Speaker 1: Good a team.
Speaker 2: This is part two of the conversation we started yesterday
Speaker 2: with Sabrina, hope you're enjoying it. I won't get in
Speaker 2: the way of what is to come enjoy.
Speaker 1: See you at the end. Does that mean Sabrina your
Speaker 1: honor doctor? Does that mean that?
Speaker 2: Like my thinking is generally like when I would like,
Speaker 2: I've worked with first responders over here, with Victoria police
Speaker 2: and with the military a little bit, and with lots
Speaker 2: of elite athletes.
Speaker 1: And we just did a big study out.
Speaker 2: Of Monash where I study which I had my first
Speaker 2: academic paper published, which is hilarious, which is hilarious. Hang
Speaker 2: on because there's like fifty authors, so I really don't
Speaker 2: deserve any credit.
Speaker 1: Whatsoever, but my name is on it.
Speaker 2: What I wanted to say was generally speaking, we train
Speaker 2: a soldiers and police, especially special operators like in Victoria
Speaker 2: they call it Special Operations Group, they call them soggies,
Speaker 2: and you know the elite soldiers where they do a
Speaker 2: lot of like intense high level, high pressure, uncomfortable like
Speaker 2: they just get put through the grind. It's it's as
Speaker 2: it's as as realistic as it can be without it
Speaker 2: being real.
Speaker 3: Is there a.
Speaker 2: Similar approach to train firefighters to be able to deal
Speaker 2: with that, because you can't perform under pressure if you're
Speaker 2: never under pressure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally agree. I totally agree. And if you are
Speaker 4: just going through the motions. I mean, there's an element
Speaker 4: where you can do that for skills development, right where
Speaker 4: you're learning a skill and you're doing it slow time
Speaker 4: and then you get better at it. But unless you're
Speaker 4: actually testing that skill under pressure, actually, how do you
Speaker 4: know that you're going to be able to use it
Speaker 4: when you need to use it, because by the way,
Speaker 4: that time is going to be under intense pressure, both
Speaker 4: in terms of the pressure of the environment, the moral
Speaker 4: pressure that you're under from people who are watching on
Speaker 4: the people that you might be trying to rescue, and
Speaker 4: experiencing someone else. You know, when someone else is in
Speaker 4: pain or someone else has just experienced the death of
Speaker 4: someone that they love literally next to them in a
Speaker 4: car or in a house that you've managed to rescue
Speaker 4: one from, and someone else, there is nothing that prepares
Speaker 4: you for the emotion that you hear in that person's
Speaker 4: There is nothing that prepares you for that. But you
Speaker 4: have to carry on. You have to be able to
Speaker 4: do what you need to do. And I'm particularly interested
Speaker 4: in non technical skills. In the UK, we term them
Speaker 4: command skills, so your ability to make decisions, your situational awareness,
Speaker 4: your communication skills, your leadership skills, your ability to work
Speaker 4: as a part of a team. You know, all of
Speaker 4: these things are skills. They're not you know, they're not.
Speaker 4: They're not some kind of higher gift that you get
Speaker 4: that you know you're kind of born with. You're either
Speaker 4: a great decision maker or you're not. You've got to
Speaker 4: work at it, and working at it means doing it
Speaker 4: in the kind of environment that you're readily going to
Speaker 4: expect to use it in, and in our world, that
Speaker 4: means that it's going to be emotionally charged, dynamically changing,
Speaker 4: with little or incomplete information, sometimes inaccurate information, and it's
Speaker 4: really tough. And it's a bit like swimming. If you
Speaker 4: wanted to swim the length of the channel or swim
Speaker 4: in the sea, but you only ever trained in an
Speaker 4: Olympic sized swimming pool. You know what, you might be
Speaker 4: the fastest, the best, you might have the greatest endurance
Speaker 4: in a pool, but as soon as you get out
Speaker 4: in the sea, even though it's the same skill, the
Speaker 4: context is so different. The application changes and so you're
Speaker 4: not going to be able to do it in the
Speaker 4: same way. And those kind of non technical skills, the
Speaker 4: development of those are similar. So whatever technical skill you
Speaker 4: might be doing under pressure, it is determined by your
Speaker 4: non technical skills. Your ability to make a judgment on
Speaker 4: when that needs to applied or how that needs to
Speaker 4: be applied, Your ability to communicate your intentions, your ability
Speaker 4: to absorb the information from around you that you need
Speaker 4: to create, your situational awareness, your mental picture, that which
Speaker 4: is the basis of every single decision and every single
Speaker 4: judgment that you make. That is tough, and if you
Speaker 4: want to do that under pressure, we need to recognize
Speaker 4: that stress affects the processing capacity that you have available.
Speaker 4: It reduces it, so you have less processing capacity available
Speaker 4: to absorb that information. You have less processing capacity available
Speaker 4: to make a decision, You have less processing capacity available
Speaker 4: to think about the message that you're trying to communicate
Speaker 4: and whether or not that meaning has landed in the
Speaker 4: way that you intended it to land. These are all
Speaker 4: really important factors for the success of the overarching incident
Speaker 4: because it's complex. So if you want those to work effectively,
Speaker 4: you have to train them under pressure. Is no good
Speaker 4: just doing it in slow time. You have to train
Speaker 4: under pressure, and so making people feel uncomfortable by putting
Speaker 4: if you're doing a command atercise, for example, by throwing
Speaker 4: lots of injects in so you don't have time to
Speaker 4: think about something. You don't have the luxury of being
Speaker 4: able to hold lots of things together in your mind
Speaker 4: at one point. It creates that sense of pressure where
Speaker 4: you then have to prioritize your activity. And actually, even
Speaker 4: if in real time the situation might not be like that,
Speaker 4: for you know, the full duration of the hour that
Speaker 4: your command exercise is actually you're compressing it, and so
Speaker 4: what you get is like really deep practice. If you've
Speaker 4: heard the term deep practice, it's what you're kind of synthesizing,
Speaker 4: and it's about feeling uncomfortable. It's about doing things wrong
Speaker 4: and then repeating them in a different way so that
Speaker 4: you can do it better next time. But creating that
Speaker 4: sense of pressure in whatever way you can do it
Speaker 4: is super important. I'm a really big fan of realistic exercises.
Speaker 4: I know they're super expensive to do. I know it's hard,
Speaker 4: especially when you get places like I mean, in the UK,
Speaker 4: we have the Casualties Union, who are an amazing group
Speaker 4: of people, many of whom are amputees who've been through
Speaker 4: traumatic incidents themselves, who will come in and role play
Speaker 4: that they have incredible makeup on to simulate, to simulate
Speaker 4: traumatic injuries, and they respond in a way that is
Speaker 4: really realistic. And these people are incredible because bear in
Speaker 4: mind they've had their own traumas to come in and
Speaker 4: to be able to do that those experiences to help
Speaker 4: develop the people that they know other people will rely
Speaker 4: on in the future to go and rescue them from
Speaker 4: similar circumstances is a level of courage that to me
Speaker 4: is absolutely god worthy. It is awesome. But that kind
Speaker 4: of realistic opportunity is worth waiting gold, absolutely worth its
Speaker 4: weight in gold. But whatever you're doing when you're training,
Speaker 4: don't just go through the motions, don't just go to
Speaker 4: get through the end of the exercise. Make it count.
Speaker 4: You can never train too hard for a job where
Speaker 4: you know people die.
Speaker 2: I love that, and it's so like I always you know,
Speaker 2: I use this analogy of white belt to black belt,
Speaker 2: and I say, you know, the way that you become
Speaker 2: a black belt in any martial art is you start
Speaker 2: as a white belt, you get punched in the face,
Speaker 2: you get kicked in the deck, you get choked.
Speaker 1: You know, this is what happens.
Speaker 2: You know, you get beaten up, and then eventually you're
Speaker 2: a yellow, then eventually a green, and a brown, and
Speaker 2: a purple and a blue, and then whatever the system is,
Speaker 2: you know, and then one day you wake up. You're
Speaker 2: the same person with the same potential and the same genetics,
Speaker 2: but now you've got new skills, new awareness, new resilience,
Speaker 2: new understanding, new insight, same human but not really. And
Speaker 2: now you've got that you can perform under a level
Speaker 2: of pressure that you couldn't even think about when you're
Speaker 2: a white belt, because you didn't know what you were doing.
Speaker 2: You couldn't be calm, you didn't know how to self regulate.
Speaker 2: And now five six, seven, eight, ten years down the track,
Speaker 2: you've got this high level of ability and skill to
Speaker 2: be able to do this thing that most people can't.
Speaker 2: And it's because you did the work, and it's because
Speaker 2: you weren't fucking around. It's because you had five dislocated
Speaker 2: elbows and these, it's because you've got a thousand black eyes,
Speaker 2: it's because you've got choked fifty times. It's like that's
Speaker 2: you can't get good at the thing that you're not doing.
Speaker 2: You can't master the.
Speaker 1: Thing that you avoid.
Speaker 3: And you can read about it and hear about it
Speaker 3: and watch fucking videos on it and listen to lectures
Speaker 3: about it, but unless you're actually doing it, like unless
Speaker 3: you're actually at the coal face, rolling up your sleeves
Speaker 3: and doing the shit or a version of it, then
Speaker 3: when the storm cometh, Brothers and Sisters, you capitulate. You know,
Speaker 3: We've had lots of people and speaking to that, just
Speaker 3: as an example, we've had people on the show and
Speaker 3: I can't say who, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I can't say who.
Speaker 2: But even something like this where people can obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: they've got their expertise like you, they've got skill, knowledge,
Speaker 2: you know, all of that. They can communicate and sometimes
Speaker 2: they've written a book and you know, some whatever. But
Speaker 2: then you put them on either I used to work
Speaker 2: in radio as well, and so you put them in
Speaker 2: a radio interview or on an interview with this where
Speaker 2: you say, you know, you give them a backstory of
Speaker 2: you know, how many people listen and what we do,
Speaker 2: and and all of a sudden and we're live. That
Speaker 2: person goes from being interesting and funny and articulate too. Yes, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm like, fucking hell, somebody just removed his personality in
Speaker 2: the last thirteen seconds. And it's just it's terrible because
Speaker 2: to them, there's when you say, I used to say
Speaker 2: to people, there's only twenty thousand people, don't you know listening,
Speaker 2: don't worry, And I would say that to fuck around.
Speaker 2: I don't say it anymore, or how I can say
Speaker 2: it to you because you do this all the time.
Speaker 2: But like and then people, especially if you're thinking of
Speaker 2: a stadium of humans or something, but something that they
Speaker 2: do all the time, which is talk and share and educate,
Speaker 2: now you're doing it in a different context and they
Speaker 2: can't string three words together because there's a level, a
Speaker 2: self created level of pressure. Yeah, and maybe I influenced
Speaker 2: that a little bit.
Speaker 4: It's true though, And it's you know, it's really similar
Speaker 4: when you think about things like, you know, even a
Speaker 4: job interview or a presentation. How many times when you've
Speaker 4: got a big presentation, have you kind of practiced that
Speaker 4: in front of a plant pot or in front of
Speaker 4: the dog. Well, guess what, the dog's never going to
Speaker 4: troll you on Twitter.
Speaker 5: It's a safe environment. You know, You've got to do
Speaker 5: it in front of people that make you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: because when you step in to do that presentation or
Speaker 5: that job interview, you're going to.
Speaker 4: Be running on adrenaline. You're going to feel anxious, you're
Speaker 4: going to feel uncomfortable. So you need to know that
Speaker 4: you can do it despite that feeling. You need to
Speaker 4: know that you've practiced it in that kind of envirovement.
Speaker 4: You need to know the places that your head is
Speaker 4: going to go blank, where you're going to stumble, so
Speaker 4: then you can go and focus on those bits and
Speaker 4: make sure you know it better. You know that for me,
Speaker 4: it's a gift. It's an absolute gift to have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to practice something before you go in and before
Speaker 4: you do it, and to develop those skills. And if
Speaker 4: it means, you know, you feel uncomfortable, it means you
Speaker 4: mess something up, or it means you feel a bit silly, well,
Speaker 4: you know what, that's a really small price to pay
Speaker 4: for all of the good stuff that could come out
Speaker 4: of you being successful at this, you know, and in
Speaker 4: my world that means people walk away, they get to
Speaker 4: go back to their families. At the end of the day,
Speaker 4: there's not this great, big void left by someone that's
Speaker 4: no longer walking this planet. What a gift, What a gift.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, and I know you've got
Speaker 2: to go. We'll talk about your book in a moment.
Speaker 2: But a couple of years ago, Sabrina.
Speaker 1: That's actually it was it three years ago, the Crab?
Speaker 2: Yeah, three yeah, So I was you know, I think
Speaker 2: I told you before when it went live. I've been
Speaker 2: training my whole life. I owned gyms all that, so
Speaker 2: go to the gym every day and just left. Shit,
Speaker 2: I'm not very good anymore. I'm old, I'm a bit fucked.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I still go down, you know, sit on
Speaker 2: a dumbbell. But anyway, The Crab my training partner, Mark,
Speaker 2: who I lovingly call the Crab because he moves like
Speaker 2: a crab. He's like a large crustacean with biceps. But anyway,
Speaker 2: so we were training and he did a set of
Speaker 2: chin ups, held his breath the whole time. Sabrina did
Speaker 2: thirty chin ups, not an exaggeration. X pro body built,
Speaker 2: a very strong, very big all of that. Did thirty chins,
Speaker 2: came down and went to his hands and knees, and
Speaker 2: I thought he was having a seizure, and he had
Speaker 2: a cardiac arrest and died in the gym, on the
Speaker 2: gym floor. So he came back to life, I need
Speaker 2: say quickly, but he was dead for seventeen minutes. And
Speaker 2: and talk about you know, people under pressure, I would
Speaker 2: say there was. There's probably twenty people in the gym,
Speaker 2: but in him because there's there's levels to the gym.
Speaker 2: But within a couple of minutes there were thirty or
Speaker 2: forty people in the gym. And so i'd you know,
Speaker 2: his big unit is one hundred kilos, which I don't
Speaker 2: know what that is in stone, seventeen stone maybe, So I,
Speaker 2: you know, I got him on his back, I got
Speaker 2: him into a position where I could work on him,
Speaker 2: and I did that like as soon as I realized
Speaker 2: what had happened, which was quite quickly. So I started
Speaker 2: working on him by myself. Now thirty people were standing
Speaker 2: on the other side of the gym, not one thing
Speaker 2: like looking terrified. Not one person went what can I do? Ye,
Speaker 2: not one person said can I help? And so I
Speaker 2: just looked up and said I need somebody, And they
Speaker 2: all stood there like nobody came, and so here's here's
Speaker 2: my friend on the floor. I'm doing the compressions and
Speaker 2: the breaths. I'm so I'm alternating, and I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm busy.
Speaker 1: I got shipped on and.
Speaker 2: I look up and nobody moved forward. Nobody came. They
Speaker 2: all just stood there looking terrified. And then this one
Speaker 2: bloke kind of looked semi like like he was thinking
Speaker 2: about it. And I said, what's your name? And he
Speaker 2: said his name? And I said, let's just go Steve,
Speaker 2: and I said, Steven, get the fuck over here. He's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. I go get the
Speaker 2: fuck over here. I'll tell you what to do, right
Speaker 2: and that that but that a maze. Well that was messy,
Speaker 2: and that was you know, like a daunting scenario, of course, but.
Speaker 1: I was upon reflection later, I was amazed at how.
Speaker 2: I don't know if nobody knew what to do, but nobody,
Speaker 2: nobody came forward. Like I literally had to swear at
Speaker 2: someone to get someone to help me. And that's, you know,
Speaker 2: because who's standing next to someone when they die. Very
Speaker 2: few people, you know, not in not where we live anyway,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And then so you're right, people just don't know what
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and normally comfortable, competent, you know, pretty adaptable, flexible
Speaker 2: people fucking freeze in certain circumstances. Do you know.
Speaker 4: Well, firstly, I'm really sorry that you had that experience,
Speaker 4: but also you are incredible because you have literally saved
Speaker 4: Mark's life there in that in that scenario. So he's
Speaker 4: alive because of the intervention that you made, and that's
Speaker 4: that's pretty incredible and definitely something worth recognizing. But it's
Speaker 4: it's funny how other people respond in a situation where
Speaker 4: they feel deeply uncomfortable. There's been some really interesting research
Speaker 4: that's looked at how when in an emergency situation, if
Speaker 4: there's somebody that's already intervening, other people will stand by,
Speaker 4: will be less likely to come forward and help because
Speaker 4: they think it's dealt with. And it's really challenging because
Speaker 4: in that kind of circumstance, actually you need all the
Speaker 4: hands that you can get, right, You need that help
Speaker 4: and you need that support, and some of it comes
Speaker 4: from a lack of confidence, I think. And it's interesting,
Speaker 4: you know, because we almost had kind of the opposite
Speaker 4: problem in the fire service. So there was one of
Speaker 4: the things that we introduced when we were doing all
Speaker 4: of the research and the policy changes on the back
Speaker 4: of the research was some work around something that we
Speaker 4: term operational discretion, and that's the flexibility to recognize when
Speaker 4: a policy doesn't apply that you will actually do what
Speaker 4: you think needs to be done, used your professional judgment
Speaker 4: to do whatever you need to do in that circumstance.
Speaker 4: And there were some incidents, some really high profile incidents
Speaker 4: that we had in the UK where people had died
Speaker 4: because people were One of the contributing factors part of me.
Speaker 4: One of the contributing factors was that everybody was so
Speaker 4: focused on sticking to the policy that the policy wouldn't
Speaker 4: have worked for that situation. Sticking to the policy actually
Speaker 4: made the outcome worse. There was one called there was
Speaker 4: one in Gosden Mine where a mine shaft had collapsed
Speaker 4: and a lady had fallen down the mine shaft and
Speaker 4: was trapped down there for a considerable amount of time,
Speaker 4: and one of the incident commanders, the fire commanders, wanted
Speaker 4: to adapt some equipment to be able to get them out,
Speaker 4: and another disagreed because it was outside of policy and
Speaker 4: stopped it all and insisted on waiting for the mine rescue,
Speaker 4: and the woman ended up being trapped down there for
Speaker 4: so long that one of the contributing factors to her
Speaker 4: death was hypothermia. Now it would be wrong to say
Speaker 4: it was solely because of the the delay caused by
Speaker 4: that or sticking rigidly to the policy, but what was
Speaker 4: talked about by the judge afterwards when they were looking
Speaker 4: at her death is that that was one of the
Speaker 4: inflexibility was one of the contributing factors. So it's funny
Speaker 4: because if you were not in a uniform, you'd grab
Speaker 4: whatever you could grab and you would do what you
Speaker 4: could to try to make it work right. But as
Speaker 4: soon as you put up that uniform, you have that
Speaker 4: different responsibility, that different level of accountability, and the judgments
Speaker 4: I think, and you know, the judgment that you would
Speaker 4: have after an event once you're wearing that uniform and
Speaker 4: representing one of the services is far greater than a
Speaker 4: member of the public would have if they were just
Speaker 4: trying to do their best to help out. Of the
Speaker 4: things that we introduced was this concept of operational discretion,
Speaker 4: where if you recognize that adhering strictly to the policy
Speaker 4: either is going to make it worse because that happens sometimes,
Speaker 4: or the policy it's such a novel situation that the
Speaker 4: policy does apply, then it gives that kind of flexibility
Speaker 4: to choose what to do in that circumstance. And we
Speaker 4: did some research on this, and we were looking at
Speaker 4: the impact of stress and uncertainty on decision making when
Speaker 4: applying operational discretion. That was our kind of driver for it,
Speaker 4: and we gave fire commanders two scenarios. One was really
Speaker 4: straightforward runn of the mail. It was a high rise
Speaker 4: fire where they knew what to do, they knew what
Speaker 4: to expect them, was a super superclear policy, no need
Speaker 4: to deviate. And the other one was similar to this.
Speaker 4: It was a mind shaft. It had collapsed a sinkhole, sorry,
Speaker 4: it had collapsed, and there was a group of children
Speaker 4: stuck at the bottom and it was outside of the
Speaker 4: reach of their normal equipment. So you would have to
Speaker 4: use operational discretion. And we took measures of stress as well,
Speaker 4: and rather than just relying on self report, because you
Speaker 4: could ask a firefighter with a mushroom cloud behind them
Speaker 4: how they are and they'd be like, yeah, everything's fine,
Speaker 4: I got this under control. Even if the heart beating
Speaker 4: tens of the dozerts. So we took blood samples so
Speaker 4: that we could measure it was actually a leukocyte response
Speaker 4: rather than a single measure of quarters are. We were
Speaker 4: looking more holistically at a range of measures, because when
Speaker 4: you experience stress, your cells respond differently, and so we
Speaker 4: looked at at the leukocyte response to give us a
Speaker 4: better measure. And what we found is the more uncertain
Speaker 4: the situation, the higher the stress levels. Not surprising there,
Speaker 4: but the more uncertain the situation and the higher the
Speaker 4: stress levels, the more certain people were to reach for
Speaker 4: a set of rules even when they didn't apply. And
Speaker 4: so this was a really interesting one because we all
Speaker 4: do this sometimes when we're making a decision under uncertainty
Speaker 4: or we're not quite sure what to do and it's pressured,
Speaker 4: and we'll reach for something that might feel familiar because
Speaker 4: it gives us that sense of security, but it might
Speaker 4: not actually be the right thing for that set of circumstances.
Speaker 4: So my advice to people, whether they're in the fire
Speaker 4: service or not, is if you are making a decision
Speaker 4: or under the decision under those circumstances and you find
Speaker 4: yourself reaching for something that makes you feel better, or
Speaker 4: something that gives you that sense of comfort or something
Speaker 4: that's familiar to you. Just pause and just double check
Speaker 4: your assumptions to make sure that it's actually delivering the
Speaker 4: outcome that you're hoping it's going to deliver.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense, And I can understand why
Speaker 2: people do that, because they're protecting themselves because if this
Speaker 2: turns out bad, it's not my fault.
Speaker 1: It's the rules.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2: And if I kind of be the rebel and it
Speaker 2: turns out bad, it's my fault, whereas it might have
Speaker 2: been bad anyway.
Speaker 4: You know, it's such a litigious society now as well,
Speaker 4: and you know, you see the way that incidents where
Speaker 4: people we're not automatons in a uniform. We're human beings.
Speaker 4: You know, we're real people at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: And when you see the way that people are judged
Speaker 4: after an event who might have got it wrong, but
Speaker 4: they've gone in genuinely wanting to do their best, you know,
Speaker 4: it could be really difficult then for someone to find
Speaker 4: the courage to take a leap to do the thing
Speaker 4: that they think needs to be done without that security
Speaker 4: of a set of rules to wrap around them. Get it.
Speaker 2: Now. I know you don't have any spare time because
Speaker 2: you're an author and you're a mum and you're a
Speaker 2: dog mum, and you're a wife, and you're a bloody
Speaker 2: superstar at fifty things, and you're a researcher and you're
Speaker 2: a fire fighter and you've got a thousand test subjects
Speaker 2: whenever you want them. But you definitely should have your
Speaker 2: own podcast.
Speaker 1: Ah, you'd be so good.
Speaker 2: Like you're such a brilliant communicator and storyteller, and you
Speaker 2: you're such a good science communicator too, because you explain
Speaker 2: complicated stuff in an uncomplicated way or what can be
Speaker 2: complicated stuff.
Speaker 1: Because we're a largely.
Speaker 2: Non academic you know, we've got a percentage of academics
Speaker 2: that listen, but you know it's not an academic show
Speaker 2: per se. And so my constant, or my not every episode,
Speaker 2: but a lot of episodes, I'm trying to figure out,
Speaker 2: how do we say this, and how do we navigate
Speaker 2: this conversation and make it you know, interesting, but also
Speaker 2: really relevant and unders stable so people can do something
Speaker 2: with it. And you just do that automatically. It's a
Speaker 2: real gift and a real skill. So well done.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Tell me about before we go, tell me about the book.
Speaker 2: So your book is called The Heat of the Moment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right to tell us about that, did you?
Speaker 1: Is that your one and only book?
Speaker 4: I've got another one coming out in March. But the
Speaker 4: Heat of the Moment I wanted to take something that
Speaker 4: would talk about the way that we make decisions under pressure,
Speaker 4: because it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you know,
Speaker 4: our brains are going to work in a similar way.
Speaker 4: So I took everything that we'd learned from more than
Speaker 4: twenty years of firefighting and more than a decade of
Speaker 4: research about how we make decisions in the heat of
Speaker 4: the moment, when we're experiencing pressure, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: talk about it in a way that could be then
Speaker 4: applied to everyday life. So each chapter talks about a
Speaker 4: specific aspect of decision making with it gut decision making,
Speaker 4: whether it's you know, the way that you develop your
Speaker 4: situational awareness, whether it's the way that you communicate all
Speaker 4: of these concepts. And it opens with an incident that
Speaker 4: I've been to and so that you can see that
Speaker 4: part of that aspect of how your brain is working
Speaker 4: actually kind of at a real life incident in reality,
Speaker 4: and then I unpick the research that's relevant to it,
Speaker 4: and then I kind of talk about how it applies
Speaker 4: to everyday life as well. So, yeah, that was a
Speaker 4: real That was a real labor of love to write.
Speaker 4: It was a real joy. Actually, it's just nice to
Speaker 4: be able to share what we've done with the broad
Speaker 4: or audience because I think, you know, there are some
Speaker 4: really important lessons that we've learned in the fire service,
Speaker 4: and they've been learned through a lot of pain, as
Speaker 4: I described earlier on. And so isn't it great that
Speaker 4: you can share that with as many people as possible
Speaker 4: and not just limit it to those that were the
Speaker 4: same color perform as.
Speaker 2: You do you think that being able to self rid
Speaker 2: in the middle of the mayhem and you know, make
Speaker 2: decisions and stay relatively calm. Do you think that we
Speaker 2: spoke about it a little bit before, but do you
Speaker 2: think that is more innate? Like I feel like there
Speaker 2: are people that are just better than that. And also
Speaker 2: my part B of that question is are people more
Speaker 2: anxious now than.
Speaker 1: Thirty years ago? Or we just more aware of anxiety?
Speaker 4: Sabrina, Really good question. I think that it's I think
Speaker 4: that it's a mixture of nature and nurture every every
Speaker 4: single time. And I think that it can be developed
Speaker 4: as well of what you expose yourself to and how
Speaker 4: you respond to that exposure and how willing you are
Speaker 4: to put yourself in those uncomfortable situations like we talked about.
Speaker 4: And the anxiety question is a really good one. I
Speaker 4: think that I don't think people are more anxious than
Speaker 4: they are today than they were before. I think they
Speaker 4: just weren't allowed to show it before because of the
Speaker 4: societal pressures that people were experiencing. I think the world
Speaker 4: was super different, wasn't it. So I think there's that element.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are things that make us feel anxious
Speaker 4: today that weren't around before. Exposure or social media, I
Speaker 4: think is a key one. I mean, I can have
Speaker 4: firefighters at a job and the job will be uploaded
Speaker 4: onto YouTube by someone with their camera phone before they've
Speaker 4: even packed up and left the scene. You know, so
Speaker 4: previously it would never be like that. You never had
Speaker 4: to kind of worry about those kind of things. So
Speaker 4: I think my point is if someone does make a mistake,
Speaker 4: it's usually recorded and there forever and You've seen the
Speaker 4: way that people respond publicly to people who've made mistakes,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of huge debate, isn't there around cancel
Speaker 4: culture and things like that? So I think there is.
Speaker 4: I think whilst judgments would have been the same across
Speaker 4: the ages, I think that they are a lot more
Speaker 4: public now than they perhaps were previously. So it's really difficult,
Speaker 4: isn't it to compare times to say whether people were
Speaker 4: more anxious thirty years ago or whether they're more anxious today,
Speaker 4: because I think the context is so different that it's
Speaker 4: really tricky to kind of weigh everything up and go
Speaker 4: one or the other. But I certainly think that there
Speaker 4: are things today that can make you feel anxious that
Speaker 4: you didn't have thirty years ago. I think we have
Speaker 4: the luxury today of being able to be really open
Speaker 4: about being anxious, which means you can deal with it
Speaker 4: better than you might have been able to do thirty
Speaker 4: years ago. So there's definitely a silver lining there.
Speaker 2: All Right, We've got to go, because I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm dragging you you on, but I'm so interested in
Speaker 2: your stuff. I want to ask you two quick questions
Speaker 2: and I'm promise we'll go. So Number one is, so
Speaker 2: you're all about excellence, high performance, performing under pressure, you know,
Speaker 2: being the best you can be. And are there any
Speaker 2: other fire serve around the world that you look at
Speaker 2: in any country or it might just anywhere in the
Speaker 2: world where you go, they're.
Speaker 1: The best, They are amazing for these reasons.
Speaker 4: Oh, I think that's a great question. And I think
Speaker 4: there are different fire services that are really excellent at
Speaker 4: different things. And sometimes you have the persona of the
Speaker 4: biggest and the best, and you hear about, you know,
Speaker 4: the great ones around the world and things I won't
Speaker 4: mention any names, but when you actually scratch the surface,
Speaker 4: they don't always turn out to be as shiny as
Speaker 4: you might have thought they were outside. So I think
Speaker 4: there's real value if you are looking for the best,
Speaker 4: in looking really specifically at what you want to see
Speaker 4: the best of and not stopping until you've turned over
Speaker 4: for all the stones that you can to find it,
Speaker 4: because the places that you might find it might just
Speaker 4: surprise you.
Speaker 2: And do you do you ever look across the pond
Speaker 2: with any curiosity on our Australian summers with the bloody
Speaker 2: bushfires that we we seem to be having more and
Speaker 2: more of that have been devastating in the last few
Speaker 2: years Oiver here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they have been utterly devastating, and your first responders
Speaker 4: I have a huge amount of admiration for the way
Speaker 4: that they've tackled them, because those kind of incidents are relentless.
Speaker 4: They're not the kind of incidence that you go to
Speaker 4: and a couple of hours later you're back at the
Speaker 4: station and its job and not you know, it's all finished.
Speaker 4: Is day after day, week after week with those kind
Speaker 4: of incidents, and they are exhausting. So your first responders,
Speaker 4: I have to say, I think are exemplary in the
Speaker 4: way that they have They've dealt with that and shown
Speaker 4: incredible resilience and courage in the face of doing so,
Speaker 4: as have been your communities actually who I've seen a
Speaker 4: huge amount of resilience from having gone through those incidents
Speaker 4: and they are utterly devastating. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that we are thinking about more and more now as
Speaker 4: fire services is the impact of climate change on weather
Speaker 4: related incidents. You know, we've been having some awful wildfires
Speaker 4: here in the UK, not like not to the extent
Speaker 4: that you do in Australia, because our demography is very different,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't have the same kind of forested
Speaker 4: areas that you do there and the expanse that you
Speaker 4: do there, but they have been devastating for the wildlife
Speaker 4: that we do have here, and they're happening more and
Speaker 4: more regularly. Same with flooding. So actually thinking about what
Speaker 4: we can do to prevent those happening in the first place,
Speaker 4: to really get ahead of that is something that's super
Speaker 4: important to us, and we're doing a lot of work
Speaker 4: at the moment in my own fire department looking at
Speaker 4: how we can kind of improve the work that we
Speaker 4: do in rural communities to stop those kind of incidents
Speaker 4: happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Perfect, well, Sabrina, you're fascinating, you're Grey communicator. We appreciate
Speaker 2: you having a chat with us on the You project.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and I want you to come back when
Speaker 2: your new books out so we can talk about that
Speaker 2: and stell lots of books for you.
Speaker 4: Is that all right, my pleasure? It would be great,
Speaker 4: And it's been an absolute joy to speak to you today,
Speaker 4: So thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure, Melissa, do you like Sabrina.
Speaker 4: Oh, of course, thank you so much for spending all
Speaker 4: this time with us.
Speaker 3: What a privilege to listen to your story.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I've just been sitting here and all, so
Speaker 4: thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Are you crushing hard just a little bit?
Speaker 2: And I can tell. I can tell because you get
Speaker 2: that goofy. I love her look on your face. Hey, Sabrina,
Speaker 2: stay there. We'll say goodbye off air, but thank you
Speaker 2: so much, and thanks everyone.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you.