I was giving Zach Green from MN8 Foxfire a tour of our department when I got a call from Lt. C down at Station 7.  There is some construction going on next door to the station.  The landscape contractors brought in some trees to be planted; in one of them, a nest had been built. Two baby birds were subsequently dropped onto the burgeoning garden forming in the shadow of the new cell phone tower.  

What do people do when they have a problem they can't readily solve? They call the fire department.  Since a fire station happened to be right next door, the contractors brought the helpless creatures to Engine 7's house.

Armed with their extraordinary problem solving skills, the crew came up with the right answer. They called a vet to get some advice and found that one was willing to take the birds in for us. The call to me was for  advice as to how they could carry out their plan, since the vet was in Bluffton, outside of our jurisdiction.  I told them to manage with what they had and to let me think about how to make things work out.  I was returning to my office at Station 7 anyway and told them I'd talk to them in person shortly.

When I arrived, the guys were huddled around their little project at the watch desk, feeding the birds worms.  They had a syringe and a catheter and were dripping warm milk gently into the two tiny birds mouths.  And they had a hot pack under a warm towel keeping the birds comfortable.  Solutions like these don't come readily to people who aren't engaged in their jobs.  These three firefighters, three guys who I wouldn't describe as "huggy", were tending these infant birds with all the gentleness of my 11 year old daughter, with real concern for their outcome.  

Was it their job to do this?  No.  Was it a challenge, especially since they didn't know what to do? Yes.  Did it fall into the scope of our mission?  No, but it was the right thing to do.

There are those who would argue that our resources are better spent elsewhere.  They might say that we have a responsibility to the community to provide fire and EMS coverage and this was detracting us from that responsibility.  I would argue that this was not the case.  I would also argue that the ability for our people to show compassion for even the most helpless of beings demonstrates to me a willingness to do the job we are charged with doing, while sharing our organizational values.

Transactional leadership has no place here.  What benefit did they get from these efforts?  What tangible bonus came as a result of taking in these birds?  There was none.  These firefighters did these things because they care.  And caring is an extraordinarily important part of leading altruistically.

Our organization has established integrity as one of our principal values.  Some describe integrity as the desire to do the right thing even when nobody is watching.  It would have been very easy to just get rid of these birds in the dumpster, or to tell the contractor it wasn't our job, or to tell them that they needed to call Animal Control, or any one of a number of excuses people can make for not doing what is right.  I wasn't around, I never would have known.  But that isn't the way we operate around here.  Our leaders, almost to a man, can be trusted to make good decisions even when they aren't popular or convenient or in the job description.  They know what we expect, they understand our shared values, and they set the example of leadership by demonstrating these values in their daily actions.

What examples of leadership tell you a person cares even when it hurts?  Can you look at yourself or at other leaders and say that the organizational value of integrity is continually upheld? When people act with integrity, it is often because their leaders have demonstrated their own insistence on acting with integrity.  When leaders don't demonstrate these values, the troops say, "Who cares?"  Of all the values an organization holds, it is the ones that the followers see their leaders demonstrating that they place importance on.  If you don't act like it means anything, you shouldn't be surprised if the troops don't feel the same way as well.

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I won't keep you in suspense that long, as I am not a suspense writer.  He ended up succeeding and retiring about ten years later on his own terms, more or less.  The reason why? Because after I had my conversation with him and outlined my expectations, he was surprised that nobody had ever really sat down and had a similar assessment of his contribution to the organization.

Here was somebody who in his early years did the things he needed to have done, he took his tests, he maintained his certifications, but he wasn't your superstar employee.  He wasn't the one showing up at a half-hour before clocking in, or joining special teams, but he was doing a decent enough job and I won't say he was simply filling a spot, because he was indeed better than that, but he wasn't a rock star either.

As it happens, our department back then, and in the form we are now, happened to have a lot of rock stars.  Not that there was or is a problem with that, but as supervisors, we have to be careful that while we have high expectations of individuals, we are reasonable in their ability, both physically and mentally, to manage and succeed at that level.  If not, we may need to adjust.  We might need to be a little more realistic and of course, we may need to go to the Bag O' Tricks and use a different means of motivating this individual.

He had a high sick leave ratio, simple enough; is the problem an actual medical problem, or does he need to go to employee assistance to seek solutions to personal problems?  Regardless, I was the first one to literally say: "You have a sick leave problem.  We need you here at work.  If there is a health problem, we need you to go to a doctor and get it resolved.  If there is another problem, we can help with that too.  But otherwise, we need you to be here on your assigned day for the assigned length of time. Period."

That might not translate into "altruistic" leadership to you, but remember, sometimes we are too close to our own problems and need to have someone else put it into perspective for us.  But if you fail to address the issue, don't be surprised if the issue keeps occurring.  Sometimes people need to be pointed gently in a direction, and in this case, he got help.

These issues also carried over to some of the other challenges as well and we were able to resolve those as well.  The issue of some of the previous leadership styles, which you might want to understand, involved having inconsistent supervisory expectations.

Department wide, and this has carried over into our current existence, we have always had very high expectations.  But what it really comes to, if you dig deeper, is not necessarily an expectation for "Supermen", but an expectation for others share our organizational values.  This doesn't translate well to all of us, and there are those of us, myself included, who get mixed up a little in what it is we want from our people.  It really comes down to this: I don't need you to be the best firefighter or best medic in the world.  I need you to have the attitude that while you may be the best, that we put others first and we work together as a team.

I can teach you to be a better firefighter.  I can teach you to be a better medic.  I can't teach you to have a better attitude.  

Either you are receptive to my teaching you, or you are not.  Either you are receptive to being nice to our customers, or you are not.  

Either you are receptive to seeing that I am willing to trust you, or you are not. It is all a matter of attitude.

As much as I want my people to exceed, they have somewhat different values.  But so long as their work values are the same ones shared by the rest of the team, they should be okay.  I didn't need this guy to be a member of Special Ops, or even come out to some of the things we did on the weekends together.  I would have liked that, but the reality is that this individual was not a high achiever, and yet he was willing to do everything we needed him to do.  He was not striving to be an officer, he didn't want to lead teams, he wanted to fight fire, work on the ill and injured, and drive fire trucks or ambulances.  He was also okay with doing all the other more mundane parts of the job and with a smile on his face.  But he wasn't lining up to be the next chief.

This individual needed an officer who understood that.  He did not, however, need the other type of officer either, the one who given an individual who was not a rising star, was the absolute opposite and expected NOTHING from him.  He was not challenged, he could call in sick regularly without any repercussions, he did not train and any number of other problems.  This individual needed a leader who could switch tools in the middle of the job if needed.

Ultimately, we got his situation straightened out.  His sick leave was reduced to perhaps once a quarter, or less.  He actually was inspired by his colleagues to obtain additional certifications and he even showed up to some of the non-mandatory things we do. But the difference was, when we had an issue, we communicated.  We worked together to solve the problems and we were both receptive to each others' perspectives.  When you can have a relationship where both individuals realize their similarities and their differences, and you can agree to work together, you can achieve much.

Everyone is different. Even family members raised in the same home bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table, and the result of those traits, running up against the challenges faced by living day to day, multiplied by the opportunities to learn something and divided by the blown chances, all factor into the individual's attitude.  Humans are much too complicated to have a rote method of managing.

To say that all individuals will respond to good leadership is unrealistic.  While we have those who inspire us when we see them excel, there are those that you can give chances to and they'll exploit them every time.  But that is when another trick must come out of the bag. 

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Emma, my oldest, wants to know all the secret Daddy tricks to winning in Monopoly.  She is 11, so advising her on strategy probably isn't going to be really effective, but she is a smart girl.  She might even already understand strategy but doesn't realize it as such, after all, she is becoming a pretty good chess player.  I don't know that I want to teach her my outlook on it, though, because I can be quite the cynic.

The problem is that Monopoly is a game that relies on the roll of die, on the actions and inactions of others, and your intellect is maybe but a percentage of it all.  Don't get me wrong; you can blow it.  You can screw things up so badly that you are bankrupt before you have spent an hour on the game.  Others can sense your weaknesses and exploit them.  If Caroline or Honora were to play Emma (they are 8 and 6, respectively), she could have their money in minutes.  But if, for some wild chance, Emma were to roll badly and regularly enough, there is only a certain amount of control you would have and others, if they are perceptive enough, could eat you alive.

I have, however, played Monopoly before with people who were not interested in winning.  In fact, I have played before where the goal was to be the first one to blow all your money and interestingly enough, if everyone is giving you chances to make money, literally throwing it at you, it is still possible to "lose" the game.  But it sure takes a lot longer.

We all have employees, subordinates, or colleagues that no matter how hard we throw opportunities at them, they still manage to screw them up.  We all probably know of a few people who have been given a hundred second chances and they still manage to miss the boat. You really have to say to yourself, at some point, how many passes is this person going to get before someone pulls the plug?

I said before that transformational leadership really depends on the ability of the follower to understand it.  They have to see that they are being given opportunities to grow, you are willing to guide them, but to be transformational, they are going to have to do something with what they have got.  Altruistic behavior on your part is great, but for it to be transformational requires the recipient to have a clue.  In light of this kind of failure, you probably should have some ability to push them in a direction in which the lesson becomes apparent.

When you are a middle to upper level manager like a Battalion Chief or an Assistant Chief, you have to rely on your subordinate officers to do their jobs.  I have had varying degrees of enforcement apparent from one officer to the next before, and surprisingly enough, that degree of variance isn't obvious.  Likewise, just the nature of certain personalities sometimes are enough to provide compliance where another officer isn't able to achieve the same.

Case in point: Years ago, I had the opportunity to walk into our old administration building at the same time a firefighter was about to be let go.  I was a pretty new officer and I had seen how this individual wasn't a high performer, but I felt like I could at least give working on him a try.  I intervened with the Deputy Chief at the time and asked if I could have a shot at it, to which he agreed to permit.

We gave the individual a few days off without pay to reinforce their narrow escape from termination and I digested their personnel jacket.  I saw some patterns that were troubling, but I was young, full of energy, and I wanted to prove my ability to turn someone around.  I was also armed with a bag of tricks that come from a long enough period of observing leadership styles and lots of understanding of strategy.

When the individual returned and reported to me for the first time, I laid it all out for their benefit.  This individual had been on the department for a number of years before I had been hired, he was older, and he was skeptical.  I explained some of what had transpired, including the fact that they were very close to being sent packing.  I also reinforced that I was the only thing that was standing between him and the door at that point.

Granted, that kind of explanation for most people should trigger the reaction of gratitude, but in this case, it was more along the lines of resignation. "Why?" he asked me, "Do you want to 'save' me?  I don't even know you that well."  I told him the truth: I saw some of the "leadership" exhibited by his most recent officers and I felt like their approach was not very effective. I felt like my leadership style might make a difference and I was not interested in seeing someone lose their job for reasons not entirely their own.  "Plus", I said, deadpan, "If I pull this off, I'll probably be regarded as a star."  While I said it for a little shock value, he laughed pretty hard when I told him that.  He stopped laughing when I told him that I wasn't sure that I COULD pull it off.  I explained to him that without his efforts, I knew I would NOT pull it off.

And I wasn't sure, to be honest with you because in reality, it comes down to the effort of the individual.  But I was willing to try, so I expressed my views on what he needed to do to improve, I explained my rules and my modus operandi, and I laid out my expectations.  When I was done, I asked him if he thought he could manage all that.  He looked a little beat up, 

So I'll talk in the next post about how it went and hopefully you'll tune in for the outcome.  See you tomorrow.

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The definition of irony is the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. Situational irony occurs when the actions someone takes have an effect exactly the opposite of what was intended. In some cases, irony is present when someone has a certain strong belief or is known for acting a certain way, and is faced with the dilemma of having to embrace the opposite.

I have friends from high school who at the time, were probably stoned more often than not, and now they represent the best and brightest of the conservative right.  That's ironic.  Our past Governor, Mark Sanford, ran on a platform of family values and was fast to tell people how they should live their lives, yet his on-going affair was the complete antithesis of having a moral life.  That's not ironic, that's hypocritical.  But then he got caught, he became a butt of late night television monologues, and forever his name will  be remembered for the embarrassment he caused his family and our State: that's irony.

You will not become a transformational leader overnight.  You can't flip a light switch and become an inspiration. It sure didn't for me. I might not even be a transformational leader now.  Like I said yesterday, it is contextual.  The perception of whether you can inspire change is totally dependent on the receiver, as to whether you cause them to feel differently enough to change.  This is its own irony: Transformational leadership depends on your actions, but those actions may not ever make a difference to certain individuals. You can't say, "I did this, now you need to do that." At that point it is no longer anything but an exchange. Altruistic leadership is different. You can't push it; you have to pull and hope they follow.

Like I said, though, in looking back at my career as a company officer I see the entire range of leadership styles. From the beginning, like anyone else, I wanted to be a successful leader.  I looked at other leaders with awe and wanted to be like them. I started as a young go-getter, competing with others, trying to impress my colleagues with my technical knowledge, knowing I didn't have the street cred to immediately expect my subordinates to trust me implicitly. Watching other officers, I became all about "fighting for my guys", sometimes at the risk of completely pushing back against management.  I wanted badly to head to the top, to be the authority everyone went to when they had a problem.  

This, however, evolved differently after having been burned a few times sticking my neck out for others, and in a huge life change, I took a job at another department and saw a whole other way of leading.  A few of the officers I got to know and whom I respected greatly, were icons in the department and in the fire service around the state.  Each of these officers had their personable side, but each of them were not individuals you wanted to get upset.  They were as close to being those inspirational leaders as I had ever been and they ruled their companies or divisions like Patton at the front of the column. In my return to officership, I made it clear there was my way or the highway.  I earned the nickname "The Hammer", ready to come down on whatever or whomever was in the way of our progress, and not afraid of being the hatchet man, so to speak.

But as time went on, I started learning more about myself and exploring my own faults, my own strengths, and understanding that I was trying to be someone I wasn't most of the time, unwilling to see myself for who I am.  Ironically (again), my personality type is none of those other things: my personality type is the extroverted thinker, the ENTJ. The ENTJ is called "The Field Marshal", the organizer, the strategist. As I grew, I began to understand more about what I was comfortable with and that which I needed help with. I also began to realize that the "leadership" I was modeling was often based on another person learning from someone else who might have ben as clueless as they were.

These realizations caused me to delve more into the aspect of how to lead people, and how to serve rather than to demand. Of all of the things I thought I was doing right, had I been true to my personality as I am now, had I followed my gut instead of what I saw from other "leaders", I might have come to that realization much earlier.  But then, the experiences I acquired while I "found myself" have proven to be invaluable in and of themselves.

The most valuable thing I learned about myself was that I was just fine being who I am.  I could put my ego aside, because I am comfortable being me.  I don't have a need to impress anyone.  If you want to hear what I have to say, great, if not, there are others who do. If I become a Chief of Department, it wouldn't be for me anymore, but because I would want to influence even more than I do now.  But I could be happy being a tailboard firefighter right now because I have come to an important place, the place where I learned that the harder you reach for something, the more it will elude you.  I don't need power.  Power comes from within. I have it already.

We have been told our whole lives that in order to succeed, you have to compete. Perhaps there is another way, in that perhaps the more people you help, the more you succeed. Wouldn't that be an amazing irony in our world, if instead of standing on the hands of the people below you, helping them up the ladder actually got you somewhere?  Success can be measured in many different ways and success in leadership may not necessarily involve the best promotion or the most money.  Those things are nice, but I have seen first hand that when you put other people first, oftentimes you rise to the top.  It is an interesting dichotomy and something we'll go into further.

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I'll bet you didn't anticipate a Part 12.  Neither did I, but it seems to be a pretty popular discussion (from the hits aspect), although you wouldn't know it from the comments and likes.  So in order to see if I am engaging you, I'm proposing a question.

If altruistic leadership makes so much sense, if it would create goodwill and cause others to act positively, why is it so hard to do?  Why is it that we haven't just all jumped on the bandwagon and implemented these strategies?

I know it takes time to come up with an answer to some of these questions, so I don't necessarily expect a reply.  Perhaps that's the challenge of writing something that doesn't create a knee jerk reaction, that there is no spontaneous reply, no off the cuff comment that can be made.

It's like the difference between eating a donut and eating a steak.  The donut may taste good and cause a sudden jolt of energy in your body, but the steak tastes good in a different way, and will sustain you for at least a few hours.  This too, is the same analogy that can be used for the difference between transformational leadership and the others. Transformational leadership creates change.

I was questioned once about my leadership style in which an individual was simply not responding to my efforts, and as to whether my methods were truly transformational.  I can't say as to whether my methods are transformational: only the recipient can know that.  If my efforts at being a servant leader created the action I desired, then I guess we could say it was transformational, but even then, only if it created a sustained change in behavior.  Otherwise, my efforts were transactional: I was nice to the individual and they responded reciprocally- they were nice in return.  That doesn't indicate a sustained change.

Therefore, you may attempt to implement these changes in the way YOU lead, but it is the REACTION that says whether your efforts are transformational, transactional, or some other form of leadership.  Altruism should never be construed as enabling.  When my children want their milk at breakfast and demand it, and I respond by giving it to them, that isn't being altruistic. That is enabling poor behavior.  If my firefighters want a raise and they haven't earned it, giving it to them isn't looking out for their needs, giving it to them is reinforcing sub-par behavior.  The expectations are the same; the individual needs something, you are in a position to allocate that something, and you do so in an effort to develop a positive relationship.  The outcome, however, is completely contextual, and depends on the maturity, the competence, and the understanding of the recipient.

Back to when I was questioned about my leadership style: the person inquiring of me was making some pretty harsh statements about my ability to lead.  I was naturally not happy about it.  But whereas they KNEW what leadership was, or shall I say, they knew what defined it, they didn't UNDERSTAND it.  Just because you put good examples of leadership in front of someone, doesn't necessarily mean they are going to bite on it.  Some will and others won't.  You can work hard at modifying your approach, but if someone just doesn't automatically change, don't consider your attempts as failure.  YOU as the leader must make the first step of reaching out.  If the other person won't follow, or exploits your efforts, or fails to change, it certainly doesn't indicate you are a flawed leader.  It might very well indicate that you have a flawed follower.  And if your efforts result in success with you and don't for someone else, it also doesn't say that your leadership isn't transformational.  Followers will interact with the leader who inspires the change.  If they fail to respect their new leader, it doesn't say that they were incapable of change, it says that perhaps the new leader doesn't get what is needed to motivate that individual.

Donut or steak?  Immediate or sustained? You can tell people what the culture of your organization is, you can show them examples, you can print it on your business cards, but the moment the individual feels like they are in a different environment, they will change to react to that environment.  That is just a fact of life, that people reflect their surroundings as THEY perceive them, and if you don't get that, you don't get leadership.

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So yesterday's post asked you to walk a mile in the shoes of the person calling for help.  We may joke amongst ourselves about some of the more ridiculous-seeming alarms we go on, but those wry comments on the failure of someone to be able to say, shut off the water to their house when there is a broken pipe, should be kept among us as much as possible.  Just because we have been graced with some common sense doesn't mean everyone has and I'm sure there's a day when you'll need help and hope nobody is making jokes about you as well.  Today, however, let's talk about when leaders fail to make good choices.

In keeping with the spirit of the lead paragraph, some people don't even realize they need help, and instead of pointing at them and laughing, we should be showing them the way toward enlightenment.  I don't think that all people who make poor decisions do so out of maliciousness; I really think that poor decisions often come about because of feelings of insecurity (the subject is afraid they will look bad), ego (subject believes they are right), misinformation (subject does not have all the facts), and for other reasons.

Take, for example, this situation shared with us through Dave Statter's site at STAT911.com, where a non-firefighting Fire Commissioner is making a big deal out of not being permitted to use emergency warning lights on his POV. The decision was made to not renew the permit required for this commissioner to have warning lights on his personal vehicle.  The commissioner made interesting comments to the media about the situation, basically threatening the officer, who happened to be exercising some common sense.  The facts of the case are pretty much immaterial; this is an internal issue that has become widely publicized because one individual feels like he didn't get his way.  From the website Courant.com:

The standoff started in January when Rickis, then acting chief, decided not to renew Davis' state-mandated permit to use flashing blue lights on his vehicle, even though he's had the lights for years.  "It was against the law [for Davis] to have it," Rickis explained. "You have to be an active firefighter. It had to be done."  Davis, 64, a Blue Hills Fire District commissioner for 13 years, acknowledges that he retaliated by taking away the department-issued SUV that Rickis uses to respond to fire calls.  "My dumb-ass assistant chief took it upon himself to discontinue my permit," Davis said. "I took his vehicle away because he had no authorization to do what he did."

Just because you THINK you have power, doesn't mean that it is automatically so.  Here is a Fire Commissioner, involved in a petty fight with an officer because he didn't get to leave the blue lights on his car.  If this commissioner had REAL power, he would not have been in the position to have this happen.  There would have been mutual respect between he and the Assistant Chief, good communication, and this may not have ever come to light.  Instead, we have conflict.

Frustration is more often than not, borne of perceived powerlessness.  Frustration leads to many problems, problems that cascade away in the opposite direction from sanity, while traveling through anger, retaliation, and often enough, violence.  As a leader, by having mutual consideration for others includes engaging them in conversation, in understanding their situation, and being able to discuss differences with at least some respect or even just professional courtesy.  The commissioner might very well have a good reason for having blue lights on his car (but aside from the "power" trip it sounds like he gets from having them, probably not).  This guy sounds like he has a real problem with people "not respecting his authority".

While all challenges can be solved by communicating and working together, there are plenty of barriers to communication, and there are plenty of reasons people can give for being irrational.  If you are dealing with someone who can work with you to solve problems, you can avoid issues like these pretty easily.  If not, you have a lot of work ahead of you.  In fact, it may even come down to your having to leave that environment if things get bad enough.

If you always make the "right" decision, you will always have the force of "right" on your side.  This commissioner is so delusional that he thinks that people will listen to his ranting; the Assistant Chief has the power of reason on his side.  Like I said, not all the facts are probably presented here, but even if the commissioner did have the ability to do something to the Assistant Chief, he certainly isn't going to be able to do so now.

Might does not make right.  Doing what is best for the people you serve, your real bosses, does.  If you make decisions based on what is truly good for the community, if tried in the court of public interest, you will always prevail.  The challenge is that this can sometimes be a tricky line to walk.

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A few weeks ago, there was a tragic sequence of events that occurred in a community in our county. While working a medical alarm, a City of Beaufort fire engine was stolen by a man, who in his flight, killed a pedestrian as well as struck a number of cars.  Talk about your "Swiss cheese modeling"; short of an astronomical syzygy, I'm pretty sure you can't find a better alignment of factors to recreate that event again. If you saw that in a movie, you'd think, "How stupid!  A man escapes from a military hospital, finds an idling fire engine, and escapes his pursuers. It isn't likely to happen."  But it did.

Things happen every day that defy logic.  Truth, as it is said, is often stranger than fiction.

Deep down inside, we might say to ourselves, "That could never happen here."  Or we feel it coming up and we suppress it, because we know, if we were ever to actually verbalize that, it WOULD happen.  But we are all guilty of seeing something happen and thinking that we are either too good, too well-trained, too attentive to the details, too big of a department, or even too remotely disconnected from "big city" problems for certain events to transpire. It just won't happen to us.

This is something that happens in families as well.  I know people who are perfect parents and their children defy any reasonable expectation of success.  I know parents who have no business reproducing who have amazing children.  I know fire or EMS agencies that I can't believe, due to their ineptness, that they haven't facilitated some major catastrophe. And I know the most professional organizations ever who have had arsonists surface among their ranks, or they lose firefighters, or they burn down an entire zip code. 

Unfortunately, right now public servants have a target drawn on their back.  Some of our brothers have actually drawn it on there for us.  We are in a profession (career and volunteer alike) that used to be considered trustworthy, honorable, valiant, and courageous.  We have a few mutts in our midst who have caused people to think otherwise.  The job hasn't changed, nor has the opinion MOST people have of public servants, but the fact is that when someone can paint "firefighters" or "EMTs" in a convenient picture and wrap it up in an emotional context, they gain attention.  And so long as we tolerate membership from those who give us a black eye, we continue to enable that perception.

Our business has enough danger, innuendo, drama, and everything else that we don't need to add to it by tolerating personnel with bad attitudes, carelessness, or poor morale.  We have to seek the causes of these problems and root them out.  We have to be positive and focused on the service we provide and how we improve that delivery daily.  We must reward people for doing things right and remediate those who do things wrong.  But even when we do all these things right, our team might have someone swimming below the surface, counter to our culture or our expectations, who is intentionally or unintentionally, just waiting to pop to the surface.

If you really want to change the minds of others, the first step in doing so is by exuding professionalism yourself.  Nobody is going to follow your advice if you aren't in front leading the charge. If everyone in emergency service had that mentality, it would be a lot easier to bring the rest of the world forward.  But remember, even in the best of situations, even with thorough planning and training and coaching, sometimes things go wrong with no real expectation.  Our job as leaders is to minimize the risk of those events occurring, be proactive and engaged, and to present alternatives that eliminate those bodies from lining up.

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Too much fun and not enough self-discipline on several occasions proved to be near-disastrous.  Even into my 20's, I figured I probably wouldn't see 40. To me, "raising my fists" meant that I had to take action on everything. To me, every bully needed to be shoved back, every convention required redefining, every challenge needed taking.  While this provides many opportunities for learning about one's limitations, it also has its painful moments.  And pain, unfortunately, is sometimes the way we seek to know we are still alive.

But as I began to delve more into the art of strategy, I became more and more amazed at where the lines kept pointing back in a certain direction.  Strategy, one finds out after many years of falling on one's face, provides some stability, but more importantly, it channels the energies toward a focused point, conserving your energy for more important battles and concentrating it when necessary for an all-out assault.

As an aside, if you'll indulge me: One of the many amazing things about Zen philosophy is the power in its simplicity.  Complexity breeds chaos and chaos facilitates a lack of control.  Simplicity creates strength and focus.  As I became a young adult and out on my own, I'm afraid my focus didn't get better, it actually got worse.    Even today as an older father of three, I find that when I let the issues drive the agenda rather than the other way around, things get hairy.  I'm even dealing with it today, with a number of conflicts and not enough time to get them all completed.  One might even say that my blogging here today is a waste of my time, but I have found that it is actually a means for me to focus on certain issues.  But the point is well-taken.

But there is a time to listen and to re-engage.  There is a time to realize your losses, group your survivors, and learn from the lessons provided.  There are more often than we like to believe, moments to employ diplomacy, because war for the sake of war solves nothing.  Fighting constantly weakens the nation and alienates the people.  So there comes a time to employ introspection, understand the situation, and move forward again.

I read once that even if you coat a hand grenade with sugar, it's still gonna hurt when you pull the pin and hand it to someone else.  There's nothing like a little does of reality from time to time to remind yourself that while we should make the best attempts to control our future, there is just enough randomness in there to shake things up and if you can't deal with that, then you are going to find yourself on the bad end of more than a few lousy situations.  You have to take what you have and try to work with it, because ultimately sitting around crying about it isn't going to change things either. We have to make changes to improve our condition constantly, or live with the circumstances.  But those circumstances aren't always bad, they may just be DIFFERENT.

Words without action are useless.  Every day I hear words that have no substance.  When I speak, I want there to be a lingering desire to create motion, for people to be motivated to do, or to think, or to create.  When I step up to the bat, I'm not looking to get on base, I'm pointing at a fence.  When I write, I want to feel that bat meeting the ball at the sweet spot, and watching the ball sail over that back wall.  But sometimes, we probably need to just reflect.

Consider your situation and take action, but not necessarily take "active action".  Sometimes "passive action" can be just as moving.

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I have been following with interest the discussion of a National Firefighter Code of Ethics.  The other day I saw that Ken Willette, the Public Fire Protection Division Manager at NFPA, blogged about the one written by the Cumberland Valley Volunteer Firemen's Association this past year.  Being obtuse, like I often am, I had actually never gone to the FirefighterBehavior.com blog although I have seen some of the well-written articles that have come from posts on there.  Nothing like going to the source, huh?  Well, if you haven't done it, you need to go yourself, and when you are through, being the fire service leaders I sense you are, send your people there as well.

But this doesn't stop at the fire service.  In fact, as I have said many times before, there are lessons to be learned from a brotherhood of individuals who, as recently as a decade before, were considered to be the last bastion of integrity, honor, and valor in a society in which those values have been eroding daily.  The ever-decaying values in the fire service are an excellent case study, and many questions can come from how we went from where we were to where we are today.

And I am not suggesting that the entire fire service lacks these ideals; we just have not been very good at removing the elements from our midst who do not embrace those same values.  Well, our profession (and for the uninitiated, this refers to both career and volunteer professionals in the emergency services business) has been challenged by a number of external forces that, to the casual observer, seem to have affected the type of person we are getting to replace those who have gone on to other places.

Emergency response, paid or not, is very much a value-driven occupation.  Just because you show up and put out a fire or lug someone to the hospital, is irrelevant, despite the arguments that we are not customer oriented.  If anything, our business is all about the customer, because frankly, we tell people all the time that we can replace their material objects, but we can't replace the people.  We say this is the reason we rescue first and not salvage first.  But ironically, we have many of the same people saying that we shouldn't consult with our community in the spirit of partnership, or that we know better than they do what they need, or even more cynically, that their observations regarding our service and the way we do it doesn't even matter.

Therefore, there is a profound need to make sure the people we bring in not only have read and signed a memo telling them what our ethics happen to be, but that they LIVE these ethics.  That they BREATHE these ethics.  That they BELIEVE in these ethics and that they are proud to associate with others, a brotherhood of others, who feel the same way.

A while back, I happened upon a rollover in another jurisdiction while off-duty, and stopped to see if they needed any help. The driver was already on the way to the hospital, and the crews were just picking up debris, but I know a lot of firefighters in that jurisdiction, so I was really just chatting before heading on.  In the corner of my eye, I saw a firefighter pick up a phone on the ground.

I don't know about you, but my cell phone wasn't cheap, and they aren't indestructible either.  Plus, even if it is just damaged, you could still get the contacts off of it, etc.  But the firefighter opened up the phone, laughed to himself, and THREW the phone into the damaged car.  Not gently, mind you, but enough that it broke.  Since it wasn't my jurisdiction, but everyone there knew me, I walked over and picked up the now damaged phone, then handed it to a trooper.  I glared at the guy on the way by, but I didn't say anything. But I let him know that this was unacceptable, at least in my department.

I won't say that we don't have any of those types in our organization, but as Capt. Tom and I were saying the other day, the balance has been strongly tipped in favor of the "good guys" for a while now, and we continue to drum our organizational culture into those who don't get it.  But these values don't come naturally to some and frankly, do you even want to take the chance of trying to drag a member to that place, or should we look first for those with the right stuff, and then TEACH them to be a firefighter?

If I were advertising, I would say that if you revel in someone's misfortunes, or if you like the power of being a uniformed public official, or if driving in total disregard of others appeals to you because you have lights and siren, you probably shouldn't apply.  There's nothing at all wrong with chasing the adrenaline, but it certainly needs to be kept in the perspective that you will take on a challenge to help others, not to wish it on people so you can get your fix.

If we really believe in our brotherhood, our profession, as a calling rather than just a job, we need to take a look at who we introduce to the team. So long as we continue to permit those who are among us to soil our ranks because they fill a spot, we will continue to tarnish the image we used to be proud of.  I, for one, prefer that when I go to see my kids at school, they consider firefighters to be worthy of admiration, rather than another person they can't trust.  There's a lot of that going around lately, let's not let it happen to us.

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I fell asleep at my computer last night.

I am working on a project that has pretty much occupied all of my time over the course of the last three shifts. I think, in retrospect, that the reason that I am having to embark on this dreaded project is simply that a great number of people failed to understand that their actions or inaction created a mess that someday would have to be unraveled.

The mess doesn't even go back a short while.  When I say a great number, I am talking about numbers probably nearing a hundred.  Anyone close to this project that knows that I am talking in circles and understands the scope of this project might disagree with me, but I see the failure in my own interface with the situation, and I see the failures in many others who permitted the condition to occur, knowingly or not.

In a microscope, closely examining one piece of the puzzle, you might not even notice the problem exists.  But when you step back and look at the larger picture, you can see it is definitely crooked.  There are warning signs printed all over this and frankly, they were ignored. But they are insignificant when you step back even farther and realize that any problems we face today could have been avoided had individuals assumed some responsibility and did the right thing early on.

One of the principals in this project called out everyone else on the team and with good reason.  I say that because he is absolutely right; the system failed us.  Or to be clear, we failed the system, because it wasn't all to be blamed on the way we manage these situations.  Instead, key stakeholders ignored critical information.  They felt like status quo was acceptable. Or perhaps they felt inadequate to address the most pressing challenges.  I told this individual that while the historical aspect of how we got to this place is important, just to put the picture in perspective, who to blame is irrelevant. The situation is what it is and you can't unring a bell.  We must look forward.

Those of you reading this might assume you know what I am referring to, but I am suggesting to you that you re-read it and ask yourself, "What am I doing that is creating this same situation today?"  Because if you are honest with yourself, there are any number of issues I have to deal with that follow this chain of events and I am sure I am not alone.

I have quoted my father on any number of occasions in this regard, probably the quote that will stick with me for the rest of my life: "Do it right the first time."  Had we addressed the issues when they were small, had we fixed the leak, had we prevented the spark, had we communicated the concerns, if we had done any of these things, would they have corrected the problem before we got to this disaster we now embrace?

Let go of your concerns for a moment and realize that a drop of water contributes to the flood that sweeps away your home.  Everything affects everything else and that ripple becomes a wave, given the right conditions to grow.  Don't be part of the problem; solve the issues before they become a nightmare to untangle. 

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