Military lessons shaping leadership in the emergency services

Fin Monahan, Chief Fire Officer of South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, and Dr Claire Park, a HEMS consultant with London Air Ambulance, have a great deal of experience of leading under pressure. Both spent decades in the military before moving into civilian emergency services, and their conversation with me at The Emergency Services Show revealed how much those experiences continue to shape the way they lead, train, and build culture.

Fin retired from the Royal Air Force as an Air Vice Marshal after 37 years, while Claire served 20 years before moving into critical care and air ambulance work, remaining as a reservist. For both, the transition to civilian services was smoother than expected. “We’ve got a hierarchical structure, but with people who are empowered at the most junior levels to deliver out on the fire ground and out on the incident ground, and that is very similar, actually, to the way you run an Air Force,” Fin explained.

The similarities were clear for Claire too, though the environment is different. Small, high-performing HEMS teams operate in fast-moving, unpredictable conditions. “Small teams are very much built on respect and trust and experience, and it’s less about didactic leadership and more about working as a team on an equal level with with an open, honest debrief sort of culture,” she said. That trust is essential when delivering critical care or coordinating multiple services.

Culture came up repeatedly. Fin made it clear that it’s more than just the behaviours and protocols, though those are important too. “Culture spans a variety of things. It’s your uniforms, it’s your flags, it’s your traditions, it’s the way you socialise, it’s your slang, it’s the humour that you have,” he said. Claire echoed the sentiment: “It’s not just about what happens on scene, it’s about your interactions with each other as a team, and how that makes everyone feel.” Both stressed that a strong, supportive culture allows teams to function under pressure while keeping staff and the public safe.

A principle they both draw from military experience is mission command: setting a clear objective while leaving the team to decide how to achieve it. “In the ambulance service in particular, it’s very much commanded from the control room. And that can’t work, because the people have the incident evolving in front of them. They really need that ability to just identify what we’ve got to achieve, and make it happen, however they can make it happen,” Claire said. In complex, multi-agency incidents, this approach is important.

Training and exercises translate military principles directly to civilian emergency work. Fin recently completed a strategic leadership course focused on large-scale incidents, while Claire highlighted the ten-second triage system she was involved in developing after the Manchester Arena bombing. “The idea was to give someone, any one of us walking into that scenario and being completely overwhelmed, a flow chart to show them where to start,” she said.

Communication is equally central. Fin has established a direct line for staff to raise concerns or feedback. “I was maxed out with these to begin with, but now they’ve tailed off quite nicely, so that I only get the occasional one. I don’t know if that means we’re working but certainly it’s a statistic that we’re that we’re looking at,” he shared. Claire noted that feedback only matters if it leads to action: “People feel able to speak up and say what they think, if you’ve got the right people willing to listen.”

“It’s all about humility, and creating an environment within your organisation such that people are prepared to say, ‘I got that wrong’, and the idea of that is that you’ll do it better next time.”

Fin Monahan

What I learned was that for Fin and Claire, leadership is less about grand gestures and more about understanding the people around you and the environment they’re working in as well as creating the conditions for teams to perform under pressure, knowing when to step in and when to let others take the lead. These principles guide every decision, from routine operations to high-stakes incidents.

Listen to the full conversation below.

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