The movie crisis leader shouts orders, pounds the table and makes brilliant lone decisions. A real command point is almost the perfect opposite: quiet talk, maps, logging and coffee. And that is exactly why it works.

Operational command in the volunteer field has taught me more about leadership than any course in working life — because there, the fundamentals of leading are visible at their barest. Incomplete information, time pressure, people you’ve never met, and a task whose outcome means everything to someone.

The most important tool at a command point is a calm voice.

Situational awareness before decisions

The core of operational command is situational awareness: a shared, spoken-aloud and visibly written-down understanding of what we know, what we don’t know, and what is under way. Most bad decisions are born not of bad judgment but of decision-makers holding different pictures of the situation. That is why everything gets logged at the command point: when a patrol left, what was found in an area, what the authority last said. Logging feels like bureaucracy right up until someone asks “what do we know for certain” — and the answer is found in seconds.

The other core skill is deciding on incomplete information. Perfect information never arrives, and waiting is also a decision — often the worst one. A good commander makes the best possible call with what is known now, says out loud what assumptions it rests on, and corrects as soon as the information improves. That is not uncertainty — it is professionalism.

A leader also leads fatigue

And then the side too little talked about: from the command point you also lead exhaustion. An eager volunteer does not notice when cold, wet and worry have eaten their capacity — noticing it is the leader’s job. Breaks, clothing, food and the timing of sending people home are safety decisions just as much as drawing a search area is. The same applies in the office: in deadline week, a manager’s most important observation is not the progress chart but who hasn’t left work on time in a long while.

As this is published, a large part of our network is packing for a national volunteer weekend gathering — a fitting reminder that leadership, too, is a skill practised together. In September I tie the threads together: volunteer work is the backbone of comprehensive security — including for you, who have never attended a single course.