"Leading in the Wildland Fire Service"- Preface

Leadership is the art of influencing people in order to achieve a result. The most essential element for success in the wildland fire service is good leadership. 

This book expresses the fundamental leadership concepts of the wildland fire service. It outlines the framework, values, and principles that guide wildland fire leaders in providing leadership across a broad range of missions. The concepts in this book are universal to every person in the wildland fire service—from first year employee to senior manager. 

This book serves interagency wildland fire service interests by:

• Defining leadership in the wildland fire service.
• Articulating a universal set of values and principles to guide the actions of leaders in the wildland fire service. 
• Providing a concise reference for the wildland fire leadership development curriculum for use by both instructors and students. 

Leaders often face difficult problems to which there are no simple, clear cut, by-the-book solutions. In these situations, leaders must use their knowledge, skill, experience, education, values, and judgment to make decisions and to take or direct action—in short, to provide leadership.

This book does not state policy. It cannot provide black-and-white answers to the unlimited volume and variety of situations a leader will face. Instead this book simply outlines the broad concepts of leadership in the wildland fire service—fundamental concepts by which expectations of leaders may be established and performance of leaders may be judged. It is intended to make better leaders of us all. 

For these reasons, this book is structured around our leadership values and principles as a means of communicating what right looks like and illustrating effective leadership in action.