Report of the Leadership Task Group to the TWT

Following the Wildfire Firefighter Safety Awareness Study, members of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) recognized a strategy is needed for improving the ability to develop new leaders in wildland fire management. 

In September 2000, the NWCG Training Working Team commissioned an interagency task group to analyze the existing wildland fire training curriculum for leadership content, identify alternatives, and make recommendations. In February 2001, that task group provided their report to the Training Working Team. The report contained 14 specific recommendations regarding leadership development for wildland fire agencies. 

BACKGROUND

Leadership, or problems associated with its practice on the fireline, has been cited frequently as a factor contributing to wildland fire accidents in Accident Investigation Reports and management reviews for many years. The importance of leadership on fires has been echoed time and again. In the Final Report of the Interagency Management Review Team on the South Canyon Fire, published June 26, 1995, the statement is made that "attitudes and leadership are universal factors that influence safe fire suppression." A few years later, the "Wildland Firefighter Safety Awareness Study, Phase III" (Tri-Data report) was published. It contained numerous goals and implementation strategies related to leadership and leadership training. For example, Goal 69: "Provide supervisors with training in leadership and supervisory skills". Goal 74: "Prepare leaders for decision-making under stress".

Members of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), along with members of the NWCG's Training Working Team (TWT), have recognized for some time that what is needed is a strategy for the development of leaders in wildland fire. While some attempts have been made to deal with leadership issues in the existing training curriculum, an overall strategy has been notably lacking. No leadership training is currently required for any position in the Wildland and Prescribed Fire Qualification System Guide (PMS 310-1). Verbal criticism of existing leadership training courses is abundant.

It was in this atmosphere that the NWCG Training Working Team decided to charter a Task Group with the specific goal of analyzing the leadership training curriculum, identifying alternatives and making recommendations. The Leadership Task Group of the TWT was chartered in September, 2000 and reports to the TWT in February, 2001. See Appendix for Task Group Charter.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

The Leadership Task Group to the Training Working Team believes that new approaches are called for in addressing the leadership issues that face wildland fire organizations. These leadership issues are very complex, defying simple explanation or easy understanding. Solutions to these issues will by necessity be complex as well. 

Although our group was tasked with analyzing the NWCG training curriculum and making recommendations on leadership training issues, we ended up concluding that training alone is not enough. We feel strongly that what our organizations need is to institutionalize leadership development, which means we need to do a lot more than just provide classroom training. 

During the analysis phase of our work, we examined a number of different types of organizations that attempt to address leadership issues in their work forces for a variety of reasons. In the private sector, leaders are needed to enhance the company's bottom line. In government, leaders are needed to accomplish agency missions. In the military, leaders are needed to fight battles and win wars. Benchmarking a variety of organizations gave us some perspectives on our own organizations and some ideas for dealing with our own leadership challenges. 

We found that there is no such thing as a "military model" or a "corporate model" for leadership. There are many different leadership concepts and practices in both the public and private sectors. The task for the wildland fire community is to sift through all of these and come up with some combination that will work best for us, given the challenges our organizations face. 

In examining our operational environment and comparing it to that of other organizations, the largest number of similarities are found in the military and in other emergency service organizations. These organizations all operate in high risk environments where decisions must be made within compressed time frames, often by people under a great deal of stress. By and large, we found that many of the leadership development concepts and techniques practiced in the military have some applicability in the world of wildland fire. We're not suggesting that our operations mimic those of military organizations; we are suggesting that we use ideas that make the most sense and have the best chance of working. 

One consideration that we made in our analysis was that there are some marked differences between temporary organizations and permanent organizations. Temporary organizations are those that are put together as needed, such as any incident management organization. Permanent organizations are "standing" structures that are more or less always in place, for example the fire management organization at a local unit. The differences in the relative permanence of an organization have a variety of impacts on the exercise of leadership. Our recommendations primarily focus on leadership in temporary organizations. 

The following is a summary of the recommendations contained in this report. 

1. Establish a distinct Leadership curriculum of courses that are connected conceptually from the least complex (follower) level to the most complex (organizational leader) level. This curriculum should have its own designator (e.g., L-courses) to set it apart from technical courses.
2. Develop a strategy for accomplishing new course development, including a time line for completion, delivery strategy and cost analysis. Some existing leadership courses can be used, and some new course development will be required in order to meet the leadership development needs of all levels of our organizations. Delivery strategy needs to include a plan for developing agency employees as instructors for the more advanced leadership courses; initially these courses will only be deliverable by a vendor with expertise in leadership development. 
3. The "Human Factors" course and the "Followership to Leadership" course should be in the Publication Management System (PMS) as Level III courses under the "NWCG Course Development and Format Standards" guidelines. The Human Factors course is currently in the PMS; Followership to Leadership is currently under development and needs to be reviewed by the NWCG Standards Unit upon completion. 
4. The "Primary Leadership" course and the "Incident Leadership" course should be exempted from the requirements included in the "NWCG Course Development and Format Standards" guidelines. These standards were developed primarily for the in-house development of technical courses in the cognitive domain to be delivered by agency personnel. These two advanced leadership courses are in the affective domain and will be developed and presented by vendors–at least initially. Adhering to the NWCG standards will likely slow the development and delivery of these courses and is not likely to enhance course effectiveness. 
5. Establish a mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of leadership training. Such a mechanism might involve the use of contractors and agency personnel conducting field interviews and observing job performance on fires, months or years after training is presented. The idea is to accurately assess how the training impacted performance on the job. 
6. Eliminate the current S-201 and S-301 courses from the NWCG training curriculum. Examine whether the supervision and management skills training that exists in those courses needs to be presented within the wildland fire curriculum, or whether those training needs can best be satisfied by other agency-required training that is already available. 
7. Incorporate the Human Factors course into the NWCG S-130 Firefighter training course. This will allow all entry-level firefighters to receive information on follower responsibilities. The Human Factors course will also exist as a standalone course, for those who are not required to take S-130. 
8. Eliminate the S-131 course. Make the Followership to Leadership course a requirement for the FFT1 position. Both are 8 hour courses, so this change results in no net increase of required training for the Squad Boss position. S-131 was developed in response to the South Canyon Fire tragedy, yet it does little to address leadership issues at the squad boss level. Since Followership to Leadership does address precisely those leadership issues, it should be the required course at the FFT1 level. The more cognitive, technical content of the existing S-131 course could be developed into a Job Aid. 
9. Revise the Wildland and Prescribed Fire Qualification System Guide (PMS 310-1) to make specific leadership courses "required training" for certain key positions and "additional training" recommended for other positions. Incident Operations Standards Working Team to review, modify as needed, and approve changes to the 310-1 recommended in this document. Suggested completion date, Fall 2001. 
10. Adopt a specific set of desired leadership principles and values that are common to all our organizations. Communicate these principles and values to our work force and incorporate them in leadership training. 
11. Develop a self-study component of the leadership curriculum that allows people to study leadership concepts and principles outside the context of formal classroom training. For example, establish a leadership-themed web site and publish a "book of books" of recommended reading materials that will help people develop as leaders. 
12. Institute the use of leadership skills assessment tools within the framework of the leadership curriculum. The primary intent in using assessment tools is to enable people to identify which leadership traits they need to improve. The intent is not to use these assessment tools for disciplinary action. Some results could be used to determine whether or not individuals are ready to advance to higher-level Incident Command leadership positions. 
13. Establish a standing group (e.g., Steering Committee) that will be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the recommendations in this report. It is widely recognized that, regardless of their quality, reports alone do not accomplish change in an organization. 
14. During the ongoing NWCG course revision process, analyze each course within the "S-" curriculum to determine if leadership content is appropriate in the course given the nature of the position for which the course is targeted (e.g., Crew Boss). The creation of a separate leadership curriculum will not eliminate the need for the "context-specific" practice of leadership competencies. 

There is no single magic bullet for leadership in wildland fire, no quick fix, no easy answer. The creation of an environment where leaders are developed in an organized way is likely to take years, which seems like a good reason to get started right away.  

Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper

• Read the full report by clicking here.