Article 6 - Situational Awareness and Working with Security Teams

Situational awareness is a skill. It improves with instruction and daily practice.

Reading an environment is not paranoia. It is professional observation. Leaders who notice baselines and read changes make better decisions under stress and integrate more effectively with protection teams when conditions shift.

We Are Red Teaming: Complacency in everyday settings and unclear roles when a security team must act under pressure is a recipe for suboptimal outcomes.

Mitigation Actions:
·       Routine leads to complacency.
·       Awareness collapses when leaders become complacent and rely on intuition instead of practiced observation. Crisis becomes chaos if there are no clearly defined roles when working with a protection team, and everyone starts to improvise.
·       Professional training: attend situational awareness and/or executive protection training for principals.
·       Daily habits: identify exit pathways (aircraft/hotels/vessels, lighting, choke points, and unusual behavior/environmental changes that signal a possible problem ahead.
·       Family preparedness: teach simple observation and reporting skills to household members. It’s an easy force multiplier.
·       Working with security teams: train so everyone understands their roles when an incident escalates. Know how to move when the team must engage, how to find cover versus concealment, and communicate cues under stress.

Calm observation drives calm action. What habits do you practice every day to keep awareness sharp?