Rothstein Associates Inc.

SITTING IN THE HOT SEAT:
LEADERS AND TEAMS FOR CRITICAL INCIDENT MANAGEMENT
by Rhona Flin

“Crisis Management is an area of activity which has been propelled to the forefront of the
management agenda as a consequence of a number of recent incidents. Increasingly,
responsibility for taking command in an emergency is being placed in senior managers in
charge, not only of well-known high-risk sites such as oil rigs and chemical plants, but also of
places where the public have a right to be safe. The bombings of the World trade Center in
New York and of Manchester city centre, and the Hillsborough disaster - each called on the
skills and courage of people in a suddenly high-risk and high-profile situation.

“These are internationally memorable incidents - but every day there are non-routine critical
incidents which call on the skills, and test the training, of emergency professionals and
“ordinary” managers alike.

“How are they prepared for the task? How are they trained? How are they monitored?

“Increasingly, the responsibility of individuals who are required to take command in
emergencies is no longer simply the domain of the military, police, and fire service
commanders.

“SITTING IN THE HOT SEAT examines the selection, training and assessment of individuals
who are required to take the command role in an emergency. It presents latest developments
from the emergency services, military and industrial experts. The emphasis of the book is on
the individual manager - or commander - and his/her relationship with the team. Case
studies, expert commentary ad psychological research complete a comprehensive picture of
the issues in public, and private organizations, the military, and the industrial sector.

“The Police, the Fire service, the Ambulance service, the Coastguard service, the Armed
Forces, the Merchant Navy, commercial airlines, mining, chemical and petro-chemical
industries, offshore oil companies, the nuclear and power industries, football clubs, major
entertainment venues, hotels - safety professionals and senior managers in all these
organizations will find SITTING IN THE HOT SEAT a rich source of knowledge and
techniques.”

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“Life-endangering emergencies occur everyday. The plans made to cope with them swing
into action -- the incident teams carry them out -- and we move on. But stop for a moment to
think what this actually means. How is this planning done? How do the teams know what to
do? Who leads them?

“Think of a recent major emergency: think about the people you see on your TV screens or in
the newspaper; think about their tactical decision making under stress.

“How are those leading the emergency teams selected, trained supervised, monitored and
assessed? Particularly the individual required to undertake the role of on-scene
‘commander.’

“Much has been written about the wider organizational issues -- crisis management,
emergency planning -- or about the organizational and public service response, rather than
focusing on the individual leading the on-scene response: the person in the hot seat.

“Rhona Flin’s book -- Sitting In The Hot Seat -- focuses on the need to assess managerial
competence for emergency response. As an applied psychologist she has had unparalleled
access to the training of incident commanders in Europe and the USA. Her work, in terms of
depth and breadth of her research, makes her uniquely qualified to write this book.

“For those responsible for people’s safety Sitting In The Hot Seat addresses the need to
develop robust procedures to overcome the unexpected. For without adequate measures in
place, and without appropriately trained incident commanders, emergencies can become
disasters. The public and those responsible for their protection could pay a heavy price for
the lack of preparation.”

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. THE ROLE OF THE INCIDENT COMMANDER
Introduction
Incident command and control procedures
Command and control in major incidents

2. SELECTING THE RIGHT STUFF
Introduction
Selection criteria
Selection procedures
Competence assessment in incident command

3. TRAINING THE INCIDENT COMMANDER
Incident command training methods
Incident command training: case studies

4. THE STRESS OF INCIDENT COMMAND
What is stress?
Causes of stress for commanders in emergencies
Mediating (Buffer) factors
Effects and symptoms of stress during the incident
Effects of stress after the event and PTSD
Managing stress

5. COMMAND DECISION MAKING
Traditional decision making theories
Naturalistic decision-making
Recognition-primed decision making
Emergency decision making
Stress and Decision Making

6. INCIDENT COMMAND TEAMS
Factors influencing team performance
Research into team performance
Shared mental models - team mind
Distributed decision making
Team decision making under stress
Crew Resource Management

7. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Legal responsibilities
Selection, training and assessment
Stress, decision making and teamwork
Leadership theory
Future directions

APPENDIX

REFERENCES

INDEX

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Professor Rhona Flin is a Chartered Psychologist specializing in the application of
psychology to safety and emergency management. She is Director of Research at Aberdeen
Business School and Offshore Management Centre, The Robert Gordon University, where
she leads a team of psychologists working with the offshore oil industry and the emergency
services. She is a Visiting Fellow at the UK Fire Service College. She has also been
involved with the ACPO MODACE course at the Police Staff College, Bramshill and she
lectures on the Inspectors’ Course at the Scottish Police College.”

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1996, 258 pages Order #DR259

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