When Michelle Wigmore received a call ordering her elite Wild Mountain firefighting unit to deploy by sunrise to the oil boom town of Fort McMurray, this was hardly the Alberta unit's first foray into danger. But the 16 wildfires that comprised the fire that came to be known as “The Beast” created a multi-threat environmental disaster for Canada, burning out of control for six weeks in 2016. Lethal enough was the usual heat, oxygen, and fuel, with higher than normal temperatures, wind, and forests surrounding the “wild-urban interface.”

Even worse, as the fires raced northward, was an alarming new risk: If firefighters could not hold the line, the fires would reach Alberta's tar sands. Though the sands themselves are not flammable, the vapors and storage tanks of volatile chemicals surrounding them are highly combustible and would be hard to extinguish. As the scale of the disaster became clear, firefighters looked to experienced leaders like Wigmore to lead them through the job alive. She was known for demonstrating mastery under pressure, making wise decisions, and leading from a forward position by doing the heavy lifting.

Based on Wigmore's reputation, firefighter Kristian Toivonen left a position leading another crew to be Wigmore's subleader.

Arriving at Fort McMurray, the 20-person unit and their leader's ability to coordinate, communicate, and keep cool were immediately put to the test as firefighters battled flames reaching a thousand degrees Celsius. In one of their first days deployed, the firefighters worked 24 hours straight in an attempt to keep the fire from reaching the airport. The firefighters kept losing, but Wigmore also kept them alive. As Branden Aasman, another firefighter on the team, described it, “She just makes sure that safety is No. 1, and that we're always in a good place. Our safety is never compromised with her.”

As firefighters can attest, learning happens in real time, and wise leadership enables trust and contributes to the ability of an organization to work effectively. In this section, we turn to making sense in the moment and applying the lessons of experience, and we offer a research-tested recipe for engaging your leadership style.

Chapter 7 examines how we make sense of experience in the moment through a mindset of adventure. We focus on the skills of constant questioning and adjusting. Chapter 8 walks us through how we can apply lessons (a process that constitutes true learning) through flexible thinking across situational contexts, intuitively finding “Aha!” moments via analogies and connections.

Chapters 9 through 13 are step-by-step resources for developing and applying leadership skills in the present: How we learn and practice active listening, how we gather and deliver real-time feedback, how we understand the role identity plays in the workplace (both ours and others), and how we develop, demonstrate, and leverage political savvy to accomplish personal and organization goals without compromising our integrity.