TED talk on Leadership in Fire Service Operations
Let me start with a very simple idea.When I started to prepare this talk, I had no idea what to talk about . The point was that all I knew about leadership seemed to be vague and quite pathetic. Let alone leadership in fire operations or emergency management – this context appeared to be even more complicated and official. However, I had an obvious choice which was to make a research and discover more about the field. Which I did. Indeed, I have read enough instructive articles on leadership in Fire operations and Emergency management, I even found a recent study with important findings and conclusions on crucial characteristics of future fire service leaders. It seemed interesting to me that in order to adequately the question, apart from following a traditional model for the research, CPS cooperated with outstanding and recognized fire service leaders. The results were as follows. Emphasis on ethics, outstanding decision-making skills, perfection in technical expertise, strategic thinking… All these features were recognized as extremely important at all ranks of the profession. “Everything is right”, - I said to myself.
Everything is as right as obvious and not-true. Let me explain. It is not that these factors were not valid to me, on the contrary, I completely acknowledge their crucial importance in the occupation. The problem is that those traits seemed unbelievable and unattainable to me. I was just standing there desperately trying to figure out a person, a real person, a firefighter, whom I would follow without any fear, in any circumstances, right into the fire to rescue other people. I was hoping to hold this image in my head and I could not. Simply because there was no one. No realistic figure came to my mind, instead only generic characteristics – decision-making, professionalism, ethical thinking – were buzzing in my head. Really, the problem was they were completely detached from real life challenges.And then I thought that those were secondary and symbolic things. Because the essence of leadership in our profession is somewhere else. So where is it? And then I started looking for answers in realistic experiences. Where? – You will ask me. And, of course, you won’t believe me, but I found them here, on TED talks Frankly speaking, my first and logical intention was to go and check how other TED speakers understood the issue of leadership and what exactly they shared with public. Which I did, once again. And I deeply appreciate dozens of those thorough, innovative and constructive conclusions because they greatly helped me to rethink and redefine my vision of leadership as related to my profession. Now, let me introduce myself as one more TED speaker who is going to bring you to some conclusions about such a cooperative brainstorming thinking.
Now, the first thing I realized about leadership in Fire Service Operations is that it is always about people and danger. Not issues, not concepts, …
