BY CHERYL HORVATH
During a recent class involving students’ training for a captain’s position, we viewed the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers and then discussed the variety of leadership styles shown in the movie. We discussed a particularly important point in the film, where a company is cut off from the rest of the platoon. The company sergeant makes a critical decision to chase a Vietnamese scout just as the platoon is arriving in enemy territory by helicopter. As the company chases the scout into unknown terrain, the company’s radio operator (and the only link to the rest of the platoon) is shot and killed. In the heat of the moment, the sergeant makes a decision that is irreversible and ultimately costly. He yells back to the company, “Take the radio!” and continues his pursuit of the scout. The company comes under heavy fire and is completely surrounded by Vietnamese soldiers. The rest of their platoon must wait a day before they are able to rescue the few remaining members.
The sergeant’s “Take the radio!” moment signifies to all of us those times when we make an initial decision; fail to properly assess its effects; and, consequently, follow it up with more bad decisions. Whether we are responding to emergency scenes or dealing with station life or our personal lives, we have all experienced making bad decision after bad decision. What causes us to do those things? How can we learn to recognize those “Take the radio!” moments and reverse our bad decision making?
In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell references numerous examples of good and bad decisions made in a variety of real-life scenarios. The book examines why some people are always able to make the right decision in very stressful situations.
In one story, a lieutenant was leading his company into a house on fire. When the lieutenant sensed something was going wrong with the incident, he pulled his company from the building minutes before the floor on which they had been standing collapsed. The lieutenant stated he had a feeling something wasn’t right and acted on it. The author analyzes the lieutenant’s thought process (the lieutenant firmly believed he had ESP and that that was what had protected him throughout his career). After two hours of reviewing the incident with the lieutenant, the author concludes that the officer came to a life-saving decision by unconsciously evaluating the things that were not happening.
The fire was below the company. But every time members applied water in the direction of the perceived kitchen fire, the expected result did not occur; the fire did not go out. The lieutenant also noticed that although there was very little noise from the fire itself, the heat conditions were high. Remember, the lieutenant firmly believed he had ESP. Only after the author questioned him for a couple of hours was the lieutenant able to come up with key observations that led to his decision to pull his crew from the fire building. Gladwell uses this story to illustrate the concept of “thin-slicing,” or “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.”
For us as decision makers, this means that we have to trust our instincts. Unfortunately, at a time when many fire departments are not getting the hands-on “fire work” or training to keep their skills proficient, this creates a huge challenge. But recognizing those “Take the radio!” moments is the first step toward making better decisions. Slow down your thought process, and scan the environmental circumstances around you before making decisions. Once you make a decision, step back and check the results. In some situations, you must evaluate your decision rapidly; in others, you will have more time.
Think back on calls you ran or problem situations you dealt with in the past. Retrace your mental thought process, trying to remember those bits of information you processed that led you to make a bad decision.
I can remember a very difficult EMS call that involved the delivery of a baby who did not survive birth. The midwife had left the mother’s side and the scene prior to our arrival. After the paramedics carried the lifeless infant from the bedroom, my company and I were determined to carry the distraught mother down a tight stairway that had two 90° turns. The mother was heavy, obviously in pain, and emotionally upset. Although we successfully and safely placed the patient into the ambulance, my decision as a company officer in determining how to carry the patient down the stairs was a poor decision. Why was it a poor decision? I did not stop and reevaluate the next task that needed to be done or the best way to complete that task safely. Consequently, instead of requesting assistance from another company and using a litter and rope assembly, I made the decision to have the patient carried down the stairs in a very uncomfortable and inefficient manner.
As I think back on that decision, I realize several trigger points led to that bad decision: the emotional situation, the midwife leaving both the scene and the mother’s side prior to our arrival, and the call occurring in the middle of the night. I now see how in reacting to those trigger points, I came to that decision. Instead of processing out those pieces of information and focusing on the patient’s welfare and that of my crew as we made the difficult lift, I was determined to move the patient and put an end to a very bad EMS call.
Good and bad decisions are made every day. Through training, life experience, and sharing our personal success and failures with each other, we can learn to understand the “Take the radio!” moments and develop our decision-making skills to do the right thing at the right time. Use your department’s after-action critiques of calls and training sessions to explore the reasons decisions were made, good and bad. Instead of assuming that someone or a company’s actions were wrong, put yourself in their position and review the information with which they were operating. Maybe you will learn from their thought process, or maybe you can help them learn from your interpretation of that same information. Either way, we all help each other with our “Take the radio!” moments and, ultimately, our safety.
Reference
Gladwell, Malcolm. >Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Co. 2005; 23, 122-123.
CHERYL HORVATH is a division chief in charge of training for the Northwest Fire District in Tucson, Arizona, and board co-president of the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Services.
