Beyond Command and Control: Conceptualising Leadership Along the “trust Investment” and “decision Interaction Style” Spectra
Tracks
Prince Room
| Monday, July 14, 2025 |
| 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM |
Overview
Rev Dr Mark Layson, Charles Sturt University
Details
Key Presentation Learnings:
1. Many active citizens don’t want to join or create another group. They simply want to be supported to be active community connectors.
2. Invest in community at a neighbourhood level, based on where the community is at in terms of disaster phases.
3. Differentiate and distinguish between a coordination approach, which is helpful at organisational levels - and a networking approach (supporting community connectors) at street level. The latter is more organic.
Speaker
Rev Dr Mark Layson
Adjunct Research Fellow
Charles Sturt University
Beyond Command and Control: Conceptualising leadership along the “trust investment” and “decision interaction style” spectra.
Abstract
Command and Control (CC) leadership is widely used to beneficial effect in high-risk or urgent disaster and emergency operations. CC leadership is highly directive and hierarchical in nature and can be highly effective in high stress situations. In many emergency response organisations CC often becomes the default leadership style in business as usual and nonemergency situations. However, the unexamined and perpetual use of CC leadership in all worker interactions can become a workplace psychosocial hazard for disaster and emergency workers. Workplace health and safety regulations require organisations to mitigate the risk of unsupportive or overly directive leadership. Additionally, the use of directive and hierarchical leadership can negatively impact staff retention, cultures of safety, and staff wellbeing.
Instead of attempting to determine the correct occasions to use CC leadership, this presentation re-constructs the way leadership is understood and practiced as a move away from an emphasis on the use the CC model. The workshop conceptualises good emergency and disaster leadership as being adaptive to the work cycle of preparation, planning, response, and recovery. Further, we will conceptualise good leadership as recognising the reality of leading/following exists along two axes – “trust investment” and “decision interaction style”. Understanding and deploying strategies that recognise when and how these axes are being utilised will be make leaders more sensitive to operational demands, the needs of personnel, and mitigate the psychosocial risks associated with poor leadership.
Workshop participants will develop strategies to work along the “trust investment” axis in leader-follower interactions to maintain sufficient mutual trust. Further, participants will examine how trust activities work with different leader/follower interaction styles that include collaboration, consultation and influence. As a result participants will be empowered to provide safer and more productive workplace environments for staff and volunteers.
Instead of attempting to determine the correct occasions to use CC leadership, this presentation re-constructs the way leadership is understood and practiced as a move away from an emphasis on the use the CC model. The workshop conceptualises good emergency and disaster leadership as being adaptive to the work cycle of preparation, planning, response, and recovery. Further, we will conceptualise good leadership as recognising the reality of leading/following exists along two axes – “trust investment” and “decision interaction style”. Understanding and deploying strategies that recognise when and how these axes are being utilised will be make leaders more sensitive to operational demands, the needs of personnel, and mitigate the psychosocial risks associated with poor leadership.
Workshop participants will develop strategies to work along the “trust investment” axis in leader-follower interactions to maintain sufficient mutual trust. Further, participants will examine how trust activities work with different leader/follower interaction styles that include collaboration, consultation and influence. As a result participants will be empowered to provide safer and more productive workplace environments for staff and volunteers.
Biography
Mark is a former police officer and firefighter, who has been serving as an ambulance chaplain providing staff support since 2012. He is the Director of the NSW/ACT Disaster Recovery Chaplaincy Network. His interdisciplinary PhD explored moral injury in Australian first responders. He developed a holistic bio-psycho-social-spiritual framework for changing organisational culture and leadership practices in a way that prevent poor staff outcomes. The research applied findings at the intersection of workplace psychosocial risk mitigation, staff wellbeing, and spirituality. His lived experience of frontline trauma work, emergency management, and research in moral frameworks inform his ongoing research and program development. Mark is a Certified as an Emergency Service Manager with the Australasian Institute of Emergency Services and speaks regularly at conferences across Australia and internationally. In his spare time Mark enjoys triathlon, exploring the moral ambiguities of parenting young adults and middle-aged water polo violence.
