Leadership for Emergency Drone Teams

The use of drones in Firefighting and Search and Rescue (SAR) is now becoming a well-accepted practice, with most UK Fire Services having a drone capability themselves or partnerships in place to access drones.

Although this is still an emerging and developing technology, the principles have been widely accepted across the sector, with drones being routinely employed for situational awareness, oversight, search and rescue, thermal imaging, fire investigation and scene documentation. Work with the UN World Food program to establish new formula for SAR effectiveness is also underway ( LINK TO OTHER ARTICLE BY TOBY MEREDITH _ IN THIS ISSUE), and, in a UK context, it is rare for a SAR team to be without some aerial capability.

Given drone usage is such a fast-moving developing field it is unsurprising that much of the published work and guidelines have been technical in nature. This is reflected in both academic and operational research work, and in the scarce material available for emergency services in sector literature. However, to date there is little work on the management and leadership skills required to make drone teams effective. While there is an abundance of material available on the flight characteristics, weight, payload potential and the operation of new aircraft, there is very little on the tactics and leadership required for effective drone use within an emergency organisation.

The much-welcomed establishment of this new publication will surely see more of a focus on evidence-based practice, in addition to the important technical information, and this will serve our current and future leaders in drone applications well. Of course, technical understanding and practical operational skills will always form a large part of the learning and professional development associated with drone operations, but equally even the most technically competent and knowledgeable team will struggle to perform with poor leadership.

And it goes without saying, there are well established works on leadership, team management and organisation, and many of these are specific to fire and emergency services. It is also clear that these vastly outnumber what technical material exists for drone operation, as you would expect.

It is also well established, and well accepted that effective leadership in Fire and Rescue requires a mix of technical and non-technical skills, as described by Butler et al (2019). Put simply, an example of these would be a knowledge or procedure, or tools and equipment (technical) and skills such as leadership, communication, and effective decision-making (nontechnical). It is recognised that leadership in a fire or emergency context requires a set of skills that go beyond technical understanding - requiring empathy, emotional intelligence, selflessness, communication skills and an even temper.

What is interesting though is that the recognition of the importance of these traits as in many cases come from other risk critical sectors, like surgery or aviation. The establishment of empathetic non-technical skills was encouraged in response to a series of high-profile disasters where a leaders' judgement or interpretation could not be challenged by a subordinate, and so a correction could not be put in place. As a result, wholesale re-evaluation and retraining was conducted across both of the sectors and the principles of empathetic emotionally intelligent leadership was envisaged.

Good Practice

Personal Impact Encourage open communication and freely enter into dialog - not conflict.

Look to learn from mistakes and encourage a ‘just culture’. Leadership is about an opportunity to learn develop your own skills and help those in the team develop theirs.

People sometimes make mistakes, and rather than ridiculing these, they should be seen as opportunities to learn. We need to create a team culture where feedback about performance is an everyday part of team growth.

Success and achievements within the team should be recognised and celebrated.

Inappropriate behaviour, bullying, offensive or discriminatory language needs to be recognised as wrong and challenged. It is important to understand the impacts leaders have on the team and seek ways to improve how you work with others.

Outstanding Leadership As a high-profile team, with significant media and public interest in our activities, a drone team needs to take being an ambassador for the service seriously. Communications need to be professional, so take care with grammar and spelling, and never engage in arguments online or in public view.

Contra-indications

Do not be unwilling to share expertise with others; or withholds relevant information.

Don’t exhibit aggressive, defensive, overpowering, bullying, or defensive behaviour.

Never refuse to take part in feedback, avoid debriefs, or be unaware or uncaring of team well-being and mental health.

Avoid employing obstructive behaviours rather than progressive ones.

If things go wrong, don’t look to blame others, or pass on accountability.

make sure that others in the team area able to put in different views in meetings.

OFFICIAL encourage all team members to speak and share their views on the teams work and understand the team in order to best utilise the diversity of strengths and skills within the team.

Take responsibility and accountability for the quality of your own work, and the work of the team. This means ensuring that documents are up to date, deadlines are met and promises are not broken.

OFFICIAL

Work with the team and with others to set the strategic direction of the team within the organisation, communicate that clearly, and take responsibility for any tasks assigned to yourself.

Service Delivery As a leader it is important to plan ahead and prioritise both your work and the work of the team, managing everyone's time effectively to get things done.

Support any opportunities to improve the way we do things for the community or a service, and actively contribute to problem solvingmaking time to understand issues fully and take appropriate actions.

Remember, decisions or actions need to be based on evidence, risk and a good knowledge of what good practise looks like.

Seek the views of others in terms of improving quality and effectiveness, and evaluate the impact of any changes objectively, so that we can be confident the change is for the good. Consider putting systems in place to monitor the quality of decision-making and automatically generate intelligence.

Work hard to build trust with others and be able to constructive relationships for greater collaboration. encourage innovation, including new technology, but also different ways of working.

Never show stubbornness in the face of opposition, even when proved wrong, and never challenge others in a way that intimidates or undermines.

Absolutely never use stigmatising behaviours or language and has little interest in understanding or working with diversity.

Don’t be preoccupied with you own agenda, or development, rather than driven by service delivery.

You should not see leadership as a route to fame or recognition rather than for good of organisation.

Organisational Effectiveness

Be clear about the teams’ goals, and how all team members can make a difference. Understand the role of the team, and you as a leader, in contributing to wider organisational priorities.

OFFICIAL

Do not overlook bullying or is party to bullying. Do not avoid longstanding issues requiring leadership.

OFFICIAL

Continually seek to improve your own performance, and the performance of your team. Actively seek feedback, and positively engage with new ways of working.

Take ownership of change, help others to understand it and to implement it. Demonstrate that you are willing to adopt to new ideas once new information emerges.

Strive to understand risk across all the projects in the team. Consider risk to reputation, team well-being and risk to efficiency and effectiveness.

Aim to create the conditions within and around the team for innovation and change to occur organically, and for the right reasons.

Never reject ideas quickly without reflection or insight. Fails to see relevance of wider issues.

Do not be obstructive towards change, and improvement.

You cannot refuse to let the team bring innovation.

Never be obstructive towards learning and progress.

Of course, this brings us back full circle. It makes complete sense for us as leaders in drone operations to draw from lessons learned in aviation, because drone operations literally are aviation. And the reason aviation and surgery are often given as exemplar risk critical sectors should also be obvious: the potential for widespread injury or death in the case of an aviation accident is self-evident, and this absolutely applies to Fire Service and Search and Rescue drones. If even one of the smaller drones is flown dangerously or control is lost, the potential for widespread harm is clear.

So clearly the risk of poor leadership, or lack of established leadership protocols is serious, but relatively simple to address in the short term. What we need to do is take the existing risk critical leadership protocols already associated with emergency response, coming from a tradition in aviation, and apply them to our emergency response aviation activities. As a guide for drone team leaders, we have taken just one example of a leadership framework, in this case specifically related to fire, and highlighted where we think there is an obvious relevance to drone operation leadership. The framework we have used is the UK National Fire Chiefs Council

Leadership Framework (available here), and the table that follows is hopefully of use to leaders in an exciting emerging field. So, in conclusion, leading a drone team shouldn't really be any different to leadership in any team. Yes, the technology is new, the practices and tactics are still being ironed out, but there is no excuse for our leadership not being excellent. People rely on us to be professional in all of our endeavours, leadership included. The broad principles are to serve as a leader with integrity, openness, empathy and to be led by evidence and objectivity. As long as we don't stray too far from that base, the leadership of a drone team should be a straightforward as leading any team.

Richie has worked for WMFS for nearly 25years in a number of operational roles. He is currently responsible for the Implementation of WMFS strategic priorities in relation to Response alongside the wider provision of integrated Service Delivery through Prevention, Protection and Response.

As drone manager, he has established a strong team approach that provides a robust drone capability for WMFS, which supports incident commanders to make effective command decisions at incidents. Utilising the learning already gained, he is continually working with Innovation and Sustainability to horizon scan, ensuring the drone team is using the most up to date technology and continues to evolve the capability.

FRGS, FInSTR, FICPEM

Watch Commander, Organisational Intelligence. West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS)

Ian works on the "operations" side of Organisational Intelligence at WMFS and was previously a firefighter in the London Fire Brigade. He has also been an intelligence officer for the RNLI and was formerly an Associate Professor in a Geography Department of a UK university. He is part of the editorial team of the Journal of Search and Rescue and holds an emeritus academic position at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

References

Butler, P.C., Honey, R.C. and Cohen-Hatton, S.R. (2019) "Development of a behavioural marker system for incident command in the UK fire and rescue service: THINCS," Cognition, Technology & Work, 22(1), pp. 1-12. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-019-00539-6.