Incident Commander

So, I have been in an on going training program as part of the NEAT team here at the plant and most recently I was in a training that was an extension of the Haz-Mat training. In each major catastrophic incident (such as 911) there is in place a type of proper Incident command system used by the government. The Incident Command System (ICS) is a standardized, on-scene, all-hazard incident management concept in the United States. It is a management protocol originally designed for emergency management agencies and later Federalized.
Anyway, in this last training we were taught that there are three major types of leaders...
1) Autocratic- must have confidence in leader, leader must be technically competent and be able to make rapid decisions.
2) Automatic-Leaves members to make decisions, usually struggles at making decision, technically insecure, informal leader of group
3) Democratic-consensus, is good in a non-emergency situation,...draws on team expertise, often used excessively by non-decision makers


I was chosen to be the incident commander in this exercise. Of course I understoodd that he was going to be testing and observing my leadership skills as well as figuring out which type of leader I am. I also knew that Autocratic is the best and the other two are CRAP and that everyone in that room was anticipating the girl was going to be a lame automatic! So…pressure was on…and I brought it! I had to create a strategy and then instruct four other people on how to execute it in a short time frame with the parameters of the assignment constantly changing. SO,…what do I have to show for it all? Just this crappy house built out of note cards…it’s surprising how difficult these little tasks can be…but I was told that I was calm and had natural leadership skills (for a girl...)

Another fun task we did was to sit back to back. One person had a picture of a constructed block pattern and had to instruct the other on how to build it. First time around only the person with the picture could speak, second time around there was communication between the two parties. My team won this challenge. The instructor said that he’s used this activity with young married couples at church before. I think this would be a pretty fun (or frustrating) FHE activity.