Emergency Response Leadership

Introduction

• This article focuses on the development of the leadership function, looking specifically at emergency response management
• Management roles are analyzed through situation assessment and examining leadership identity
• The research highlights a divide between methods taught in formal education and practical, real-world application
• In actual emergencies, effective management involves meaningfully shaping the event and bargaining the leader's authoritative stance

Leadership Education and Challenges

• Many leadership programs aim to equip individuals with competencies that go beyond specific skills, emphasizing self-assessment and reflection
• Formal leadership training is moving towards basing decision-making on informed rationales as opposed to intuition
• The goal is to cultivate social understanding in conjunction with learning
• Balancing cognitive processes and social dynamics are key in making leadership legitimate and accepted

Core Tasks of an Emergency Response Leader

• The leader's core tasks are to interpret the situation and determine appropriate actions
• Emergency response deviates from other leadership functions due to pressure from the setting
• The dynamic aspect of incidents limits planning and forecasting, requiring the leader to take on a privileged position to assess situations and issue commands
• The authority of the management position is amplified in crisis situations, contrasting with normal organizational contexts

Traditional vs Relational Perspectives on Leadership

• Emergency response leans on a distinction between traditional and relational viewpoints
• The traditional view perceives leadership as a solitary attribute, an inherent quality of the leader, whereas the relational perspective views the skill as socially constructed
• Pattern recognition drives decision-making in emergency situations, based on info stored in memory
• Leaders are expected to identify anomalies proactively
• Newer research challenges this by Rake and Njå, where experienced leaders do recognize patterns but also face aspects challenging existing cognitive models

Factors Effecting the Leader

• Leaders tend to give few actual commands
• Response leaders tended to react instead of act
• The first pattern noticed dictates the procedure
• A leader's cognitive capabilities are not the only variable needed for an effective response, emotional and physical state also matter
• Strategies to protect legitimacy trigger reactive leadership
• Leaders who actively involve themselves in problem-solving do so to preserve their management capability and grasp the overall situation

Relational Perspective on Leadership

• Leadership should facilitate emergent coordination
• Capabilities should be understood as a social procedure that constructs and produces change through engagement in creating shared meaning
• Possibilities for managing depend on interactions in community where the leader is involved

Research questions

• How are emerging response leaders trained and how is this challenged in real scenarios?
• What perspectives are key to efficiently coach effective leadership?

Privileged Meaning Maker

• Organization at incident set up with clear responsibility placements via command structure
• Shared decision making means leaders share perspectives and deliberation, establishing common ground with mutual trust and transparency

Aims of Shared Leaders

• Contribute to common understanding
• Act as decision-makers, leading tactics
• Partake in meaning-making

Leaders enacting meaning-making processes.

• Instilling balance via coping, problem-solving and learning. Bodily/cognitive reaction
• Identity and social influence

Enactment of practical consequences

• Leader expected to assess and define scenario in a way that others can act on optimally
• Enactment connected to situation assessment

Leaders Situational Judgement:

• Person retrieval; inside or outside
• Evacuation
• Fire risk
• Resources
• Timing of day
• Additional support
• Identity constructed and reconstructed via communication
• Individual understanding formed out of engagement
• Leader’s handling of decision-making and conversation

Reflective vs Reflexive Processes

• Reflective processes are cognition based, using logic and analytics
• Reflexive draw deeper on assumptions and are particularly relevant for self identity as leader

Study of Privileged Meaning Makers

• Field studies conducted to follow learning and teaching procedure of prospective leaders
• Focus on reflective methods, and reflexivity

What was discovered

• A collaborative, more objective mindset was found in prospective leaders
• An objective approach to finding logical reasons when there were issues with fires was standard
• Study method included participant observation plus constructivist ethnographic approach which fostered a collaborative dynamic

Using technology

• Helmet cameras employed to allow replay and explore operative process
• Researchers also used instructors from Emergency Management Technical School to analyze observations in instruction and discuss the idea training for future leaders

Leadership in daily emergencies

• Daily operation studied with direct observation through camera
• It was utilized to support attention, and has been introduced in Denmark and Norway as such

Camera as research tool

• The camera allows for the observation of the processes where they might learn of areas for more explorative operative practice

Analytical method to determine findings

• Critical events are deconstructed in the situations of the mind
• It is a tool in assessing these processes which are being studied; the footage, the operations, and transcripts all make up the finding

Learning and the Insatsleader

• Emergency management training is handled by the Emergency Management Technical School where a course is undertaken which has a series of practices that help the leader reflect
• There are studies and perspectives that help the leader and instructor improve; one leader being ‘Emil’ who serves a typical example of community who is a full time smith/part time head officer

Methods used

• Tabletop exercises, where injuries get put in place and the situation is acted out (H0 1/87)
• Instructors give realistic cases to the leaders each having a certain function
• The goal is to use the standards and tactics that they know as it plays out

Exercise Description

• The exercise works through prioritizing, where it is or isn’t safe, etc; determining factors
• The goal is to give a common picture, and for the technical (law) side of leaders to provide a situation picture

Leader Takeaways

• All leaders are trained to stop handling technology and start leading; to step into action and be a member who communicates well
• In the example provided a certain candidate doubted their decisions, what was the result
• A new leader needs to determine that they are the ones who are accountable, and that there are things you must go through

Full Scale Exercises

• Full scale exercises allow for a lot of the experience to be felt
• These exercises challenge each single aspirant in order to do management, in relation to leadership
• In a realistic manner, a group is given the emergency: for example in the analysis a flame has developed due to acid and fumes and everything is now melting the workers had tried to fix this but ended up with chemical burns, etc.
• The leader is tasked to ascertain the area of the hazard

Judgement and Analysis

• While attempting to analyze everything there were issues, and the scene has been left vague, for lack of information/specifity
• Therefore it is important that the team communicates and determines if the scene is safe to take into account. If unable to do so, the leader would risk their credibility and effectiveness
• Sometimes it takes time, but taking on the role can give others the ability to operate effectively; however this does not always directly relate

Everyday Management

• Although trainee management tries to be realistic leadership in the daily world involves everyday operations, which is very different with aspects such as authority, communication,
• Even if a group is working together, who has authority is also based on what’s important

Simulation as Learning

• Learning needs to occur based on a combination of cognitive & relatable aspects

The gas-leak case

• The leader of the police arrives quickly where its said ‘tell me what you need’ indicating the need for the leader to take charge
• The leader of the fire crew uses detectors and there has been no reason that people are doing poorly, leaving confusion
• The team needed to communicate what the other sectors can do if the fire don’t have information, can’t get answers, etc

Identity and Position

• Metaphor helped defuse a hazardous situation
• Leaders help others and determine what’s needed
• The leader is responsible for drawing upon what they can, while being aware of who can get the job and if not what can be done

Conclusions

• Even when simulations try to mimic reality they are very different, like daily operations, which leaves challenges in the field
• Leadership must be a combination of relational and cognitive training
• The skills training and tech must come together - a good area for innovation
• What leaders do in each sector is of high importance and all aspects must be considered