SAMatters Radio

Latest Episodes:

SAM 180 | Accountability Oct 03, 2017

Show notes

Accountability is a critically important component to the safety of employees when they are operating in hazardous environments. From the perspective of situational awareness, accountability plays several roles.

The obvious role is personnel accountability facilitates the rapid deployment of teams if something goes wrong. The person in-charge knows the team sizes and where the teams are operating at and can send help expeditiously.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 179 | Coordinated Actions Sep 26, 2017

Show notes

The potential issue from uncoordinated, independent action is it may be unrealistic to think multiple individuals, or multiple teams can begin work on a problem, at varied times, and make the same assessment of the situation/conditions and know, automatically, what other team members are doing and what goals they are trying to accomplish. This can cause problems with team and big-picture situational awareness.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 178 | Explaining Tunnel Vision Sep 19, 2017

Show notes

When it comes to developing and maintaining situational awareness, tunnel vision is a big deal. Situational awareness is developed by having a broad perception of the environment in which you are operating. As your focus narrows, you start to miss things. Those "missed things" are like lost puzzle pieces, leaving holes in your understanding of what is happening. Thus, situational awareness can be impacted.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 177 | Time to task completion Sep 12, 2017

Show notes

Your highest level of situational awareness is formed when you are able to make accurate predictions about future events. We call this projection and it simply means you are able to predict, or project, the future.

This is accomplished through mental models you develop that are founded in your training and experience. But for supervisors, it requires more than training and experience to make accurate projections of the future.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 176 | Imagination Sep 05, 2017

Show notes

In this episode, we discuss how to use your imagination to anticipate outcomes – an important component of developing strong situational awareness.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 175 | Positive reinforcement of undesired behavior Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

In this episode, I am taking on a topic often discussed in my leadership programs more often than in my situational awareness programs – motivation. I'm not going to get in to depth on the topic of motivation as it takes me a solid four hours in a classroom session to demystify the topic and reveal the secret sauce for how people are motivated. However, there is one fundamental component of motivation that has a direct implication to firefighter safety – the positive reinforcement of undesired behavior.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 174 | Complex Communications Aug 22, 2017

Show notes

We have many traits that make us uniquely human. Among them is our ability to engage in complex communications. We can look at black ink squiggled on a piece of bleached paper and derive meaning from those symbols. We call that skill reading comprehension.

And we can listen to and comprehend the meaning of more than 10,000 words. We call that listening comprehension. Indeed, our ability to communicate is quite complex.

But our complex communications system has a downside also – complex miscommunications.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 173 | Bravado Aug 15, 2017

Show notes

A person displaying bravado is not concerned with his or her own safety. They are only concerned with looking courageous. This does not make the individual brave. It makes the individual dangerous.

Once a person gets into the bravado mindset, the critical first two steps in the formation of situational awareness (purposefully capturing clues and cues and comprehending clues and cues into meaning) can be flawed.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 172 | Confirmation Bias Aug 08, 2017

Show notes

The foundation of situational awareness is capturing clues and cues in your environment – what some would call "paying attention" – and then making sense of those clues and cues – what some would call "understanding" – and then making projections of future events – what some would call "prediction." One of the challenges in the formation of situational awareness that can arise during the "understanding" phase is Confirmation Bias.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway

www.RichGasaway.com

Support@RichGasaway.com

612-548-4424

SAM 171 | Expectations can impact Situational Awareness Aug 01, 2017

Show notes

One way to control your reaction to stress is to first understand what causes you to be stressed. There are the obvious stressors – physical demands of the work, time compression to make quick decisions, dangerous and unpredictable work. Then there are the less than obvious stressors – peer pressure and the fear that can result from not meeting citizen expectations and/or elected official expectations.

Our sponsor:

Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com

Intro music

Safety Dance (1982)

Men Without Hats

GMC - Virgin Records

Licensed by BMI Music

Situational Awareness Matters! website

www.SAMatters.com

Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/

Contact Rich Gasaway