The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Achieve Effective and Avoid Ineffective Leadership Behaviors Based on Concepts from the United States Fire Administration (USFA) Type 3 Incident Management Team Training or O-305 course | KEV Talks #16

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Sharing the leadership principles from Unit 2 of the United States Fire Administration (USFA) Type 3 Incident Management Team Training or O-305 course.Take a deep dive and jump on the way back machine with me to hear more on the O-305 course from my 2018 episode at https://kevtalkspod.com/o-305-course-summary/Listen to the Civil War series on Jocko podcast at https://jockopodcast.com/2022/12/15/363-the-principle-weapon-is-the-mind-read-study-learn-with-jd-baker/Subscribe to this podcast here so you will get notified when my Civil War leadership discussion episode with Judd "JD" Baker releases on 1/17/2023Remember...Have a plan | Stay informed | Get involved | Godspeed

Have you worked for an effective leader and they provided you with good outcomes or effective and efficient outcomes? Conversely, have you worked for ineffective leaders where they didn't help you reach outcomes at all? I think I have throughout my career. I would imagine some of you listening out there have too. So today I'm going to provide outcomes of effective leadership behaviors. Outcomes of Effective Leadership Behaviors. This is based on the U.S. Fire Administration's Type 3 Incident Management Team training that I went through years ago and then helped teach after that. And it's the basis, part of the groundwork or the boot camp, if you will, for any incident management team member. Those are folks, teams of public safety, public health, all different people

that go around after a tornado and bring everybody together and help the planning process work together. And I've talked about that and I did an episode in 2018, kind of the course summary of the O-305, all hazards and management team training. And so go check that one out. I get more in detail on that. But on this, I'm going to hit on unit two and really talk about some leadership traits. And this episode is a setup for the next episode that's coming out next week, where I talked to JD Baker, who is a historian, the principal, the founder of Omna Omna International. If you're a Jocko podcast fan, you may have heard him. He did a series on the Civil War. It was outstanding. So go check that out. And I was fortunate to learn from JD years ago in 2014, when I did the Gettysburg staff ride.

And we share how we got to Gettysburg. And so that's on the episode coming up. So look for that next week. But for now, I'm going to talk about some of these basics, some of these tried and true principles, some of the outcomes that we should get from effective and ineffective leaders. But first, thank you for choosing the KevTalks podcast. Let's get logged on and get locked in as we share people's compelling stories, talk about industry-leading

best practices, and the hope that we can all make progress together. But for now, let's fly back into this episode in three, two, one. Hey, everybody. Thanks for sticking with the show and coming back. So the United States Fire Administration, my brother and sister firefighters, police officers, public health folks, all of them helped shape me as a project and program manager and leader. And a huge part of that was this O-305 or All Hazard Incident Management Team training. And then of course, the practical application of that training because training is good, knowing how to use it in the real world, even better. So the leadership lessons here in this unit two, and if you take the course or Google unit two,

you know, type three incident management team training, you can find this really focuses on what are some outcomes you can expect if you are or work with an effective leader? And then also what are some ineffective leadership behavior? So I'm going to talk about this on the perspective of the effective leaders, and then we'll talk about ineffective leaders, and then perhaps what we can do to fix some of those ineffective leader behavior. So the first thing is that effective leaders should promote the common good, right?

We've talked about leader's intent, which means the task purpose and end state is clearly given and accepted and communicated. And we understand that our teams know what that means, but also that, you know, this is where the incident commander or the chief information officer or the CEO of the company or the team lead, whoever's leading a level of leadership

has the common good of everyone at hand, right? And that they relay that. So there's a thing we would do when we deployed before we sent anybody in the field to do security or be ready for a rescue task force or get ready to stand by at a marathon or something like that. And it was an operational period briefing. And to kick that off and to close it, the incident commander or the person in charge gives a speech. But it's

a helpful speech and it's for the common good. Thank you so much for putting the work in. We look forward to keeping everybody safe today. We know we've worked hard to get here, etc, etc. It's just like a locker room speech for a coach, but the team are folks that are going to go out there, police, fire, EMS dispatchers that are ready, food services. It could be the same thing. It could be your project team. It could be your analyst. It could be your program manager, whoever it is on whatever type of team you have. They need to understand that the common good, right? We are all doing this because X outcome is going to happen. And we'd like to do that safely because of Y factors, right? So you get the point. So common good should be a theme throughout a leader's time to be effective.

The second thing is a high trust state, right? Your team has to trust you as a leader, meaning if you say you're going to do something, you do it and you follow up in a timely manner or you get stuff done that you're not going to kind of talk about them behind their back, play that kind of, you know, I'm going to talk to you, but then I'm also going to talk to the person above you and just make sure. And, you know, there's all these kind of funky leadership games that people can play, but there has to be a strong level of trust. And of course it can be given, but it needs to be earned. And it needs to be obvious, right? And part of that trust is allowing your team, like I've talked about here to make decisions, to do things on their own, to build the plan, right? Because it's not my plan

as the team leader or the program lead. It's going to be made up of the components from all the experts I have on my team. That's a reason they're the experts. It's a reason they're in the position they're in and I need to trust them. And that needs to be obvious when we are in the planning process, whether it's all hazardous management, waterfall, agile, planning a barbecue, whatever, we got to trust our folks. Parenting, right, is a great example. I think you have to start giving trust to your kids, and then building them up to let them do things. Do they stumble? Sure, but adults stumble, right, you know, and then that trust gets eroded, then you build it back up. But there has to be a state of high trust in the get go. And you'll hear on the episode that I have coming up with J.D. Baker,

some of the Civil War leaders did not have trust in their folks, so they took a lot of stuff on themselves. But we'll get to that next week when you listen to that one. And the third thing for effective, what effective leadership rather promotes is the pursuit of truth. So I touched on this when I talked about on Foundations Friday, the middle, right, in that book, Move, that talks about folks get on a call and maybe they talk about how bad it is and what's going on and what's wrong, but not necessarily actions or not necessarily the facts. Here's the facts.

Here's the status of where we are and not facts to use it against somebody else, but to help drive decisions. And so we want to have those facts. We want to pursue what's the ground truth of the situation. In my emergency hat, right from a bit ago, but I still use that stuff all the time. Reporting, as you noticed, if you watch the news, the first reports are usually wrong, the numbers that are accurate, maybe this area was affected or not. So you got to confirm all that information, you got to pursue the truth of what's happening. If you have personnel disputes, you got to listen to each one of them. You got to factor that in. You got to help that, you know, foster healthy confrontation. Healthy is the key, right? Not unhealthy confrontation. And that again is another parenting tip. I have three sons, two of which are closer in age,

just about a year, year and a half apart. And I get stories, nobody, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Nobody started it. When you go to talk to them, it's like, man, so we got to figure out the truth, right? So you got to talk to your people. You got to let them talk to you. You've got to collect the real data. And that's a big part of what I've talked about too, right? Is facts, not fear, right? And so be informed with the real information, not rumors, not the news reports, but from the ground truth on your people and trust them to do that. So we're talking about the common good. We have a high trust state that we're building within our teams. We are pursuing truth so that we can make fact-based decisions. Of course, there'll be some emotion thrown in

there, but facts is what we want to look for. And that we have the form and function serves the end state, right? So how we do what we do together, the form of the team, the function of the team, who does what where, how often we meet, how often we discuss things, the money we spend, the resources we put in, that it meets that leader's intent of the end state, right? That let's say for projects and programs that it falls within the budget, it's within the scope, it's on time in the schedule, the quality is high, right? For response type stuff, it's safety is number one. Our people are safe. That's the ultimate end state is everybody goes out and everybody comes home, right? Or that we did minimal damage. If you're at a house fire and you do an overhaul afterwards, right? You try not to completely destroy the home, save as much as you can, those kinds of things. So the form and function of how your team operates has to fit

within whatever end state the leader's intent was provided. So whether it was a county administrator or mayor, the CEO, the CIO, whomever it was that gave you that work within those bounds, or sometimes you have legal bounds, right? So the end state has to conform to a regulatory thing or a legal thing. And you have to consider that as a leader as well. To continue to be effective and touch on these effective outcomes, we have to have initiative, right? If you're a leader, you can't hem and haw and wring your hands. Well, let me back up. You can do that, but you're going to fall into that ineffective leader. Now, that doesn't mean that if you're hit with a bunch of information, it's a very dynamic situation

that you can't take a second, take a breath, consider it, then make a decision, right? But you have to make a decision in decision, as I've talked about, and I talked about on episode, my 10th episode I ever did in podcasting about leadership lessons from Gettysburg and beyond, talking about the time wedge, right? As soon as something happens, boom, clock starts. And if you think about a triangle going down to zero to the right, you're going to run out of resources, you're going to run out of time to make a decision. And so you have to take some time, take a breath, gather those facts. Does this fit in the end state? Will it save lives? Will it keep us safe? Will it save money? And then have the initiative to make a decision. In addition to decision making, you have to have the initiative to maybe change some things. So if your form and function is

technically within the proposed or the guidance of the end state from your leadership, I think sometimes you need to have that initiative to break the mold a little bit. If it's not working well, if your reporting structure, if the tools you use isn't working well, then I think take the step to say, you know what, I'm going to make this more efficient for my team, for me, who has to then have a look at this whole program. So I don't want to spend a lot

of administrative time gathering information. So let's use this automated system we have, or let's communicate using this tool that already works well, instead of this old one that someone prefers. And then say, we tried this, sir, ma'am. And it works really good, we would like to keep using this thing. And to me, so to me, the initiative is not just decision making as a leader. It is having the initiative and the boldness to make processes better as you're working on them. So I think that's very important.

And the last thing which kind of dovetails into that, which is, you know, no accident, is continuous improvement, right? So you need to always be getting better yourself as a leader, looking at how you can make your team better in their skills, in their communication, in their camaraderie, how they work together, how they gather information, report, all that kind of stuff. Because whether you're out in a field or out in the middle of nowhere, and you're an incident manager team, or you're working from home as project and program managers, or really it can be from anywhere. You always need to be thinking, how can I make this safer? How can I make it more efficient?

How can I make people happier in what they do? Just all these continuous improvement opportunities and not setting your ways and going, well, we did this. I don't feel like changing it and I'm just going to stick with it. Now that doesn't mean you have to change everything, right? Some stuff just works. So keep that, cut away the stuff that doesn't, and then keep that continuous improvement going. So a quick recap, outcomes of effective leadership behaviors from unit two in the type three incident management team training, always look for the

common good, foster a high trust state within your team, pursue the truth, right? With facts, not rumors and fear and things like that. The form and function of what you do and how you do it should serve the end state that you were provided that leader's intent. You should take initiative in your decision making and in making things better and not making them worse. And you should always be in a continuous improvement process, your own evaluation or OODA loop on yourself and your team, right? Observe, orient, decide, act, those kind of things. So let's talk about ineffective leaders.

But before we do that, I want to remind you to please stop by the KevTalksPod.com website. Follow me on the socials. I'm at P-A-N-N-Y-L-L-K-G, Penelope KG, on Instagram and Twitter. Also, you can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. That's kind of the big dog in the fight. You all know that. Apple and Spotify are the two big ones. If we can get favorable reviews on Apple, that'd be awesome to help grow the show. Or just leave your honest feedback. Help me get better. Help me do continuous improvement. Thank you. So let's get back to ineffective results. Low morale, right?

If I'm a micromanager, if I'm not trusting people, if I'm just taking rumors as the truth, the morale, and there's a lot of other ways to do that is going to be low, right? You've, you know, probably folks out there listening have worked for bad leaders, and it probably made you not want to stay at the job you're at, right? That's a huge factor in things. And also in the second thing for ineffective leadership is distrust. So you can't have a high trust state if you're not going to delegate to your subordinates or if you're always going to be hovering next to them or if when you're on a meeting with them, you're always going to jump in and not let them answer. That's the balance of the high trust versus trust, right?

There's a time to sit there and listen if they've invited you to the meeting and let it keep happening and then get to a point where you go, you know what, this is a chance where because of the knowledge I have and perhaps the position, I can make a difference, but not just do it just so you want to be heard. Let your team do that.

Let your lead team person do that or wait till they prompt you and kind of have that discussion ahead of time so they can say, hey, during this meeting, I might need your help to help push a decision, push an action. So jump in maybe when I give you this cue, and it's very helpful. But if you don't have those conversations, if you're not trusting, ineffective leadership can just develop distrust. If you don't allow your folks to do their jobs, you're all over them all the time. If they have to do extra reporting just for you, not a good thing. Groupthink. So groupthink can

be good if you foster ideas and they're productive and you bring them together. But that's not really what groupthink means in this, right? It's kind of the mob mentality. The team that doesn't trust you that has low morale is going to have thoughts and it may lead the whole group down the path of not doing things as safely because they cut corners or not having the right outcome because they just don't want to listen to you. And so that's why morale and distrust are really building high morale and developing trust are very valuable. So you can kind of stave off groupthink. Not that we don't want group discussions, not that we don't want the team to work together in solution. Absolutely.

But it shouldn't be kind of the mob mentality and grumbling to then take us down a road of just not doing the work or not wanting to or maybe listening to somebody else. That can lead to safety issues, inefficiencies, losing money, all that kind of stuff. Of course, this one's on this list. Number four of ineffectiveness, bureaucracy, right? Having to go through me to then get to somebody else or come to me before and have me make every decision for you. It just doesn't help. There's levels in every organization, public safety, private, state level, local, federal, doesn't matter. Every entity has

bureaucracy. So as a leader, while you may have to work within a set of rules, you can help cut down the bureaucracy of predetermined structures and rules by circling back to that initiative thing, right? So if your team keeps telling you that they are spending an inordinate amount of time in preparing materials just to repackage the same information, or that they have to go through three people just to get an answer instead of going to the one person they know. That's when you take the initiative and say, hey, if you don't mind, I'm happy to have a discussion. Let's cut out some of this bureaucracy levels, right? So these are pre-established stagnant things that don't

work. So cut down on the bureaucracy for your team on behalf of your team by breaking down barriers, by escalating for them, and by listening to their issues, and then determining solutions for them and with them. And stagnation, right? So if you have a team that you're leading, that doesn't trust you, that has low morale, that's groupthink all over, there's grumbling and rumors happening, they have bureaucratic levels all over the place, they're going to stagnate, right? They're not going to make progress on the objectives or the tasks toward the objectives that you've established as a team to either get the sandbags because it's flooding to build the product that's going to market, whatever it is, your team's going to

stagnate because they're not inspired. There's no trust there. You haven't shown them or allowed them to take initiative. Or they're not also in the mindset like we should be of continuous improvement. And stagnation is just chipping away at tasks, not getting work done, not professionally developing. So many different ways to do that. And that's a shame because a lot of teams are full of really good people. And when they're not led well, they stagnate. So their full potential isn't reached. The full potential of the work and

project isn't reached or attained. And that's a shame. So that's where we would then come back to the effective leader. So to avoid ineffective leadership, don't foster low morale, right? Build that morale up. Check in with your people often. Foster trust so that you don't have low morale, right? Build that morale up, check in with your people often, foster trust so that you don't have a team full of distrust. Keep your team informed as timely as possible with accurate information and actionable information so they don't have to resort to groupthink and rumors. Cut down the levels of bureaucracy for them, take their feedback and help change these stagnant rules or layers or structures. And don't let them stagnate. Check in with them. If you see somebody that has low morale and they're not developing and they're not working hard, check in, see what you can do. Are they overwhelmed?

Can you get them more help? Sometimes the best thing we can do for our people is free up their time. Thank you very much for taking your time to listen to this podcast and subscribe to the show. Please go to kevtalkspod.com where you can read more about previous episodes. You can subscribe with links that are there. Follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Penelkg, P-A-N-E-L-L-K-G. If you like jujitsu, I also have the UYU-Jitsu J-I-T-S-U podcast where I share tips for beginners and new jujitsu practitioners. So remember everybody, have a plan and a planning process so you can keep everybody aligned, stay informed with facts, not fears and rumors, and get involved so you can help make a difference. And I wish you all Godspeed.