Chapter 6: When Mistakes almost become Disasters

Teams of fire fighters in harm’s way work under the continual threat of extraordinary physical danger. When team leadership fails, however, the consequences may include serious physical injury, death, and associated psychological distress. This chapter considers what happens within these leadership failures and steps captains can take to prevent disasters. In particular, this chapter reports research on fire fighter team leadership in dangerous contexts that analyzed 100 near-miss reports from firefighters across the United States. These reports describe instances in which firefighters narrowly avoided death or serious injury. These data suggest that the process of organizing for expected ambiguity serves as the foundation for effective team leadership in such contexts, and that three related processes of framing the problem to the unexpected, adjusting, and mindfully communicating with the support team reduce many hazards. For teams going into harm’s way, the data suggest a number of practical team leadership behaviors that should improve the team’s ability to survive in the face of danger and to learn from others’ mistakes.