CERT Training

General Stanley McChrystal's book "Team of Teams" sets new rules of engagement for a complex world. McChrystal, a retired US Army General, shares a bold argument that leaders can help teams become greater than the sum of their parts. This indispensable guide to organizational change, affirms what Bridges of Love is hoping to accomplish through building teams trained in Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) instruction. Great Teams consist of individuals who have learned to trust each other and over time they discover each other's strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to respond as a coordinated whole when disaster strikes. Teams who members know one another deeply perform better!

Not only do we need to build trust within a team structure, but that same relationship building across the sectors, acknowledging and accepting CERTs into the emergency structure, civil society members who have gained basic emergency skills and knowledge (CERT). McChrystal acknowledges a lattice of trusting relationships may seem intuitive to anyone who has been on a team, but it runs against the grain of reductionist management; where in a command, the leader breaks endeavors down into separate tasks and hands them out. The recipients of instructions do not need to know their counterparts, they only need to listen to their boss. In a command, the connections that matter are vertical ties; team building, on the other hand, is all about horizontal connectivity.

For more information on Bridges of Love's project, "The Power of Civil Society, Moving at the Speed of Trust" please visit www.bridgesoflove.net