OK, I admit it. I've been at the Tom Peters' books again.

For those that don't know me I have this habit of reading stuff; any stuff. And I have picked up this habit of reading Tom Peters' books.

Now I am not and never will be a businessman. I do not have the skills (and probably more importantly the personality) to make money in business. But I often find little nuggets of great stuff in all these different book subjects. And sometimes, like today, it feeds an idea...

In his book Peters was speaking to the importance of personality of leaders and how building friendships often overcomes the political struggles of various business issues. (Agree to disagree as it were because we all get along...)

And I thought, political issues? Do we have those in SAR? Should we stop them, or should we build friendships that allow us to disagree and still get on?

I have a background in Emergency Planning, and one thing I often talk at length on is joint exercises for major incident planning. The plan often goes out of the window very early in the incident, but the "friendships" built up during joint exercises and the knowledge and experience of working together means that the incident is resolved effectively. If you don't believe me read a few post-incident reports. I guarantee that you will find numerous references to it!

Those working in the area of missing person search will already understand some of this. Here in the UK the relationship between the Police Search Advisor (PolSA) and the SAR volunteers is the most important factor in the effective response to a missing person incident. Sad but true, if the PolSA/Volunteer relationship isn't good, the SAR team will be called late, if at all and will be given specific instructions that might not be the most effective search model but they cannot give their input and so on. If the relationship is good ... well the response is good and the search is good and everything is rosy... well you get the idea.

I'm lead to believe that this is similar around the world too.

And then we get on to multi-agency incidents. Again, good relationship, good search; not so good relationship - lots of issues, search effectiveness goes down.

So here is the challenge for each and every one of you.

I am lucky. In the role I have I get to chat to people from every SAR discipline there is, and with people from all around the world. I feel very lucky but likewise I've had to work hard to build these relationships - especially considering I'm not the best people-person there is. Now it's your turn.

The challenge...

Step One. Befriend; speak to or e-mail, someone from a different SAR discipline who you might work with in your area. Someone from the local dog team? Coastguard? Police or law enforcement?

Talk about your different roles, try to understand their viewpoint. Then talk about social things, have a drink together...

Step Two. Befriend; speak to or e-mail, someone from another part of the country. In your own SAR discipline and in different SAR disciplines...

Step Three. Befriend; speak to or e-mail, someone from a different country involved in SAR.

How do you go about doing this? (It's ok - I know you got into SAR to help make friends...)

Why not use our SAR forums? Leave a comment below...

Or why not join our Facebook group and meet SAR people there?

Another Facebook group is the "Can we reach 10,000 Search and Rescue Responders?". Ask someone new to be your "friend" and point them in the direction of this article.

And let us know how you get on. I'll see if I can get some SARworld stickers or something for completing the challenge...