4 Ways That You Can Improve Your Situational Intelligence

Before entering the vast realm of technology, I had the blessing of serving my community as a firefighter. When I think back to that time, I cannot help but be reminded of all the life skills I developed and how I have subliminally applied those traits to my tech career. One of the biggest skills I learned was situational awareness. In firefighting, situational awareness is critical to ensuring that you and your team go home safely, and even small oversights can have dire effects. I was blessed to work under a highly intelligent captain who consistently stressed the importance of situational awareness and would constantly have drills to reinforce the concepts in our heads.

In firefighting, there is a myriad of tasks that must be performed in order to successfully mitigate an emergency. The crew of the first truck to arrive on the scene of a fire must-do tasks like assessing the severity of the situation, getting water to the fire, and forcing entry into the structure. Obviously, speed is critical when responding to a fire, so there isn’t time for the captain to delegate these tasks on the scene. Instead, each firefighter must have the situational intelligence to grasp which task they should take. A great example of this happened early in my career when my crew responded to a major warehouse fire. On that particular day, my default role was to…