Notes from book - Flow-based Leadership
Author
Judith L. Glick-Smith Ph.D
Title
Flow-based Leadership:
What the Best Firefighters can Teach You about Leadership and Making Hard Decisions
URL
Date read
2020-02
Quotes
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Studies by researchers of flow, such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, and others, show that the more experience and training a person has in a given area or task, the more flow experiences that person will have.
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The goal of flow-based leadership is to establish and maintain an organization that promotes the well-being of individuals involved in the organization, as well as the customers or community in which they serve.
When people can trust the organization to keep their best interests at heart, they will be more forgiving when things don’t go as planned.
There will always be factions who disagree based on their own world view, but if the organization consistently demonstrates and communicates its intentions as honorable and true, those who disagree can still respect the decisions made.
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Building an effective culture requires deligence, commitment, a focus on safety, a servant-leadership orientation, knowledge management, a sense of honor and duty to doing what is right and true, a willingness to accept risk, thoughtful decision making, and mindful communication
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we only grow when we are a bit off balance.
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Flow occurs when you face a clear set of challenging goals that require appropriate responses.
Training, experience, and access to feedback in the moment facilitate your decision making and your actions.
You experience the feeling of complete and infinite emersion in the activity.
Flow does not occur when you are at rest.
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being in a flow state does not guarantee the appropriate decision, experience, or outcome.
Flow is neutral: that is, neither positive nor negative.
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There are eight characteristics of flow:
• You have clear goals and are receiving immediate feedback within the activity.
• There are many opportunities for decisive action.
• Awareness and action merge.
• You focus on the task at hand.
• You feel in control of your actions.
• Awareness of self disappears during the task and feels stronger following task completion.
• The concept of time has no meaning.
• The experience is autotelic.
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Opportunities for acting decisively come from challenging activities that require skill, which are matched by how well a person believes he or she is suited for the challenge.
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according to Csikszentmihalyi, flow enables feelings of “the possibility of control…what people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations.” The byproduct of feeling a sense of control is confidence
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“It came from the experience of knowing, when you are in that position, you cannot one hundred percent rely on the information you get.
You have to use your gut instinct from your experience, so that you can recover when something happens.”
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“We weren’t going to have it happen again.
Putting that policy in place empowered the local folks to take the actions that they needed to take
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Firefighters make no judgments about the “other.” What sets firefighters apart is their compassion for other people.20 The firefighter helps without prejudice or attribution.
There are no labels placed on the people (or animals) in jeopardy.
Firefighters are called to save lives.
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We were an open book right from the beginning.
This attitude really helped us get through this.
Here’s what happened.
Here’s how it went down.
Honesty is the best policy
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“Time is funny in emergency situations.
It compresses and expands in very weird ways
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Autotelic refers to the idea that one acts for the sake of doing.
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The feeling of being in flow is that of being at peace in any activity.
It is that feeling of lightness, of moving without effort, of buoyancy: as if flying through the air or floating in water.
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“When you are a fireman, you are doing your thing.
You worry about you.
You worry about your partner, but it’s you.
As a fireman, I want to go and dig out.
If it’s burning seventy percent of the building, I want to go in there and ‘get me some.’ Once you become an officer, it changes the whole scope.
Once you become battalion chief and incident commander, you ask, ‘What’s my risk analysis here? Is what I’m getting worth these guys?’ They might hate me because I’m pulling them all out and going defensive, but as an officer, it changes everything.”
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Flow occurs at the intersection of the activity’s challenge level and our abilities to meet those challenges.
In other words, to enter into flow, we have to balance challenges and skill at a high level, while receiving feedback within and about the activity
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He simply wants to be the best he can be, on the job and in his life in general.
He understands that he can always learn something new in each class.
He actively seeks out new opportunities to learn and excel.
He explained to me that once he has learned something really well, he strives to challenge himself to go to the next level.
In this way, he is always getting better, and enjoying the job and his life more.
He is also appreciative of every opportunity to expand his abilities
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intuition grows out of experience
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Preparation refers to training and experience.
It refers to taking care of the tools of your trade.
It refers to rehearsal—repeating the activity until it is ingrained at a cellular level.
This is what enables recognition-primed decision making.
The activity is so familiar to you that when you are challenged by something out of the ordinary, you can continue to function at an optimal level with confidence.
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Both physical strength and cardiovascular health contribute to our sense of overall well-being.
Attention to physical fitness through play and exercise is essential to our ability to initiate flow states
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When people are in flow, they tend to lower their inhibitions when stressed.
When they are stressed, strategies that worked in the past may no longer be valid.
This allows for the consideration of a variety of alternatives, based on perception and cognition.
They reject the ideas that are not productive or feasible, and select those that appear to work for the situation.
Conversely, people with high levels of inhibition and low cognitive ability shut down in the face of stress when in intractible situations
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On a personal level, I have learned that if I go to the gym early in the morning and work out for 45 minutes, I feel better during the day.
My energy level is strong and my mind is sharp.
In addition, there are the side benefits of lowering my cholesterol and evening out my blood pressure, so that I don’t have to take medication.
This enables my emotional and mental bandwidth to expand.
I have “room” to put myself in challenging situations that stretch my skills—one of the preconditions of flow
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The more leadership commits to training and preparation, the more likely the leader’s team will experience flow when the situation warrants it.
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Confidence is a function of training, experience, and preparation in the form of physical readiness, mental alignment, and spiritual connection.
To accomplish this, the individual must be situationally aware at multiple levels.
When all these aspects are in place, leadership happens—whether it is self-leadership or leadership of others.
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High cognitive leaders are more in tune with themselves and their relationships.
They recognize when they are communicating with others who do not have the same level of cognitive ability, and make the effort to ensure understanding in their communications.
People with low cognitive ability “tend to use few dimensions when processing stimuli…tend to contrast themselves with others and are less open to feedback…[and] tend to have a relatively narrow set of interests and knowledge domains
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Highly flexible people do not seek to predict and control situations and events, but rather allow situations and events to emerge, making decisions that are appropriate to the moment in response to continuous feedback.
This correlates to the idea of the merging of action and awareness that occurs in a flow state.
Leaders rise out of the necessity for specific talents and knowledge required in the situation
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We will be more likely to compare options when faced with an unfamiliar situation.
The reason is that a lack of experience will prevent us from generating reasonable options, or will at least reduce our confidence in the options we do generate.58
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We will be more likely to compare options when faced with an unfamiliar situation.
The reason is that a lack of experience will prevent us from generating reasonable options, or will at least reduce our confidence in the options we do generate
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It is important to be aware of your feelings in each moment, thereby minimizing potentially negative consequences.63 Therefore, when you are able to imagine a positive outcome to life’s challenges and incorporate experience and training to facilitate that imagined outcome, you will be more likely to make choices consistent with that positive image.
Your expectations can become “self-fulfilling prophecies.”64 Bad decisions are most often made because of “inexperience, lack of knowledge, or poor judgment.” The most critical component of good, consistent decision making is learned ability: knowledge, training, and experience coupled with the awareness that everything is a system, requiring the continuous processing of feedback and other information that may not necessarily be available in a sequential manner
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“seven best practices—Awareness, Rest, Support, Exercise, Nutrition, Attitude, and Learning (ARSENAL)—[to] build capacity in these three key factors and contribute to developing and maintaining a stress resilient system
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When you find yourself in a situation you don’t recognize, your training enables you to focus on the unfamiliar elements of the situation.
Training helps you execute those tasks that are necessary to get through the situation, while freeing up your cognitive ability to problem solve.
However, it is important to also factor in the effects of stress, your ability and willingness to act, and emotional and cognitive capacity.
If you or your organization is in a constant reactive state of being, the abilities to focus on the task at hand, to be open to possibility and creativity, and to act appropriately for the situation are all compromised
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Experiences are not limited to personal experience.
When an organization fosters knowledge sharing, you can learn from the experiences of others.
This removes the time boundaries established by linear experiences and facilitates exponential growth of everyone on the team.
This requires fostering of a learning culture, free of naming and blaming, and a commitment to life-long learning on the part of individuals as well as the organization
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“True leadership is not about superiority, position, or prestige.
It’s about revealing and releasing the potential of those around you.
Leadership is not about the power of one, but facilitating the greatness of many.” —Brett and Kate McKay
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Incident commanders and other commanding officers must demonstrate the ability to lead by remaining calm; communicating clearly, honestly, and concisely; and consistently making right decisions.
Remaining true to this leadership style instills trust.
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If you are the person in charge on an incident, no matter what your rank, you must be able to shift from a collaborative leadership style to an autocratic leadership style in a heartbeat.
This involves being secure enough in yourself to be willing to make decisions that will upset or even anger those with whom you are working
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Debriefing the incident upon immediate return to quarters is essential to “reinforce good practices and…identify any unacceptable performance.”
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impetus
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amorphous
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Empowering others to make the appropriate decisions instills confidence and a sense of control, which is essential to operating in flow.
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Knowing what type of leadership to use depends on training; knowing when to use that type of leadership is facilitated by experience.
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Smoke Daddy provides opportunities for instructors to share themselves intellectually and spiritually.
He encourages instructors to spread their individual passion like seeds in the garden.
Instructors have the freedom to innovate and revise methods, procedures, and motivation.
This fosters a sense of belonging and contribution.
Rhodes says that this is the “life of the program.” In the GSD program, you won’t ever hear anyone say, “That’s not my job.”
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Recent research shows that “emotion and vividness influence fluency, availability, and judgments of probability.”
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Drills are often based on past incidents in which firefighters lost their lives in the line of duty.
This practice attaches an emotional component and meaning to the drill that solidifies the learning.
Knowing why reinforces the commitment to excellence.
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One of the biggest contributors to bad decision making in emergent situations is fatigue.
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The Georgia Smoke Diver program represents a model of service and community that can be duplicated successfully in other public service organizations.
GSD is a group of equals, leaders committed to service.
How the GSD program manages to sustain itself from year to year has to do with member commitment to excellence and the mission of the program: to make firefighters better.
After studying them for the past five years, I have identified very specific characteristics that facilitate their longevity, passion, and dedication to their profession.
The following characteristics of the
GSD program form a framework for flow-based leadership:
• Lead by example.
• Communicate clearly.
• Commit to a stable infrastructure.
• Bind the group by cultivating trust.
• Honor individual creativity for innovation.
• Use positive motivation techniques.
• Facilitate team flow.
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there has to be commitment on the part of leadership at both departmental and governmental levels.
The flow-based leadership framework will not work in departments where leaders make fear-based decisions, decisions that hurt others, or decisions that focus on power.
Decisions must be based on love and respect for the job, the professional community, and the community served
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organizational leaders in the business world, the not-for-profit realm, and the public service sector often put forward elements of this model.
However, leaders pick and choose those elements that suit their own needs, which may be related to financial gain, ego boosts, or power grabs.
What seems to be missing is the sense of purpose, a sense of service toward the customer or the public, and honor and respect toward the people actually doing the work of the organization
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“Change-making happens when people fall in love with a different version of the future.” —Seth Godin
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All ideas matter, even if not all can be implemented.
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make the effort to learn who your employees are at their core, so that you can enable them to be successful.
People are happier and more productive when they feel they are successfully contributing.
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If a person is in flow, he or she can and will work until the task as complete: not because they have to, but because they want to.
They enjoy the experience of getting it done.
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Empirical evidence over the last 20 years of organizational studies shows that communicating a purpose, demonstrating trust, encouraging and facilitating mastery, promoting self-management and self-directed processes, and encouraging worker autonomy are the most effective ways to motivate workers
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While this is best driven and demonstrated by the highest leaders in the organization, each individual has the ability to implement flow-based decision making using the components described in this chapter.
You do this by:
• Demonstrating your own commitment and ability to live and work in flow;
• Communicating your vision, goals, decisions, observations, and ideas and giving others the opportunity to communicate the same from their perspective;
• Mindfully providing the appropriate infrastructure and systems that support and provide feedback to your people (rather than get in the way of their ability to operate);
• Cultivating trust and a sense of belonging;
• Honoring individual creativity;
• Using positive motiviation techniques; and
• Learning what brings your people joy, so that you can provide them with training and opportunities to be in that space.
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In addressing ethical dilemas, the chief officer must consciously recognize and define the situation, objectively identify the facts, list all the options, compare each option to established criteria, select the best option, double check the decision, and take action
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two types of leaders:
(1) those who seek to control others, and
(2) those who lead by example, with the intent of enabling others to operate from the best part of themselves.
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When leaders seek to control others, they quickly find that those they lead will do only the bare minimum amount of work to get the job done
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People who seek to honor and respect those they lead find that people strive to do their best for themselves and their team.
The leader sets and demonstrates the commitment to the vision.
Creativity and critical thinking permeates everything the team does.
This results in better service, less conflict, and a higher sense of well-being at both individual and organizational levels
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It doesn’t matter if an individual is on the lowest rung of the organizational ladder.
He or she can exhibit leadership through behavior, attitude, and effective communication
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Flow-based leadership requires that the individual take responsibility for his or her own feelings, decisions, and actions.
This requires a high level of self-awareness.
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Lolley took responsibility for his own preparation to reach what he considered a worthy milestone.
The lessons he learned from this experience have positively impacted his entire life
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The people who complete the training are both self-assured and humble, which are by-products of feeling confident
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Communication is the master key to successful, effective leadership.
Communication permeates every aspect of leadership, whether it involves communicating with those who report to you, communicating with peers, or communicating with those to whom you report.
Communication can be verbal or non-verbal; it can be face to face, or it can happen across communication systems.
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Communicate the Mission and the Vision.
People do their best work when they understand why they are doing the work.
Why does your organization exist? Your people, who contribute to the success of the organization, will be more effective when they are moving toward the same goals with the same intent.
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Every day of the class, the morning operational briefing occurs at 6:30 a.m.
The briefing begins with a review of the mission and objectives and why they are important: To prevent death and injury by training firefighters to be adaptable and to develop critical decision making skills in high stress environments.
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the Smoke Diver’s Creed whenever asked, often in high-stress situations:
If I persist, if I continue to try, if I continue to charge forward, I will succeed.
I will not hear those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal.
I will never consider defeat, and I will remove from my vocabulary such words as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, failure, and retreat, for these are the words of fools and cowards.
When my thoughts beckon my tired body homeward, I will resist the temptation to depart.
I will try again.
I will make one more attempt to close with victory, and if that fails, I will make another.
When others cease their struggle, then mine will begin, and my harvest will be full.
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The mission and creed are supported by the core values, which are called “Nuts and Bolts:”
• Competence • Honor • Integrity • Mental toughness • Servant leadership • Commitment
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Communication is not just about words. It is about tone and meaning
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The mandate is to remain calm, even when the world is on fire and people are in trouble
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Remaining calm in the face of chaos is a skill, just like anything else
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How a person connects with Source (whatever he or she calls that Source) is a very personal thing.
The GSD program is difficult, mentally and physically.
Participants break away whenever possible to rest, contemplate, meditate, and pray.
This is not an organized part of the program.
It happens organically.
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To be effective, we need to “understand the people with whom we work and on whom we depend, and to make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values
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It is every person’s responsibility to tell co-workers how he or she prefers to receive information.
Conversely, it is also every person’s responsibility to ask co-workers how they want to receive information.
When we each take responsibility for how people prefer to receive information and we honor that preference, misinterpretation of communication will be kept to a minimum
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Individuals who actively practice self-awareness and who strive to continuously improve their own interpersonal skills contribute to the effectiveness of the team
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Having a sound infrastructure enables the ability to focus on the changing environment without having to be concerned with tools, systems, and other operational aspects being in working order.
Organizations cannot expect the best work of their people when the technology or the physical assets get in the way of efficiency
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Components of Infrastructure
• Physical assets (buildings, apparatus, computers, tools, and equipment appropriate to the types of service to which the organization responds, personal protective equipment [PPE], etc.).
• Systems (both systemic processes and the supporting software that enables them).
• People to maintain and support both the assets and the systems.
• Knowledge management processes that support the activities of maintaining and operating the infrastructure and the overall work of the organization (e.g., living documentation in the form of standard operating procedures, after-action reports, and other decision-support information).
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Organizations that create such cold, monitored environments convey to their workers that they are not trusted.
This establishes an “us vs. them” environment in which no one enjoys working.
We spend at least one third of our lives in the workplace.
The workplace should be a place people want to be, where they enjoy both the environment and the work they do
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When systems break down, what is your back up plan? Do your people understand the command structure, and who is in charge of what? Do they know what to do when their systems and equipment are not working? Is there a protocol that they are supposed to follow, and are they trained on this protocol?
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While it is practically impossible to imagine every scenario that may need resolution, it is important to think of as many situations as possible, put in place standard operating procedures for handling these situations, and train both staff and personnel on these procedures.
This effort should be done at a time that is not emergent.
This is the essence of readiness.
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Internal Organizational Situation Awareness In the GSD program, there are five standing meetings every day.
• At 6:30, the leadership conducts the morning briefing with the instructors to go over the day’s drills in the context of potential weather conditions, safety considerations, and assignments.
• At 10:30, the leadership meets to discuss tactics, review the next day’s activities, discuss any problems that happened that morning while setting up, discuss assignments for the next day, and change processes as appropriate.
• At 14:00, the leadership team meets again to recalibrate and discuss issues that need to be addressed.
• After the class is finished for the day, the leadership team meets with the instructors again to communicate any information pertinent to the day’s decisions and the next day’s schedule.
• After the final instructor briefing, the leadership team meets to prepare for the next day’s morning briefing and discuss any last-minute changes.
Meetings are not long.
They are designed to address issues quickly, determine a resolution, make assignments, and decide how the resolution will be communicated.
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While documentation projects are often attempts to capture how the organization does it work, the resulting work product is often no more than a snapshot in time
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Processes continually evolve because, unless there is forced standardization, people will change the process to fit the circumstance.
Why they make that change is what gets lost.
If this tacit knowledge is not captured and codified, the organization is doomed to repeat the same errant processes over and over
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infraction
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Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are foundational to any organization.
They spell out how the organization executes its mission.
What many organizations do not realize, though, is that SOPs are not static.
They should be living documents that reflect the decisions of the leadership.
It is important to strike a balance in the level of granularity within the SOPs.
If the organization dictates every step of a process, maintenance of that SOP will be much more difficult than if the organization offers guidelines on how something should be done.
However, you don’t want to be so vague that processes and procedures are not executed consistently.
Hiring a professional technical communicator to help with this balance will result in measurable dividends in the long run
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Another form of knowledge management is storytelling, although this is less formal.
Some of the stories have been codified because they are used as the basis for some of the training, such as the Denver Drill.
Codifying these stories helps to anchor the facts, which, in informal storytelling, tend to morph, expand, and contract.
New elements enter the story, and over time, become “facts.” Storytelling is an effective way to bind an organization to its “ancestral” knowledge.
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Each person takes responsibility for his or her own work and well-being, while also taking responsibility for communication with others on the team.
This is what team flow looks like
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crestfallen
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Binding the group through a sense of purpose, accompanied by the sense of mutual trust and support, fosters accountability.
The glue for a bound organization is trust.
Cultivate trust with ritual, storytelling, laughter, and collaboration.
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emotions help bind the group, and that making meaning out of seemingly everyday moments builds trust and respect.
He knows intuitively that ritual binds the group
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Chief Rhodes has a knack for saying just the right thing in the right moment.
This is because he lives and breathes his own commitment to live a life of service
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Laughter is the auditory equivalent of a hug of the grandest proportions
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Storymaking and storytelling result in opportunities for laughter.
Because the mission is so intense—literally focusing on life and death—laughter is the logical and natural way to balance the seriousness of the day
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Collaboration happens at the team level, as well as the organizational level
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Honor Individual Creativity to Promote Innovation
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cognizant
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People feel motivated when their personal reason for being aligns with the organization’s purpose
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Money and things are short-lived.
The joy associated with this type of reward dissipates quickly, and is often replaced with a sense of entitlement.
People come to expect the bonus or the trophy and are upset when, even after doing mediocre work, they don’t get it.
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According to Daniel Pink, “When contingent rewards aren’t involved, or when incentives are used with the proper deftness, performance improves and understanding deepens
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Many organizations have mentoring programs that serve this purpose, but the success of these programs depends on individual commitment by the mentors and consistency in how people are mentored
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People know when someone is genuine in his or her intentions just by watching his or her behaviors
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Mentoring starts within the self.
We must be secure within ourselves to mentor someone else.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that we know everything; in fact, it means that when we don’t know the answer, we are secure enough in our own skin to be able to say, “I don’t know.
Let’s find out together.”
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meted out
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Shift to Positive Motivation Eventually, the tone of the encouragement turns from “What makes you think you are good enough to be here?” to “Come on.
You got this!” The shift is so subtle it is almost imperceptible
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When a candidate isn’t stepping up or taking responsibility for his actions, no amount of positive motivation will help
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Learn about your people at an individual level.
What are their individual goals? What are their hopes and dreams? What are they afraid of? Ask yourself how each person fits into the scheme of things you have to achieve in your role as leader.
Does that person need help? Would he or she be better served in another role? What are his or her strengths and weaknesses on the team? What does he or she love to do?
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Deliberately introduce variation to workflow.
Csikszentmihalyi uses the example of how moving through a museum room to room fosters boredom.
However, having people move through a connecting hall or bridge with different views (e.g., the ocean, the mountains, the city) will help the individual see the art in the next room with fresh eyes
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Changing a culture and building a flow-based organization requires vigilance, deliberation, and attention to detail.
Learn to recognize when you have normalized unsafe practices for the sake of tradition.101 Often tradition is perpetuated by ostracizing anyone who is different or doesn’t conform.
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Firefighters know who they are at their core and understand their life purpose and mission.
When you purposely live your life with this knowledge, you live authentically.
You also take care of yourself—not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that recognizes that you cannot help others if you are not healthy in all aspects of your life
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It often takes courage to express one’s own thoughts.
“Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair
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all forms of courage:
(a) physical courage,
(b) moral courage,
(c) social courage, and
(d) creative courage
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Creative courage is the most difficult of the forms of courage, because it requires us to discover new meaning in the context of an ever-evolving society
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The constant process of training, learning, and reviewing of past incidents is how the firefighter exhibits creative courage.
“The need for creative courage is in direct proportion to the degree of change the profession is undergoing.”117 The fire service profession is in a state of perpetual change
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Bravery isn’t just willingness to go where others don’t want to venture, or putting yourself in harm’s way.
Bravery is also about being emotionally vulnerable, being able to love without conditions, being able to forgive fully, living life with a purpose, and knowing that the world, and the universe, ultimately works in ways that pull toward the good