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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I got to talk to Capt. Tom (EMS12Lead.com) the other day after his return from IAFC's Fire/Rescue Med 2012 Conference.  After congratulating him on bringing home our spiffy new 2012 IAFC Heart Safe Community Award, he gave me a recap of the conference and some of the outstanding moments. One speaker he was enthusiastic about was Paul LeSage, author of the book Crew Resource Management: Principles and Practice. Chief LeSage, who retired as an assistant chief from Tualatin Valley, Oregon, is also a publisher, a clinical professor, and has a consulting practice.  

Chief LeSage spoke of "Just Leadership", which has a lot of the hallmarks of what we have been discussing here.  According to LeSage, the values shared within a "highly reliable emergency medical system" include actively seeking continual improvement and creating a "Just Culture".  As Capt. Tom put it, a lot of what Chief LeSage advocates as being a good leadership model starts with eliminating the "blame" culture, instead, creating a culture where errors and mistakes are used constructively to create learning.

These characteristics are right along the same lines as what we are saying is best: leadership should be, to the extent possible, transformational.  People should be led, rather than dragged, into understanding how challenges occur within our agency, and instead of beating people up, we should get to the root of the problems and address them, hopefully preventing a future issue.  This kind of leadership relies on crew resource management (CRM) and the human factors analysis and classification system (HFACS) models, each of which look toward problem solving as being a cultural issue rather than purely as a performance issue.

Years ago, I was fortunate enough to be a participant in the United States Marine Corps' Total Quality Leadership program where many of W. Edwards Deming's theories on quality control were adopted.  While the CRM and HFACS models are different, in that they look toward behavior and communication, I find that there are aspects of quality improvement through the "zero defects" approach that  also are quite similar.  All three of these models really do look at taking the problems from a scenario and finding ways to solve for them, while putting the emotional side of the situation aside.  After all, if problems aren't "blame" and instead are "observations" with clearly defined factors, if we use logic to remove our hurdles, people should respond more constructively.  Errors or mistakes are discussed with the intent of solving the problem, and lessons learned can provide excellent lessons for others, hopefully avoiding the same mistakes again.

There is huge requirement, then, to leave your ego at the door.  It is hard to admit you were wrong, or that you made an error, especially in cultures where there is an emphasis on competition and hierarchy. CRM says it is okay at crucial moments to question an order.  HFACS says that even the smallest mistakes have contributing factors that must be considered in the pursuit of solving them.  These are principles that are not fully embraced even to this day in the firehouse.  "You mean the Chief made a mistake? Nonsense!"

Take a moment and look over some of the links I have provided, because they give you a little perspective on the next issues we will cover.  There is an undercurrent present that you must understand.  

• The boss is not always right. Ego needs to take a seat.
• When safety or catastrophic failure is at stake, ANYONE should speak up.
• More eyes on the problem mean more chances of coming up with a successful outcome.
• The vast majority of people who make mistakes don't do so deliberately.  What can we change to insure success?
• Our situation requires constant analysis and reaction to the facts.

These are not embraced among your basic "dinosaur" officer.  These are, in fact, counter to the authoritative, paternalistic approach to leading that has been said to be correct for most of my lifetime.  These issues require a leader to do what is right, to take the best approach (even if it isn't their own approach), and they require the leader to serve others and to educate them.

Our understanding of what moves people to act intuitively and appropriately is evolving as we continue to learn.  Hopefully this series is doing just that for you as well.

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Our department lost a dear friend yesterday after a long battle with cancer.  Lt. Bruce Schultz came down from Ohio back in the day when hanging out at the station for long enough would get you hired.  I remember that when he did this, we were faced with a longer than average lull in our hiring and he stuck in there until he got the call to the majors.

Bruce and I knew each other for just under thirty years, which for two people not from the same zip code, is a very long time.  Just like anyone who works together for a long time, we had our ups and downs, but honestly, he was a good man and would do anything for you if you needed it..  So, I know you are looking at that blue 1975 Datsun B210 and wondering, "What the hell does a 1975 Datsun B210 have to do with honoring a firefighter?"  Well, my hard drive crashed a while back and I don't have any old pictures on it, so unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Bruce for this memorial.  Instead, I posted a picture of a 1975 Datsun B210 in his honor. He, of anyone, would appreciate the sentiment.

I remember one night, when Hilton Head Island's night life wasn't what it is today (not that it's roaring around here at 0200 or anything), we went to Savannah to do a little drinking and to meet some young ladies.  This was right after he started dating his future wife, Dale, who also happens to be the sister of our "C" Shift Battalion Chief/Ops.  In those days, driving after you had a few cold ones was looked on as youthful indiscretion.  When we left the bar (Remington's, for all you Savannahians) I decided to go back to the Island by way of Interstate 516.

Anyone who knows Savannah knows that 516 goes in the opposite direction from Hilton Head Island. So a few minutes into this, we realize we have gone the wrong way, and I decide that my 1975 Datsun B210 (see above, only I couldn't find a picture of my car in red) is a four-wheel drive machine (it wasn't) and I tried to cross the median at relatively high speed (for a red non-four-wheel drive 1975 Datsun B210).  Bruce was not impressed.  

Bruce really wanted to go home at that point, except home was Station 6 and it's not like we were going to be welcome there in our condition either.  He was also dating Dale at that point, and really didn't want to do anything that was going to set her off either, like showing up at her apartment smelling like Budweiser.  The Georgia State Trooper that pulled up to see what we were doing wasn't impressed either.  But in those days, like I said, we weren't as enlightened about the dangers of impaired driving.  The trooper took one look at Bruce and I, decked out in our finest disco clothes, covered in grass and mud, and growled, "I've got to go to a wreck.  If I come back and find you still here, both of you are going to jail!"

Luckily, two U.S. Army Rangers, probably heading back to the base for the night and likely in the same condition as us, had also ditched THEIR car just down from us and got the same speech. As the trooper sped off, we made a quick agreement: we would help them push their car out of the ditch if they would help us do the same.  So that bond borne of a desire to return unscathed to our own respective beds was sufficient to keep us all out of jail and we limped back into port at Hilton Head none the less for the wear.  

Needless to say, not long after that, Bruce got married.  My roommates and I (also firefighters) used to joke that we would wake up in the morning, look out in the yard, and ask "who drove?"  We were a little wild in our younger days and I like to think perhaps Bruce took a look at the mess we were and figured he had a good woman and a good situation, and didn't want to mess that up.  He and Dale were together ever since and I, of course, was specifically prohibited from retelling that story, because Dale was and is a sweet, church-going woman and probably would have not looked kindly upon our little adventure. 

Bruce got cancer a while back and after a fight, thought he had it beat.  He returned to work for a while and was working at regaining his strength. Just like the demon killer-type in a nasty horror movie, Bruce saw it lying in the road, turned his back on it to get on with his life, and it came back with a vengeance.  

Not too long ago, Bruce was trying to be his usual self, I gave him a hug and asked how it was going.  He said he was going to keep working at it and wanted to try to get back to working condition.  Mind you, Bruce was moving very slowly at this point, obviously in pain, and minus quite a few pounds.  But he didn't let it get him down.

Like I said, I relieve his brother-in-law on the C to A shift change.  When I saw Cliff yesterday morning, he broke the news to me that the doctors at Duke gave Bruce two weeks to live and they were sending him home to be attended to by Hospice.  Bruce and Dale were determined to stick it out, or at least that was the face they showed us all.  Both of them felt like they didn't need any fussing over them. His children were going to come see him, as well as his year-old grandchild.  Cliff said he made sure he told his boys to go over and see him soon as well.  I asked Cliff if he thought it would be okay if I came by to see him today after shift and he said, "I'd just show up. I'm sure they'd like that." I said to Cliff, "You know, my grandfather got diagnosed with cancer in 1965 and they told him he had a few months.  He died in 1981."  But, I said, I'd make sure I went to see him. 

I did not get the chance to say goodbye.  Within four hours of that conversation, Bruce passed away.

I like to tell the funny stories after someone has gone, because I remember the good times and I think of how different we all are in our "adult" years.  I think the concept of a wake to celebrate the life of a departed loved one has a lot of merit.  Some people see that as almost sacrilegious, but I see it as something that we should be joyful for, because our friend or our family member, in this case, our Brother, is in a place where there is no pain.  And how can you not be happy about that?

I ask that you all keep Bruce's family in your thoughts and prayers.  They are good, good people and they will surely miss him, and even when we know that our loved one is no longer suffering, the times will still be hard to bear.  But with time there is healing and hopefully they can move to that place quickly and remember him for the person he was.

Thanks to Chief Barry Turner and our brothers at Bluffton Township Fire Department, the brothers at Burton Fire Department, and the others who have offered to cover the Island during the funeral, so we can be together and celebrate Bruce.  It's a shame that something like this has to happen sometimes to see who is there for you, but our departments have always had a good relationship and we would do the same for them as well, and that is truly brotherhood.

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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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While Capt. Tom at EMS12Lead.com might not be trumpeting his success, I will do it for him, as well as for the rest of my colleagues at Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue.  This week we received another honor, the IAFC's Annual Heart Safe Community Award.  With a lot of pushing and pulling from Capt. Tom Bouthillet, and a lot of support and cooperation from other notables, including Fire Chief Lavarn Lucas, Deputy Chiefs Brad Tadlock and Ed Boring, Capt. Eric Lainhart, our medical control docs, Bo Sherwood and Van Gaube, and of course, Kelly Arashin, we received the award in recognition of the system we have in place in our community.

Between our bystander CPR education efforts, placement of automated defibrillators in the community and our advanced life support response system, individuals experiencing a cardiac event have a significantly better chance of survival than in the past. If an arrest is in progress, we dispatch additional Fire/Rescue companies, where all the line personnel are trained in use of the "pit crew" concept, to maximize the efficiency of assigned resources and to deliver a very high standard of care.  

It doesn't end there: our Fire/Rescue personnel have a number of tools we can use, including 12-lead EKG monitoring with transmission capability and the ability to provide therapeutic hypothermia if indicated.  Our system is also capable of identifying possible STEMI patients in the field and setting off an additional chain of events.

Our delivery of the patient at the Hilton Head Hospital Emergency Department is just one more step.  There, they will have already been alerted by the teams in the field and depending on the situation, have either already brought in a cath lab team, or are prepared to continue therapeutic hypothermia through as needed.  We have a great relationship with our emergency department personnel and we all work together as a team to provide the best possible chances for a positive outcome.

What's more is that the pertinent information is documented and shared through the CARES Registry, where we will be able to extrapolate data needed to help us improve our service.  We have identified methods for communicating good performance as well as performance requiring remediation.  And above all, the system is delivered daily by nine Fire/Rescue companies with extremely professional, caring, and knowledgeable personnel, all of whom are aware of the importance of excellent public service.

When we factor this in with our recent CFAI accreditation, which we have maintained through three cycles, we are pretty proud.  But even more impressive is that our personnel have maintained their positive attitude and professionalism despite comments made about their integrity by certain individuals in our community, rather than those individuals stepping back and defending what they should have known to be true.  Our entire force maintained this very same quiet professionalism even when held to a 1% salary raise last year (and that was not across the board) and no increases in years before that, not because they were afraid to speak out, but because they heard the concern of the community, especially with the economic situation being what it was, and they were willing to accept that and soldier on, when they had every right to be vocal and upset about the situation.  These personnel have also maintained their quiet professionalism among other challenges as well, challenges that will remain unsaid by us, because that's the kind of people we have.

One of the primary things we say to guide our people is to always "do the right thing".  If that means stopping and helping someone change a tire, or picking you up off the floor for the seventh time that week, or loading up your kids in the rig to take them to the hospital when we are transporting you because you have no family available, we do what it takes to make our "customers" happy.  And we say customers because it isn't just the taxpayers; we serve the visitors, the workers, the homeless, anyone we deal with.  They may be patients today, or the may be the homeowner on another, or the occupant, but to us, they are people.

We have an extraordinary amount of pride in our department, but a lot of humility as well.  I talk about all of our personnel because I am proud of them, but they don't go around bragging about it, so I am happy to tell you all about them.  We have very high expectations of our people, but we have fun too.  And while there are plenty of bad moments, the good definitely outweigh the bad.  The difference is that we try to let everyone in on the decisions (to the extent possible), we listen, we try to get them the tools they need (but they aren't spoiled, our budget didn't budge but a single digit percentage from last year), and we do things safely, with a lot of common sense applied rather than emotion.

So while we will be celebrating this new award, we already realize, it is recognition for what we have done.  For us, what we have done so far is never good enough.  We will continue to push forward and improve from where we are today, to keep looking at ways we can tweak this or adjust that to make our organization that much better.  We do not rest on our laurels.

If you get a chance to come to our Island, make sure you stop by a station.  EVERY station and Headquarters is open to the public and we encourage visitors.  We will always take the time to show someone the trucks, or to take a blood pressure, or just to talk about what we do.  We are an all-hazards response agency who takes the job very seriously and we like sharing what we do. Thanks to all of you at HHIFR; you all make me proud to be affiliated with you. 

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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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Another excerpt I wrote a while back sat in my "draft" box, but it is appropriate for the discussion right now:

I said a while back that we all know what good customer service feels like and we all know what it’s like to have bad customer service. Professionalism begins at using our skills, abilities and past experience to improve service quality and to provide excellent service not just to the taxpayers, but to our colleagues.  If you don't like the thought of referring to these others as customers, that's okay.  Just think of them as human beings who need your help, because really, that's exactly what they are.  How you label them is your choice.

Our personal mission must be to exceed at helping people when they need help.  Why they call us is pretty much immaterial; if they didn't need help, they wouldn't have called for it.  It may not seem like an emergency to you, and in some cases, it may not even be an emergency to them.  But they had a problem, they didn't know how to solve it, and they turned to the one group of people in the community with a stellar reputation for helping people.  That would be the fire department, in case you hadn't guessed.

Our job is to come in with a fresh perspective and a certain amount of expertise to make things better.  I have heard from a number of people that this "customer service" attitude cheapens what we do.  I don't know a better way to put it, but to have the mentality that the service we provide is there and if you don't like it, too bad, is not doing right by the people you serve.  Regardless or not of whether it's the only show in town, that's certainly not the way we should be interacting with others.

You've probably heard it said a thousand times, "consider these people like you would if it were your mother" or "your son" or "your daughter".  That's not a bad way of looking at things either.  But maybe the best way of looking at it is, "What if it were you?"

The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", in case you don't know it) these days is more and more apropos.  Today's society as a whole seems to forget that maxim at every turn.  If anything, we in emergency services should be the examples of that message to anyone who sees us on a daily basis.

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Once there was a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and his position in life. One day he passed a rich man's home.  He saw all the possessions and the important people lined up to visit. The stone cutter became envious and wished he could be like the merchant.

To his surprise, his wish was granted; he suddenly became the rich man, enjoying luxury and power, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself.  While the material things were interesting, he became dissatisfied. Before long, a high official passed by on the street, carried in a sedan, accompanied by an entourage and led by soldiers banging gongs.  Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow before the procession.

"How powerful that official is!" he thought, "I wish I could be a high official!" 

With that thought, he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan, feared and hated by the people all around.  At first, the crowds paying him homage were flattering, but before long he grew bored. Because it was a hot summer day, he became uncomfortable in the sedan.  He looked up at the sun, shining proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence.  

"How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"

Then he became the sun, shining down fiercely on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers.  In time, a huge black cloud moved between he and the earth so that his light no longer beat down on everything below.  

"How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish I could be a storm cloud."

The he became a storm cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone.  But he soon found he was being pushed away by an unseen force and realized it was the wind.  

"How powerful it is!" he thought.  "I wish I could be the wind!"

Then he became the wind, blowing off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him.  But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it – a huge, towering rock.  

"How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish I could be that rock!"

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth.  But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed.

"What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.

He looked down and saw far below him, the figure of a stone cutter.

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The other day my wife sent me a link I thought appropriate to this conversation. Written by Geoffrey James at Inc.com, it is titled "8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses". This compilation contains a number of the values I have already shared with you in this series.  While the article itself was interesting, when I read the comments, I found some of the reactions to be unbelievably negative.  

There are clearly those who don't believe altruism has a place in leading.  There are those who have learned in their lives that leadership requires you to wield tyrannical power, to make people uncomfortable, and to focus on profits over people.  Altruism, to them, is equated with weakness.  That works fine if you have an endless supply of bodies, but at some point, the battle will take a toll on the troops and you will find yourself in the position of trying to move forward and nobody wants to move with you.

What makes a leader?  What drives people to follow someone who was appointed to supervise them, to organize them, or to fill a position?  You can fill volumes with the definition of leadership, but here's a very poignant thought: one of the greatest institutions to study leadership, the United States Military Academy at West Point, infers that altruistic leadership is the ultimate measure of what makes a leader.  They promote it in the West Point Cadet Maxim:

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

Transformational leadership, though, only works on people who seek to attain higher levels of self-actualization. As expressed in Maslow's pyramid, if an individual is, for one reason or another, unable to meet their immediate needs, their focus will not be on self-actualization but on survival.  In order for transformational leadership to be of use, the challenges found in the lower echelons of the pyramid must be resolved.  Your efforts at servant leadership can provide the platform to show altruistic actions.

There are some for whom this type of leadership is truly wasted upon, those who simply live to be miserable.  I call these people "professional assholes".  No amount of servant leadership is going to convince them to come along and do what is best for the whole.  They see any effort directed toward making their lives better as simply that; a benefit for them and screw everyone else. There are any number of pathological issues at play and frankly, the behavior has many causes, none of which seem to be clearly addressed.  They may just really believe that they are right and the rest of the world is wrong.  I'm sure there are places in the world where those people can be happy, but serving the public during their time of greatest need is not one of them.

And this is where it comes to: those who work in emergency services must have the desire to serve others. This job is not a job in which you can be a sociopath and things just sail along smoothly.  The whole point of the job, career or volunteer, is to care for others.  There may be some technical applications to the job, but if you struggle with interacting with others, perhaps you should consider another opportunity.  Likewise, if you are in the position of leading people who are wired to be helping others, your failure to help others is going to make you and everyone else miserable.  These situations, which even in this day and age where we have learned more about human psychology in regard to work interactions, are still prevalent. 

We may have a group of people, we may have the tools and other resources to do the job, and we may have a mission, but if we can't put all this together and work with it, we are no more an effective emergency services team than is dumping a load of building materials on a job and calling it a house.  The leader must identify the issues facing them, find a way to solve the challenges, and put the team together.

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