A. The Importance Of The Overhead Team
1. CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD OVERHEAD TEAM MEMBER
2. CROSS TRAINING
3. TRAINING FOR SUCCESSION
THE "GARAGE TEST"
CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL SEARCH MANAGERS
CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL PLANS SECTION LEADERS
CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL OPERATIONS SECTION LEADERS
CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL LOGISTICS SECTION LEADERS
CRITICAL ROLE OF THE SEARCH MANAGER
THE FINE ART OF COORDINATION
MANAGING THE INFORMATION FLOW
MANAGING BY WANDERING AROUND
POSITIVE URGENCY AS A MOTIVATOR
James Cooke is a volunteer with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue Team.
A search is like starting a new business. There are resources to be found,
staff to be managed, a business plan to follow, and work toward a goal.
About 90% of all new businesses fail in their first year, primarily due
to poor management. Most searches that fail to meet their goal (finding
the missing person, preferably alive) also fail due to poor management.
All Search and Rescue Teams spend considerable amounts of time training.
Most of that training is geared toward developing filed search skills, and
rightly so. Far less time is spent developing management skills. This lack
of training time in management directly translates into poorly run searches.
Development of a well-trained, cohesive management team should be one of
the most important goals of every team.
A primary requirement for a good overhead team member is field search experience.
It is not possible for anyone on overhead to understand the needs and problems
of the field searcher unless he or she has experienced the challenges of
being a field searcher. In my early experience as a field searcher, I was
constantly frustrated by how long it took to get teams into the field. I
vowed that, should I ever be on overhead, I would make it a goal to get
teams into the field within an hour after they arrived. There is no substitute
for actual field experience in sensitizing overhead team members to the
needs of field searchers.
The need for field experience should not mean that the best field searchers
get put on the overhead team. There are some team members who perform admirably
in the field but have no desire or aptitude for management. A position on
the overhead team should not be viewed as a "promotion" but as
a change of assignment. A mix of good searchers and good management is absolutely
necessary for a good search team.
Most successful overhead team members have some characteristics in common,
at least in my experience. Some of these characteristics include;
While not all overhead personnel have all of these characteristics, it is unlikely that someone with none these characteristics would be a good choice for the overhead team.
A key failure of many overhead teams is the lack of cross training of their
team members. Since Search and Rescue Teams are primarily made up of volunteers,
it is impossible to know in advance which overhead personnel will be available
for any particular search. It doesn't do any good to have the best plans
leader around if that person is not available for this search and there
is no else than can step into the role.
It is important that a plans leader, for example, understand the duties
and responsibilities of the operations leader, and vice versa. While neither
may be completely comfortable in their counterpart's roles, they will be
able to step in if the need arises.
None of us is getting any younger. Just as in business, there must successors
groomed to step in when the current leaders leave.
The best way to assure succession is to include promising newcomers in your
overhead team after they achieve their required field experience. Assign
these "trainees" assistant positions, working with your section
leaders, so they can learn from example. When you have training searches,
let these assistants assume the section leader roles with normal section
leaders acting as observers. The assistants will experience the challenges
of the search, and the section leaders can give constructive feedback for
improvement at the conclusion of the training.
When you continuously train all your overhead team, including trainees,
you are naturally training for succession. Willingness of your veteran leaders
to share their training and experience makes the new overhead team members
feel part of the program rather than outsiders.
How does your garage look? My own subjective view is that your garage is
predictive of your success on the overhead team. I cannot give you any evidence
that this is true, but I'll give you a summary of my own ideas of the garages
of overhead team leaders;
On a more serious note, there are some common characteristics shared by
overhead team leaders. My observations of these attributes include;
The overhead team should be a permanent part of your search team organization.
It is not possible to develop good management skills unless everyone exercises
and trains for their task, and this applies to the overhead team as much
as to a technical rescue team.
A minimum training level should be the completion of the Managing the Search
Function course. This course at least gives everyone the same basic orientation
and a common set of terms and functions. In addition, overhead team members
should be encouraged to attend any other training that is available, such
as BATSAR, SAREX, and SAR City. All of these offer courses that will help
the overhead team member improve their skills as well as putting them in
contact with overhead team members form other Search and Rescue Teams. A
lot of training in overhead is gained by talking with and listening to other
overhead team members.
Table top searches and mock searches are two types of exercises that will
improve the skills of your overhead team.
Table top searches will help the overhead team get used to the paperwork
and working in cooperation with each other. A good table top search sharpens
your skills in tactics and resource utilization. Three to four table top
searches a year seems to be a good number to keep the overhead team interested.
It should be the responsibility of different overhead member to create each
table top search, either as a unique search or from an actual search from
your own area. Creating good table top searches is an art, and training
is required to create a realistic and satisfying table top search.
Mock searches should be an opportunity to practice skills that have already
been learned. It is a mistake to think that persons without the requisite
training can be thrust into an overhead role during a mock search and expect
that they will have a good training experience. The only result will be
frustration and bad feelings. This is the ideal environment for assistant
section leaders to step into the section leader role, however. The assistant
can experience the stress and problems of managing the section without the
risks of an actual search. The section leaders can act as observers and
give the assistants some pointers as the search progresses.
The most important part of either the table top search or the mock search
is to have a lessons learned section. Every exercise exposes weaknesses
in our organization, and the final part of these exercises should always
be a review of these weaknesses and developing some goals toward eliminating
them.
The overhead team must have a definite, major purpose. That purpose should
be the management of resources and plans to efficiently search for, find,
and recover the missing person. Every member should understand and agree
with this goal, and any weakness that interferes with the goal should be
strengthened or eliminated.
The overhead team must think of itself as group working in perfect harmony
toward a common goal. This does not mean there are never any disagreements
among members of the overhead team, but it does mean that everyone is treated
with respect and that any disagreements are always resolved in favor of
the missing person.
New leaders are trained and motivated by the present leaders. If the present
leaders are secretive, non-supportive, and ego driven, new leaders will
drop out rather than put up the abuse. Unfortunately, the new leaders that
survive will have all the defects of the present leaders and the destructive
cycle will continue. The concept of mentoring is very important for the
developing of new leaders. Each present leader should take the new leaders
under their wings and share with them the lessons they have learned. Persons
hoping to be leaders should actively seek out persons they admire and respect
to establish this mentoring relationship.
The search manager has several critical functions to perform during a search.
If these functions are not performed, the organization and success of the
search always suffers.
The search manager must have a positive mental attitude. The search manager
must believe the search will be successful. This positive mental attitude
will be conveyed to the rest of the overhead team, as will a negative mental
attitude. Doubts and negative thoughts will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Self-discipline is a prime requirement of the search manager. He or she
must know the plan and follow it. If the search manager changes the operation
with every twist and turn of the search, the rest of the overhead team will
have no confidence in the plan and will start to run their own operation.
No matter how much experienced you have or how smart you think you are,
there is no substitute for following a well conceived plan.
The search manger must have a healthy dose of skepticism. The nature of
searches is to generate false clues. Most information we receive at the
beginning of a search is not correct or is only correct in part. The search
manager must only believe and act on facts that can be proven, not assumptions
or hearsay. Many a search has gone wrong due to a hasty assumption that
a fact was or was not true with no evidence to back it up.
One of the most difficult aspects of management is how tight to hold the
reins. The search manager naturally wants to know everything that is happening
during a search. In most cases, the search manager also wants to act on
the information, even if this means make a unilateral decision.
The reason an overhead team exists is to break the task of search management
into manageable pieces. One person cannot manage all aspects of the search.
The section leaders must be left to manage their part of the search as they
see fit. If the search manager is constantly interfering with the operation
of the various sections, teamwork will never develop. The search manager
should view him or her self as a consultant, not the boss. He or she should
be ready to offer advice or counsel when it is requested, but otherwise
should serve in the role of coordinating the operations of the different
sections. In addition, the search manager does not, and should not, know
every detail of the operation. Section leaders are trained to deal with
problems as they arise and generally do not need the "help" of
the search manager. While the usual problems of the minute-to-minute aspects
of the search are being solved, the search manager should be thinking about
the next operational period.
While the search manager should be in the background, he or she must also
be prepared to step in if things start going terribly wrong. Obvious incompetence,
bad attitudes and outright insubordination must be dealt with swiftly and
decisively. The search manager is the one the rest of the team will look
to to solve these types of problems, and failure to do so will lead to immediate
morale problems.
The balance between too much control and not enough control is precarious
and fluid. Only experience and making and learning from mistakes teaches
this art.
Information is the lifeblood of a search. What clues have been found, what
team is doing what, what resources are available, and what still needs to
be done are all examples of information that needs to be collected and analyzed
for a successful search. Some ways to manage this information flow include;
The search manager and section leaders must be visible. This means they
should spend as much time as possible walking around the command post, watching
what is happening and getting a general feeling of how the search is going.
You can learn more about how well a search is going by spending five minutes
watching from a corner than all the reports and meetings in the world. This
is a good time to give words of thanks and encouragement to everyone who
is working so hard towards the goal of finding the missing person.
Don't forget to pay occasional visits to staging areas as well. Take the
time to thank the searchers for their efforts and listen to their comments.
Many times, you will hear a different set of concerns from the field searchers
than you will hear from your management team, and both should be taken seriously.
Remember, the role of the leader is to be seen and listen. You can't fulfill
the leadership role if your head is buried in a computer or you are constantly
meeting behind closed doors
The last, and possibly most important, role of the search manger and the
overhead team is to create an air of positive urgency. This means that the
search must always be treated as an emergency, but not as a crisis. No matter
what our emotional state, the search plan must be followed to assure ourselves
that we have done everything possible to find the missing person. The tendency
toward having the search degenerate into a crisis is ever present, and must
be checked by the leadership. Assignments should be completed quickly but
without rushing. Additional resources may be needed, but we don't need to
over emphasize the critical nature of the search.
During the initial stages of the search, adrenaline will be flowing and
the leadership will be spending most of it's time suppressing the "fight
or flight" aspect of the adrenaline surge. As the search wears on with
no success, however, the adrenaline wears off and depression sets in. This
is the most critical point of the search. The search leadership must continue
to display the positive urgency referred to above, as well as the optimistic
view that the find is just around the corner.
Positive urgency, self discipline, and optimism are expected of the leader.
If you cannot display these traits, you should think about whether or not
the overhead team is the right place for you. The missing person deserves
no less than best we can give.