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Engagement

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hose reducedI was going through back issues of T+D Magazine and came upon an article by Paula Ketter, “What’s The Big Deal (About Employee Engagement)” .  In it, Ketter states: “Engagement is all about creating a culture where people do not feel misused, overused, underused, or abused”.  That’s a pretty tall order for the cultures of some organizations, it seems. Doesn’t  it seem like there’s a always a certain amount of frustration from people in the fire service regarding their own organization and how their department meets one of these criteria? It’s always a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, but when you work around agencies other than your own for any period of time, you find they have their downsides as well.

Ketter explains that engagement can be directly related to individual, group, and organizational performance.   We as leaders are challenged constantly to improve our service in regard to productivity, retention, turnover, customer service, and loyalty.  Maybe it’s time we paid more attention to how we can motivate our personnel and get them passionate about their jobs, to the point where they feel the organization values their participation.

People become dissatisfied with their current situation (job, home life, friends, etc.) when they feel like they meet those descriptors (misused, overused, underused, or abused).  Suffice it to say, people who feel like the leadership of their organization doesn’t respect or value them are probably experiencing the same situation as someone contemplating a divorce.  If some of your personnel feel like they are in one of these dysfunctional situations, they may be inclined to make that leap away from the organization.  In a time where people are trying to keep their jobs, you’d think that it would be easy to keep personnel. I’d suggest to you otherwise, that especially in this economy, since the disengaged people won’t leave, they’ll just continue to stay.  When the situation becomes toxic enough, they’ll also poison others as well.

If you are a volunteer, you’ve been trying to recruit and retain personnel for the last decade.  It’s even more important for the volunteer fire service to engage your people (or perspective members) because really, that positive environment is the only real compensation they’re getting anyway.  Since there is no real financial loss to these people for leaving, within a period of their unhappiness with the situation, they’ll find something out there that is more rewarding to them in one way or another.

Those of us who still have employment in this economy I’m sure are grateful we still have jobs and don’t need to be reminded about how lucky we are.  If the culture was bad to begin with and even now, continues to be intolerable, “Be glad you are still here”, isn’t what we want to hear and inevitably, the result is going to be disengaged personnel.  Regardless of what anyone thinks, individuals will always have options.  They may not be pleasant options, but you do have them, just the same.  The situation that becomes a problem though, is that when the heat gets so high that those less-pleasant options look more and more palatable, you will see turnover.  That turnover could very well be catastrophic turnover, especially if the people you lose are key players.  Once one person makes the leap, they give “permission” to others to make that leap.  As a leader, we really need to understand that if people are willing to make major changes in their life to get away from our team, there is likely a bigger problem than what lies on the surface, especially if we start seeing the numbers multiplying.

Part of the challenge of engagement is insuring that work is rewarding and fulfilling.  If all we are doing is punching a clock twice a day and our existence can’t be seen as contributing to society, we become disinterested and begin to feel like we have no value to others.  Furthermore, if we are banking on transactional leadership to sustain any hope of keeping the best people around, I suggest to you that at some point, it won’t be about the reward if they are that miserable.  When individuals feel like they are valued, they will do anything for you.  When individuals feel like they are valued, they will be reluctant to leave, even when better offers come around (it’s no guarantee they’ll stay, but they’ll be more apt to stay at least).

During the time I worked for one fire department, I used to hear some employees complain about the organization and the leadership regularly.  Yet when that Chief retired, those same individuals could be regularly referring to the “good old days” and how the previous Chief’s administration “treated us like family”.  While I wasn’t unhappy at that organization in either administration, I did observe that there wasn’t as much of the camraderie and friendship as had been in the past, but in retrospect, how much of that was now that we were a much larger department and while much of the leadership of the first administration was still there, they had to spread their “love” around to six stations now instead of two?  Of course there was resentment- the employees no longer felt like they had value.  For all those years of constant reinforcement, now they had to share it with even more “siblings”.  I think the biggest part of that feeling came from the employees getting less and less strokes and less and less positive reinforcement.  Individuals began to feel as if their work was not essential.  Furthermore, when people don’t live in the community in which they work, they can’t see the tangible results of their efforts, and likewise begin to experience a disconnect with their contributions.

Good leaders will add heat to the fire to motivate and challenge their personnel, while reinforcing their values and showing them that their efforts do matter.  The biggest part of creating an effective team is getting members to feel like they are part of a team.  If being part of an organization has no meaning to them, don’t be surprised if they are less engaged and subsequently less productive and passionate about their jobs.  To get people to buy into the culture, you have to be engaged yourself and show them that you value the positive environment, and instead of losing people, you give them permission to join you to achieve success.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 23, 2009 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , ,

Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative and Exclamatory

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I was helping my oldest daughter with her English homework and we were having a discussion of the four kinds of sentences: declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamatory.  In light of all of the rhetoric lately on a few items, (you know, the Chester Flag Incident, the DCFEMS Live Burn Incident, etc.- and it is just by sheer coincidence each of these are on STATter911, okay Dave?) it seems that maybe we need a little lesson in the different types of sentences in order to help everyone through these crises.

As a little refresher for some of us, here is what I’m talking about:

1. Declarative sentences make a statement.  They end in a period.

2. Imperative sentences can end in a period or in an exclamation point.

3. Interrogative sentences end in a question mark.

4. Exclamatory sentences end in an exclamation point, or for some of you out there, ALL CAPS.

Now understand, these are pretty general.  There are always exceptions to rules (like my sarcastically phrased interrogative statement that is actually an imperative statement; Standing in front of an obviously open compartment door while the driver is not paying attention to the fact that he has left the compartment door open, saying, “You did remember to shut that door, didn’t you?”).

Now for the most part, we here at FHZ like to use plenty of the interrogative when discussing items with you all.  I am really not in any position to discuss things with you declaratively, because I am not an expert on anything.  I do, however, have a lot of experience, so I like to use the Socratic method of teaching, that is, to throw out open questions to you like softballs and let you think about them as you slam them into the outfield.  Very rarely will you see me word anything in the exclamatory.  I’m an old-school kind of officer; I like for you to realize I am yelling at you without necessarily having to raise my voice (although from my earlier post about yelling, I’m sure you understand that this isn’t feasible all the time).  When writing though, I consider myself a master of the deftly-worded semi-sarcastic statement that makes you read it, then go back again and say, “I wonder if he’s calling me an idiot?”

Think of it as a little verbal Aikido.  If you know anything about the art of Aikido, you know that the underlying concept is to use the attacker’s momentum and redirect it, while also having deeper concern for the well-being of the attacker.  Most of the time when someone is being nasty, I really don’t wish you bad, I just wish you’d go away.  And while you’re at it, take this broken humerus as a reminder of this lesson.

But one thing I really can’t stomach is a bully, and for some reason, the internet brings them out of the closet in droves.  Honestly, to me, I think it has been said repeatedly (and I am in full agreement) that the relative anonymity of the internet gives some of these trolls courage.  It’s really the same way with society in general.  It’s when you know these people, I mean really know them, like they are your neighbor, or your co-worker, when you find a lot of that “courage” goes out the window.  Just like your basic road rage; while we are all probably tempted to flip off that terrible driver, it’s a whole different ballgame if you see him four pews over from your family in church every Sunday.

These bullies like to speak in the declarative and the imperative and often in the exclamatory, when really, they should be listening and speaking in the interrogative language, especially when we find out the “resident expert” has been on the job for three and a half years and has run a hundred calls in that time.  When someone like me, who has plenty of cred to back up anything I would like to proclaim in this business, says to you, “I’d like to hear what YOU think about it”, maybe some of you blue-light bandits or red-light raiders, or whatever you call your resident whacker, should take that as a hint that even with thirty years on the job, I’m still learning, and I take pride in saying that I can learn from anyone and on any day (sometimes its what NOT to do, but you see my point).  And it’s not a vollie thing or a career thing, it’s a “professional” thing.  I know plenty of vollies that can eat the career guys up on a fireground, but I know of plenty of vollies who like to talk a good game but can’t back it up when the excrement is flying, if you know what I mean.

When everyone in our business starts realizing that they don’t have all the answers, maybe then we’ll be a little more civil to one another and stop pontificating like some blowhard hypocrite politician or preacher, not that there are any of those out there.  But until then, plan on more of the same every year around the fire service, where something blows up and forty guys and gals sit around Monday Morning Quarterbacking it, not ever having actually faced that situation themselves.  And in the event that the day comes, those same trolls will probably be standing out by the engine with a wet spot in their bunkers, watching the rest of us doing our thing.

We need a little more understanding, not just in our business, but in society.  I’m one of the worst cynics there are out there, but I’m trying, I mean, I’m really TRYING to give people the benefit of the doubt, and some of these trolls just make it damned difficult.

Let’s just try to make one of those buddy pacts; like if I find myself getting ready to flame someone, I can call on you and you’ll talk me out of it, and vice-versa (“Hi, I’m Mick, and I’m a cynic.  I’ve gone 45 minutes without swearing under my breath and calling someone a total idiot.”).

It’s time we work together in our industry and work harder to educate everyone, not just in the basics of firefighting or rescue or EMS, or even in incident command, or anything fancy like that.  Just educate everyone in being better “brothers” and better co-workers and asking more questions and less telling people what to do or how they should think.  When you have unbelievable access to authors and bloggers like the ones here in FireEMSblogs.com and all over the internet (and in your library, etc.), why not take advantage of it?  There’s a lot to be gained from looking at different approaches to the same problems and learning if there is something we have in common, rather than shooting each other when things go wrong.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 20, 2009 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Qualities of a Leader

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Fire Critic this morning posted on top ten desired qualities of officers.   It links a lot of the ideas I have put forth to you in regard to leading and you should check it out and expound on it.  Enjoy.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 19, 2009 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership • Tagged: , , ,

Balance In Power

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Hilton Head Island Truck 6 HelmetRight now there is an interesting discussion on Dave Statter’s blog, STATter911 (in the comments) on orders given by a commissioner to remove a flag sticker from a locker.  Despite the conversation outlining the age-old struggle between being too harsh and too lenient, the underlying issue is one of conflict: the escalation of events to the point in which the conflict is intractable and neither side is willing to give in.

The leadership in this case appears to have been addressing a critical issue (the issue of racially charged material on a locker).  The firefighter is interested in leaving an icon of his beliefs and values in place.  Both sides have a point and both sides can be seen as being right.  Both sides have issues that can be argued as being uncooperative and counterproductive.  So who is right?

In emergency services, those who have power have a need to maintain discipline for a number of reasons.  I’m assuming anyone reading this understands that.  Likewise, individuals have a need to be individuals, and even the most uniform of organizations can’t hope to suppress individuality.  From the soldier who keeps a religious medal tucked under his helmet to the police officer with a picture of her family in her protective vest, people will find ways to insert their individual values into whatever it is they do.

The most effective way to handle the problem of the offensive material on the locker would be to reason with the individual as to why the offensive material should be removed. Barring that, punishment of the individual who is operating contrary to the desired values of the organization seems to be the appropriate move.  Unfortunately, the easy way (and the wrong way, and also the way it seems that discipline is most commonly utilized) is to punish everyone for the poor judgement of a few.

As a chief officer, I know as well as anyone that discipline is essential to the effective delivery of service, given the type of service we are providing.  And while I insist on a certain degree of uniformity, the best way to handle that and to maintain morale is to seek alternative ways for people to express themselves.  Be it a unit patch, or a special pin, or something like that, these icons have the ability to make us feel special while being part of a team.  Conversely, and it might be the case here (and it might not), some employees choose to express their individuality or express their “values” as a form of undesirable protest or as a means of “fighting the system”.

There is a certain amount of tongue-biting I have to endure over the course of each day when someone does something counter to my own values and beliefs.  As a parent, it is something that happens daily in one degree or another, and with firefighters it seems that the same motivations exist there as well.  It is difficult sometimes to separate what is truly an issue versus what is petty.  Sometimes we as leaders must pick our battles and be willing to give on an issue so that we have some bargaining room later when we need it.  Regular conflict for the sake of conflict is just being a jerk.  Power isn’t worth anything if you don’t let it go once in a while.  If you use your power like a stick every time someone goes counter to your ideas, don’t be surprised when someone eventually turns on you and snaps back.

I believe in my right to express my support of this Nation, the God I pray to, and a number of other causes.  Likewise, I believe there is a need for uniformity and order when we are serving the public.  We have an image to portray in an effort to inspire confidence in our service and people respect uniformity.  It signifies order and that’s what we are trying to achieve when we roll onto the scene.  In both cases, I think there is a little space for understanding the opposing points of view and achieving cooperation.

When you are a leader, you need to act like a responsible adult.  As a follower, if you want to be treated with respect, you also need to act like a responsible adult.  Giving someone a suspension for leaving an American flag sticker on their locker, regardless of orders, is being inflexible and unreasonable.  Treating everyone with a broad brush when it is not indicated is never a good idea.  But failing to comply with an order from the leadership who is trying do their job by creating some uniform and objective rules isn’t a good idea either.   The established order was to remove “everything”.  But upon realizing that “everything” included an American flag, the rules should be amended either to specifically permit valued and acceptable items, or try to work together to a possible solution.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 17, 2009 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, News • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Congratulations!

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Well, it appears that Dave and Chris have pulled off another amazing venture.  I just spent the better part of an hour (with work waiting patiently on my desk) checking out the new FireEMSBlogs.com site with direct links to some of my favorite bloggers, as well as a few I have wanted to check out but didn’t yet squeeze into my schedule.

While I’m pleased and flattered to have been included, I’m also pretty psyched because FHZ has had some serious traffic in the last few hours, so it’s apparent that the strategy to put some very visible (and well-read) bloggers together in a network would pay off for all of us.  It’s that synergy thing, I guess.

So take the time to enjoy some of the excellent bloggers we have on here and come back and tell me what you think of them.  There are a few tweaks I want to make here on FHZ as well, so don’t be surprised if things change a little over the next few days (or weeks, since I still have a Buddy Walk to get done and a flooring company to support).  Regardless, I’m pretty excited about this endeavor, and we haven’t even been up for four hours.  Let’s see where it goes-

Posted by truck6alpha on October 15, 2009 • Filed under: News, Technology & Communications • Tagged: ,

Eating Our Young

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It’s not going to require much reading to see why the fire service can’t get enough of it’s collective s*** together to provide a united front on anything.  Check it out at Dave Statter’s blog at STAT911.  You can skip the video (for my purposes) and go straight to the comments.  There’s enough anger and bile in this area to prove my point.

We will never move forward in little packs of warring tribes.  We need to show a little love and respect for our brothers, regardless of who they are, where they work, career or volunteer, and their personal opinions.  Laughing at a burned brother, making derogatory remarks about each other, etc. is counterproductive, but even worse, the people who are laughing out loud are the politicians and the competing interests, because they know that so long as we continue down this path, there won’t be any resistance from us when it really is needed.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 10, 2009 • Filed under: change • Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Science Is Your Friend

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While taking Honora to school a few days ago, Bob Edwards was speaking on NPR Radio with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, the authors of the book, “Unscientific America”.  While the book apparently discusses “scientific illiteracy”, some of the commentary seemed applicable to what we currently endure in the fire service; clinging to tradition for tradition’s sake and the global ignorance of scientific findings that can improve our efficiency and safety.

The authors, in discussing their premise, suggested that the general populace isn’t stupid when it comes to science, they’re just disengaged.  The idea that they put forth is essentially that science needs to discover a way to get people to re-engage on the issues, which is not as easy as it might seem.  While the scientific community as a whole might not necessarily agree upon the ways to communicate their issues, for scientists and supporters of science to simply dismiss the “emotional side” (my quote) of others when it comes to scientific issues is turning their back on the problem.

In the early to middle parts of the last century, scientists were looked at as heroes.  Science brought us protection against disease; it brought us innovative fabrics and materials.  Science ushered in a nuclear age and took us to the Moon.  Science, however became pedestrian or became background noise.  Although Mooney and Kirshenbaum didn’t suggest it, I suggest that maybe we all began to take these accomplishments for granted.  Consider that every other time I upgrade my computer it becomes a third smaller and four times faster (and I seem to have to upgrade these bad boys about every two or three years).  While the laptop I am typing this on has 500 GB of storage, my first work computer back in 1988 had MAYBE a 120 megabyte hard drive.  Since I wasn’t so computer literate back then, I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much RAM it had.

While these technological miracles happen almost daily, maybe they’ve become a little too commonplace.  And of course, the unintentional wall established between science and the rest of us (maybe I’m a bad example) doesn’t afford any converts.  In fact, the authors discussed that Carl Sagan suffered considerable stigma from the scientific community because of his efforts to put science in a context others could understand.  The result was that he was considered to have “populist” (their quote) views and was somehow, not worthy of inclusion into the supporters of science.

What has happened is that science just isn’t as popular a subject.  Mooney stated that if you read the newspaper, “Science doesn’t beat the horoscope or the sports pages” among most people.  Along with the theory that your political view influences your perspective on science (I’d agree with that), especially in this day of deeply divided emotions about our nation and the people who run it, I’d bet that the thought of discussing some of these scientific endeavors (stem cell research, evolution, etc.) with some of your friends or family probably makes you uncomfortable, regardless of where you stand.  So it’s no question that science in many circles, isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation.  In fact, unless you are surrounded by a bunch of like-thinkers, you might well avoid scientific discussion altogether.

So just as goes science as a discussion for us all, so goes the fire service for those of us within it.  Go to any firehouse and you’ll see some strong feelings on certain fire service topics.  For any of us to discuss deeply held beliefs about our fire service brings up some pretty raw emotion.  Depending where you sit on many of these issues, sometimes it is better to sit it out and watch the fighting than it is to engage.  Why is that?  Well, I know personally, while I don’t shy away from conflict, I am not interested in engaging in an all-out battle with anyone who just can’t see any side of the issues except the one they are on.  If I choose to remain open-minded and civil, so must you.  That doesn’t seem to prevent people from acting like assholes though (yeah, I said it).

Blogging and posting is a little unique.  The anonymity of being online seems to permit some of the less enlightened individuals to pipe up when they should probably just stick a sock in it and slink back to their corner.  Especially when I’m being lectured by some moron who has two or three years under his (or her) belt and all of a sudden, they are the subject matter expert du jour.  Since the privacy of the internet protects cowards and psychos from getting popped in the mouth if they cross the line, I’d just as soon focus on positive discussion, but it doesn’t seem to stop some of them.

The emergency service industry, as does the scientific community, must remain objective while considering the deeply held beliefs and traditions of those who came before us.  While it seems that logic should overturn any voodoo, the scientific community can’t be dismissive of the emotion attached to these beliefs, because they can be equally as powerful, and no scientist has really been able to explain that.

I’ve said before that I love the traditions of the fire service.  I come from four generations of firefighters and I am proud of that heritage.  But just as my grandfather and my father were renegades and agitating for change and improvement, so do I.  I’m happy to keep a roto-ray on the front of my engine, but I’m not so keen on rushing so quickly to a fire alarm that I flip a rig.  I guess that’s a tradition that seemed to occur a lot in the past that I’d just as soon leave behind.  And yes, there are some who still think that this is acceptable behavior, as do those who think risk/benefit analysis is for sissies.

If we really want change, we have to understand that it scares some people.  Being dismissive of their fears or their preconceived beliefs doesn’t bring them to us in harmony, it creates division.  Understanding how and why things do the things they do is just as important as understanding who we are and where we came from and how we got here.  Since most of you reading this already get “IT”, I’m probably preaching to the choir, but perhaps we can do a better job of reaching out to the dinosaurs and conveying our respect for the way things were done, as well as educating them on safe and effective practices.

Understand that although scientific exploration may bear out an idea and that idea is as right as rain, that same idea will remain locked up in your head somewhere if you’re unable or unwilling to frame the idea into something everyone can understand and eventually, embrace.  If I had the universal answer to all of our problems, I wouldn’t be sitting here asking you open-ended questions.  But it seems that the questions keep getting asked and we aren’t hitting on the answers.

As a brotherhood, we need to band together and discover what others have found before us.  That together we can work toward improving public safety while striving for our own safety as well.  That tradition is important, but it doesn’t supplant common sense.  And that science, in reaching out to find answers to our questions, has achieved a method of achieving logical approaches to many problems, but we have to sometimes choke back emotion and realize that improvement sometimes means walking away from the treasured, but flawed, reasoning of our past.

Posted by truck6alpha on October 1, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, change, command, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, technology • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,