Chapter 2- Understanding Leadership and Management Theories Flashcards
What is leadership?
- a process whereby one person influences a group of indivivuals to achieve a common goal
What is management?
- a process that creates orderly results which keep something working efficiently.
What are the 3 approaches to leadership?(3)
- Trait approach
- Skills approach
- Behavioural approach
What is the Trait Approach to leadership?
- Intelligence
- Self -confidence
- determination
- integrity
- sociability
** exists in a vaccuum, does not consider situational effects of leadership on a group
What is the Skills Approach to leadership?
- Technical
- Human
- Conceptual
- emphasizes the capabilities of the leader
** focuses exclusively on leader but identifies set of skills that can be developed
What is the Behavioural approach to leadership?
- focuses on what leaders do and how they act
- emphasizes the personality characteristics of the leader
What are the 2 general kinds of behaviour that make up the Behavioural Approach?
- Task behaviours- facilitate goal accomplishment: help members achieve objectives
- Relationship behaviours- help followers feel comfortable with themselves, each other and with situation they are in.
What is the central purpose of Behavioural Approach?
- to explain how leaders combine TASK and |RELATIONSHIP behaviours to influence follers in their efforts to reach a goal.
What is crew resource management? (Blake/Mouton’s Managerial Grid)
- a grid theory based on experiments to increase leadership effectiveness in 1990s
- a type of leadership method used to improve incident safety in the fire service
- assumes that every decision and action taken are driven by people’s values, attitudes and beliefs
- a concern for people and concern for results
- describes 5 management styles
What are the 5 styles of crew resource management (Blake/ Mouton’s Managerial Grid)?
- Improverished Managament
- Authority- Compliance Management
- Country Club Management
- Middle-of-the-Road Management
- Team Management
What is Improverished (indifferent) Management style?
- represents the lowest level of concern for both results and people
- an indifferent manager goes through motion of work, doing enough to get by, but rarely make an effort to do more
- relies heavily on instruction and process, depending on others to outline what needs to be done; avoids personal responsibility
- “it is not my problem”
What is the Authority- Compliance (controlling) Management style?
- manager demonstrates HIGH need for results with LOW concern for others
- brings determination, focus, drive for success; highly trained, organized, experienced, qualified to lead team
- low concern for others prevents manager from being aware of others involved, beyond what is expected of them
- demonstrates AUTOCRATIC leadeship style
When is the autocratic leaderhip style found within the Authority- Compliance (controlling) Management required? (2)
- when fire company involved in high-risk emergency scene activity (ex. primary search)- no time for discussion, no experiements with alternative approaches
- when FO needs to take immediate corrective supervisory activity- “control, neutralize, command”- must be in control
What is the Country Club (accomodating) Management style?
- demonstrates low concern for results and high concern for other people
- heightened awareness of others, and always considers how actions will affect them; aware of feelings
- approachable, fun, friendly, ready to listen w/ sympathy and encouragement
- consequence is avoidance of concrete issues
- diametrically opposed to Authority- Compliance (controlling) management style
What is the MIddle-of-the-Road (status quo) Management style?
- belief of an inherent contradiction between concerns for results and for people and does not value one concern over the other
- moderates between both
- objective is to “play it safe” and work towards acceptable solutions that follow proven methods
- avoids risk by manintaining tried-and-true course, follows popular opinion and norms without pushing too hard
- emphasis on maintaining popular status within team
- intelligent and informed enough to persuade people, but less then they want and less than they could achieve
- appears unbiased and impartial, but represents narrow view that underestimates people, results, and power of change
- laissez-faire leadership that moves decision making from FO to FF
- effective with experienced FF and when handling routine duties that pose little hazard
What is the Team (sound) Management style?
- sees no contradiction in high concern for people AND results
- allows for freedom to test limits of success with enthusiasm and confidence
- based on “what’s right”, not “who’s right”
- preferred management style for successful FO
- demonstrates democratic leadership style; consultative approach
- depends on skills and experience of individual team members
- execution of team developed plan involves autocratic command style
What is Situational Leadership?
- composed of both a directive and a supportive dimension
- based on assumption that followers’ skills and motivation vary over time, so leader should change degree to which they are directive or supportive to meet changing needs of followers.
- recognize what followers need and then adapt their own style to meet those needs
What are the 4 categories of Situational (directive/supportive behaviour) Leadership?
- S1- high directive- low supportive (directing)
- S2 - high directive- high supportive (coaching)
- S3- high supportive- low directive (supporting)
- S4 - low supportive- low directive (delegative)
What is the S1 high directive- low supportive (directing) behviour of Situational Leadership?
- leader focuses on goal achivement by providing direct instruction on what is to be done, under close supervision
What is the S2- high-directive- high supportive (coaching) style behaviour of Situational Leadership?
- leader focuses on both the goal and meeting the follower’s socioemotional needs; give encouragement and asks for input
- leader retains requirement to make final decision on goal achievement
What is S3- high supportive- low directive (supporting) behaviour of Situational Leadership?
- leader uses supportive behaviours to bring out follower’s skills around goal to be accomplished
What is S4- low supportive- low directive behaviour (delegating) behaviour of Situational Leadership?
group agrees on goal, leader allows followers responsibility to accomplish the goal
What is Transformational Leadership?
- gives attention to charismatic and affective elements of leadership
- it is a process that changes and transforms people
- concerned with emotions, values, ethics, standards and long-term goals
- it includes assessing follower’s motives, satisfying their needs and treating them as full human beings
What are the 5 ways leaders demonstrate transformational leadership? (5)
- Provide strong role models for the beliefs and values they want their followers to adopt.
- Being charasmatic leaders who appear competent to their followers
- Articulating ideological goals that have moral overtones.
- Communicating high expectations for followers and exhibit confidence in the follower’s ability ot meet these expectations.
- Arousing task-relevant motive in followers that may include affiliation, power, esteem.
What are the 5 fundamental practices that enable transformational leaders to get extraordinary results?
- Model the way.
- Inspire a shared vision
- Challenge the process
- Enable others to act
- Encourage the heart.
** utilizes a 360degree feedback process and focuses on developing a compelling vision for leader
What is Authentic Leadership?
- recent area of leadership research interest
- does not have clear definition
- looks at intrapersonal perspective, looking at leader’s self-knowledge, self-regulation, and self- concept; nutured by the leader
What are the 5 dimensions of authentic leadership?
- Purpose
- Values
- Relationships
- Self- discipline
- Heart
What is Servant Leadership?
- an approach that focuses on leadership from the POV of the leader and his behviours.
- emphasizes leaders be attentive to the concerns of their followers, empathize with them, and nuture them.
- put followers first, empower them, and help them develop the full potential capacities
- has been a focused interest of IAFC for FO development
- increased buy-in from crew when they feel their needs are being addressed; not jst leader thinking of himself
What is the premier skill of Servant Leadership
- listening
What questions can a Servant Leader ask himself? (6)
- does my body/ face show that I am involved in the conversation?
- am I interrupting/hurrying the person?
- am I asking appropriate, open questions?
- am I using my own words to clarify the person’s message and reflect his feelings?
- am I not judging, criticizing, analyzing or trying to fix the person?
- am I responding to feedback in a non-defensive manner?
What is Adaptive Leadership?
- how leaders encourage people to adapt when confronted w/ problems, challenges, and changes.
- focuses on activities of leader in relation to the work of the followers when confronted w/ technical or adaptive challenge.
What are the 6 leadership behaviours of adaptive leadership? (6)
- Get on the balcony
- Identify the adaptive challenge
- Regulate distress.
- Maintain disciplined attention
- Give the work back to the people.
- Protect leadership voices from below.
What is Followership?
- process whereby an individual/s accepts the influence of others to accomplish a common goal
- involves a power differential between the follower and leader
- followers defer to leader’s power
- FO is both the leader and follower
- leads fire company but follows leadership from higher level
- FO is messanger of news from higher up
How is power used as a Leadership resource?
- power is capacity of one party to influence another party
What is social power?
- is result of “target person’s” response from the “agent” making a request.
What are the 5 types of power used as a Leadership resource? (5)
- Legitimate power- the target person believes that the agent has the right to make a request and the target person has the obligation to comply. ex. IC reassigns ventilation sector.
- Reward power- targey person complies to obtain rewards believed to be controlled from agent
- Expert power- target person complies due to belief that agent has special knowledge
- Referent power-target person complies due to admiration/ identification with agent and seeks approval
- Coercive power- target person complies to avoid punishment believed ot be controlled by agent.
Which of the 5 types of power are used as Personal power?
- Expert and Referent power
- these reflect effectiveness of individual
Which of the 5 types of power are used in Positional power?
- Legitimate, reward, and coercive power
- defined by role of individual has within organization.
What is Information power?
- control over information.
- unlinke Expert power, inofrmaton power is based on target person’s assessment of agent’s ability to obtain info
What is Ecological power?
- control over physical environment, technology, or organization of work
- target person’s behaviour is based on perceptions of opportunities and constraints.
What are 2 unique Leadership challenges the FO encounters when considering work environment (2)?
- the fire station as a work location
2. leading a volunteer fire company
What are the challenges and solutions of the fire station as a workplace environment?
- fire station is a “home away from home” while on shift
- case law and and administrative actions reinforce the notion that the firehall is a local governemnt facility, subject to same rules and expectations as any other workplace.
1. Educate employess on workplace rules and regs. that define expected behaviour
2. Promote use of “on-duty speech”. Do not change how FFs think, but establish environment where certain behaviours and words are not used
3. Be the designated adult- model appropriate behaviour.
What is Human Resources Management?
- the task of managing people using physical, financial, and time assets
What are the functions of Human Resources? (7)
- HR planning
- Employee (labour) relations
- Staffing
- HR development
- Performance management
- Compensation and benefits
- Employee health, safety and security
What is a Mission Statement?
- is a formal document that outlines the basic reason for the organization’s existence and states how it sees itself.
What is delegation and how and why is it used?
- allows subordinates to complete tasks they are capable of performing; allows them to grow.
- allows FO to improve better use of time for tasks that cannot be delegated
- FO should follow-up and provide feedback to FF
What are the 7 steps in effective delegation?
- Define your desired results
- Select the appropriate FF
- Determine the level of delegation
- Clarify expectations
- Give authority
- Provide background information
- Arrange feedback during the process.
** ultimately, FO is responsible for work delegated
What is Crew Resource Management (CRM)?
- is a behavioural approach to reducing human error in high-risk or high- consequence activities.
What are the reasons and ways humans make mistakes? (dirty dozen)
- Lack of communication
- Complacency
- Lack of knowledge
- Distraction
- Lack of teamwork
- Fatigue
- Lack of resources
- Pressure
- Lack of assertiveness
- Stress
- Lack of awareness
- Norms
What is an active failure in regards to human error?
- is an unsafe act committed by people who are in direct conatct with the situation or system.
- ex. not wearing a seatbelt while in a moving vehicle
What are latent conditions in regards to human error?
- are the inevitable conditions within the system.
- these conditions have 2 types of adverse effects:
1. they can translate into error-provoking conditions within the local workplace. ex. time pressue, understaffing, fatigue
2. they can create long-lasting weaknesses in defenses. ex. untrustworthy alarms, design and construction deficiencies
How is CRM an error management model?(3)
- it incorporates 3 activities:
1. Error avoidance- opportunity for trapping/preventing errors from becoming catastrophic
2. Entrapment- errors not avoided are trapped at 2nd level.
3. Mitigation- errors not avoided or trapped have to be mitigated. ex. FD responding to an emergency.
What are the 6 areas of the CRM model?(6)
- Communication skills
- Teamwork
- Task Allocation
- Critical decision making
- Situational awareness
- Postincident analysis
How are Communication Skills used in regards to to the fire service CRM?
- communication is the successful transfer and understanding of thought from one person to another.
- develop a standard language and teach appropriate assertive behaviour to avoid errors resulting from miscommunication
- create climate where the freedom to question is encouraged, respectfully
- members need ot speak directly in a manner that does not challenge the authority of superior
- should not focus on “who” is right but “what” is right.
How do “inquiry” and “advocacy” affect the fire service CRM model?
- they are discrete, learnable skills that promote synergy between mechanical element and human players in scenerio.
INQUIRY- process of questioning a situation that causes concern
ADVOCACY- is a statement of opinion that recommends what the person believes is the proper course of action under a specific set of circumstances.
What are the 5 steps to the Assertive Statement Process?
- encompasses the communications steps of inquiry and advocacy
- Use an opener: “Hey, Chief”
- State your concern
- State the problem as you see it.
4 State a solution - Obtain agreement or buy-in
What 2 components are essential of the communication segment of fire service CRM?
- inquiry and advocacy
- assertive statement
** effective listening is important as well
What are the 3 componenets of the Leadership triangle? (3)
- Effective Leadership
- Trust and respect- of subordinates must be earned by FO
- Leadership skills
What 3 competencies is respect based on? (3)
- Personal competency- refers to an individuals own internal strengths, capabilities, and character
- Technical capabilities- refers to an individuals ability to perform tasks that require specific knowledge or skills
- Social competence- refers to the person’s ability to interact effectively with other people
What is Task Allocations?
- refers to dividing responsibilities among individuals and tream in a manner that allows them to be accomplished effectively.
What are the 3 categories of multitasking ability?
- FO is always overwhelmed and believe that he becomes more effective as situation becomes more hectic.
- FO becomes overwhelmeed before even has fully played out
- FO effectively assesses the incident, calls for additionak resources early, and manages to stay ahead of unfolding
What are the 2 models of Critical Decision Making?(2)
- Recognition-primed decision making (RPD).
- describes how commanders can recognize plausible plan of action
- Nauralistic decision making- describes hoe commanders make decisions in their natural environmen.
*** decision making is improved through gaining experience, training constantly, improving commmunication skills and engaging in preincident planning.
What is Situational Awareness?
- is ongoing activity of assessing what is going on around you during a fire incident.
What are the steps to maintaining emergency scene situational awareness? (6)
- Fight the fire: all members must focus attention on task at hand.
- Assess problems in the time available: not always time available to make drawn out decisions- but need to take enought time to grasp entire situation
- Gather information from all sources: members of crew, additional arriving apparatus
- Choose best option:
- Monitor results and alter plan as necessary: be flexible
- Be aware of situational loss factors:
- ambiguity
- fixation- tunnel vision
- distraction
- overload:
- complacency:
- improper procedure:
- unresolved discrepancy
- nobody fighting the fire
What is an aviation practice that can help maintain situational awareness?
is to say a checklist out loud when preparing fora low frequencey/ high risk task
What is a post- incident analysis?
- in most cases, it is an informal discussion conducted by the company officer to review the incident, discuss the situation, and evaluate team performance.
- viewed as potential learning experience and officer should provide feedback to crew members to reinforce positive performance and identify areas where there is room for improvement
Steps for post- incident analysis
- start with overview of presentation of background, basic info about incide, incl. timeline and units dispatched
- 1st arriving officer shoud be first to describe situation as presented on arrival and actions taken
- each successive company should take a turn explaining what they saw and did.
- input should produce complete diagram of incident
- analysis should be directed at key factors, including initial strategy how/ if changed, how command structure was developed, how resources were allocated and which special/ unusual problems were encountered
The role of SOGs in postincident analysis
- were they followed and how well they worked in relation to actual situation
- differentiate between problems that occurred because procedures were not followed and areas where SOGs should be changed/ updated
Documentation and follow-up of postincident analysis
- write a summary of incident for departmental records in standard format
- allows for recommendations for future changes
- Training Department should review for trainig deficiencies and needs
