healthy team culture or maybe not so healthy team culture, because it's just applicable to every single team. And every single team has a culture, whether they want to realize it or not. But uh, but thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_04 48:51

Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. Uh, and I'm uh glad to be on the podcast.

Wrap up

SPEAKER_01 48:57

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SPEAKER_03 49:33

That was really, really illuminating. Um, that was a great conversation. It's so interesting, again, how we can take these concepts and really bring them down to earth and make a plan. Um, and one thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that that Chris points out if you aren't intentional about talking about what your culture is and making a plan for it, it can often become a vacuum. Uh, and it's just whoever's in charge or with the loudest voice can kind of dictate where the team is going. Um, and so I think that's really, really important.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

Yeah, I agree. And, you know, just as personalities could possibly dictate the culture of a team, it can also be shaped by challenges. And depending on your team's culture, as challenges arise, those will have a negative or positive impact on the team. And challenges are always going to happen, whether it's interpersonal challenges, challenges with other agencies, on missions, whatever it is. So I think that's also something that we need to accept is that okay, there will be challenges, and there is always going to be a culture, but we do have some control over it.

SPEAKER_03 50:45

Yeah. And that's why I really like too that um when Chris mentioned about incorporating conversations about how did we show up as a team in their debriefs? So not just, you know, did we um execute the mission effectively? Did we, you know, do a really good search grid? Did we, you know, tend the litter correctly, but did we represent ourselves in the way that we want to be represented? Did we pay attention to safety? Did we take care of each other? Those are really important questions, too, I think, to be asking when you're doing those mission debriefs. So I like that he highlighted that.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

Yeah, the other thing, too, that I think actually is beautiful, while it might seem daunting to others, is the fact that there really is no one size fits all approach to team culture. And there actually is no standard definition either. It really is up to the team, which that's that's what I find beautiful in the sense that you can paint your own team's culture. You can have better control and dictate the team's future because you're consciously creating its culture. And that's, you know, if a team can come together and decide on what is our team culture, what is our future vision, what is our united mission, that will vary per team. But if if you start there, that's amazing. And then you have the tools available to you, those action items that you can do to get your team to where you want it to, you know, where you need it to be. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 52:09

Well, I'm I think that this is going to be really helpful for a lot of teams. Um, and I hope that they're, you know, if any folks are listening that have seen this challenge within their team, that they can come away with some tangible action items.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

Yeah, I hope so too. And if there is anyone out there that has enjoyed this episode today, please let us know if you have any thoughts or ideas or things that have really worked out well for your team and would like to be on the podcast or just share it in an email. That's that's great too. You can always reach out to us at hello at base dash medical.com.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

All right. Thanks so much, Teal.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Thank you, Lauren.

SPEAKER_03 52:45

SAR Mutual Aid is produced by Lawrence Genechny and Teal Harbin and presented by Base Medical. For more information, visit base medical.com.