All About L-481

Course Intent

The intent of L-481 Advanced Leadership for Command and General Staff is to produce Command and General Staff members who can fulfill the responsibilities of an effective staff officer or section chief within an IMT, contribute effectively to an IMT’s decision-making process, and perform as an effective organizational leader in their own functional area and as a member of the IMT. 

This course should engage the course participants in leadership learning within the context of managing a large/complex incident. The course content includes both collective or team tasks and individual tasks. 

• Collective tasks: functions accomplished by the Command and General Staff, maintaining a common operating picture, building and maintaining a constructive team culture, and projecting leader’s intent up, down, and across the chain of command. 
• Individual tasks: demonstrating interpersonal and communication skills necessary to function as a productive member of a team, contributing positively to team decisions, contributing to the IMT’s common operating picture, working within the team culture, demonstrating effective staff ethos, and projecting effective command presence within their functional areas.

Overview

Ordinarily, emergency incidents are managed by local agencies or organizations. However, when a situation escalates and exceeds local capabilities, additional resources and incident management teams (IMTs) are called in to help. IMTs augment the reach of ordinary response organizations, providing the organization and structure to bring in the right people and resources to accomplish the mission. These teams step in to continue the efforts already set in motion by first responders or a local incident organization.

Managing large or complex incidents requires a level of teamwork and integration beyond what is ordinarily necessary. In particular, Command and General Staff (C&G) members need to function as an integrated unit in order to build a common operating picture, plan strategically, and propagate consistent leader’s intent throughout the organization. Within this context, salient themes—leadership, teamwork, common staff values, service to the common good, leader’s intent, communication, operational culture—expand beyond the confines of the incident organization and extend to cooperators, jurisdictional owners, and political-public spheres.

Training on this level requires integration of human performance and incident management acumen at the strategic level, focusing on the C&G as a functional and integrated team. It must foster professional staff ethos that strengthen and support the team’s ability to function collectively while leveraging ICS to maximum effect.

Establishing staff ethos, team culture, and command presence

The primary purpose of establishing the C&G is to provide a decisional framework and structure in order to process information and glean meaning so that appropriate direction and priorities can be established. Each member of the C&G has a specific functional role and specific responsibilities including a role within the team’s decision making process. The relationships, values, and ethos of the C&G influence the way that information is gathered and integrated, the process of vetting and prioritizing objectives, and methods of relaying decisions and direction throughout the incident organization. Therefore, strengthening common staff ethos, team culture, and command presence are fundamental requirements for building an effective C&G that provides service for the common good while effectively leading their functional areas.

In support of strengthening ethos, team culture, and command presence, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated understanding and application of command staff values both within the C&G and with external relationships. The NWCG uses the Mission-Driven Values Model as a foundation for behavior and actions of the IMT command staff. The Mission-Driven Values Model (developed and used with permission by Mission-Centered Solutions, Inc., 2011) includes:
• Service for the common good –focus on the collective team result and benefit of the greater good of the public
• High trust state – Developing/maintaining trust is people and systems
• Pursuit of truth – based on the omnipresent need of the best possible situation awareness in dynamic and chaotic environments to ensure plans are based on reality
• Form and function defined by the end state – Despite established systems or processes, the need for adaptability and versatility is essential in complex environments.
• Individual initiative – Initiative strengthens resilience in the face of unexpected challenges
• Continuous improvement – Honestly encourages and reinforces learning and improvement at all levels of the organization
• Demonstrated the ability to apply the concepts of staff ethos, team culture, and mission-driven culture values to asses and improve self, team, and individual team member performance.
• Demonstrated ability to apply doctrine and value within the decision-making process and during team interaction.
• Demonstrated ability to establish positive rapport and trust with fellow team members to facilitate learning allow for critical discussion, correct performance, and provide service for the common good.
• Demonstrated ability to develop trust and positive working relationship with external entities and/or stakeholders.
• Demonstrated the ability to analyze and understand prospective audiences to develop appropriate message delivery and promote working relationships.
• Demonstrated ability to practice leader behaviors which promote a positive operational culture and climate in which subordinate resources can be effective.
• Demonstrated effective interpersonal and communication skills and techniques during interactions with fellow team members as well as other external stakeholders.
• Demonstrated the ability to provide meaningful self-assessments, team member assessments, and an overall team-assessment in an effort to improve performance and strengthen team ethos.

Developing and maintaining a common operating picture.

On an incident, situation awareness at the IMT level encompasses a broad range of understanding: the context of the incident including the social context, the operating environment and the challenges of that environment, operations to date, the thinking that went into previous decisions, planned operations, and changes occurring within the operating environment. By design, the ICS assigns people to functional areas to make sure that the incident organization is attending to all incident systems and functions appropriately. However, given assigned areas of focus, people naturally gravitate into functional silos, concentrating on responsibilities and concerns within their area to the exclusion of participating in the broader work of the team. A critical challenge for the C&G, therefore, is to develop and maintain a common understanding of the situation, specifically one shared by all team members. The common operating picture (COP) is the term used to describe the situation awareness and understanding shared by all team members.

In support of developing and maintaining a COP, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to gain perspective of all dimensions of the incident – both in terms of what is happening in operations (tactical) as well as the larger context in which the incident occurs (strategic).
• Demonstrated ability to share pertinent information across the team so that all members have a shared understanding of the salient components and maintain this understanding throughout the incident assignment.
• Demonstrated ability to appraise the soundness of the team’s COP, questioning assumptions and testing the premises of plans over time so that planned operations are always well aligned with the reality of conditions on the ground.
• Demonstrated ability to develop effective interpersonal relationships with personnel already involved in an incident, specifically with outgoing C&G counterparts.
• Demonstrated ability to collect critical information and use sound reasoning and judgment to discern and distill meaningful and relevant knowledge from available information.
• Demonstrated ability to use a variety of communication methods and frameworks, including both listening and questioning, to identify gaps in understanding or risks to operations.

Developing leader’s intent

One of a staff member’s central tasks is to provide productive inputs in the decisions made by the Incident Commander. By design, each staff member has a different perspective based on their position. Each staff member distills information and requirements from their functional area to provide relevant perspective to the staff’s deliberative decision making process. A rigorous and conscientious decision making process gives rise to robust intent that bolsters initiative and concentric action throughout the incident organization. In support of developing leader’s intent at the C&G level, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to contribute constructively to deliberative decision making so that resulting decisions are sound and reasonable.
• Demonstrated ability to derive an incident end state that provides a practical road map for returning to acceptable conditions.
• Demonstrated ability to derive and author meaningful incident objectives with an appropriate focus on the real threats to the tactical and strategic values-at-risk.
• Demonstrated ability to guide the development of strategies and alternatives that are congruent with the nature of the threat.
• Demonstrated ability to constructively evaluate proposed plans and courses of action so that they are proportionate and reasonable in consideration of the values at risk and the nature of the threat.

Propagating intent-based planning to all levels of the incident organization

The primary purpose of formulating intent is to empower people at every level to exercise their judgment and initiative to accomplish their part of the mission. Information transmitted in the Incident Action Plan (IAP) may provide them with a proposed plan of action, but not necessarily the intent behind the plan. Communicating consistent intent to all levels of the organization enables people to commit to both what they are doing and why they are doing it.

In support of propagating leader’s intent to all levels of the incident organization, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to explain how an incident end state addresses the values-at-risk as well as how its objectives, strategies, and tactics achieve the end state.
• Demonstrated ability to help formulate and communicate clear intent that will assist resources in understanding their assignment and its role in achieving the larger mission.
• Demonstrated propagation of intent beyond the IMT to the public, elected officials, and others.

Effectively operate in the ICS system in the complex incident environment and utilize ICS products and doctrine

The Incident Command System (ICS) is the organizational system that we use to mobilize, staff, track, manage and execute incident activities. The planning process serves as a decisional aid and the product outcomes reflect and document the decisional processes. Effective use of this system is core to our capability.

In support of effectively operating in the ICS system and utilizing ICS products and doctrine, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated the effective use of the ICS and its products and doctrine to track and manage resources, and to direct action through the IMT organization.
• Demonstrated the ability to develop collective C&G products/documents that are utilized in the development of an Incident Action Plan (IAP).
• Demonstrated the ability to function within the context of the ICS Planning Process (Planning P) and positively contribute to the distribution of information through briefings and the development of ICS documents, forms, and products.
• Demonstrated ability to accomplish mission objectives and manage the team’s time effectively.

Promoting integration of functional areas

The effectiveness of the C&G depends on how well functional leaders integrate their respective functional areas into a coherent whole to mount a unified and organized response. Each functional leader has a duty to direct activities within their given area of responsibility and to integrate an understanding of the functional requirements and contingencies into the overall response effort. Each functional area is a critical component of the bigger mission; therefore, integrating all functional areas is critical to success.

In support of promoting integration of functional areas, the program targets the following competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to select most appropriate means for conveying information in light of the situation, audience, time constraints, and information to be communicated.
• Demonstrated ability to keep fellow staff members apprised of information that affects other functional areas or the incident as a whole. This target includes both the ability to assess the relevance of information and the ability to effectively communicate that information.