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Your Altruism Is Hereby Noted

I was reading the never-ending stream of discussion on Dave Statter's site about the AZ fire department refusing respond to a structure fire three miles away from their station because the home was in an area that was not paying for fire service. And we have had this discussion many times before, here on Firehouse Zen, a la South Fulton County and others. And I am constantly surprised at the discussions that go on regarding the "pay to spray" concept, since, by now, I would have thought most communities in our nation would have gotten a clue and done something about it, one way or another, or would stop acting so surprised when it happens again. And it keeps happening again. And again.

When I was a very young firefighter, I remember this very same kind of event occurring with a subscription fire department. I also remember being outraged that something Ike this could occur. Really, we are altruists, we firefighters, and we do this stuff not for the pay but for the love of our fellow man. Right? But, some thirty years later and more jaded and cynical, I wade into this conversation with a dose of reality for you. While it is great that we are all so willing to serve and to lay down our lives for others, there comes a serious discussion that is higher on the food chain than we happen to be. This discussion lies at the feet of those who make these policy decisions, at the jurisdictional level, and with those who claim the fire service is gutting their wallet for all they can get, then act stupid when we tell them all this stuff costs money.

This situation is heartbreaking and I can certainly empathize with the homeowner, my own family having lost everything we had to fire when I was young. But I also know from the perspective of a community activist: if a necessary service or facility is needed in my neighborhood, I work to fix it, or build it, or develop it. I don't sit around and wait for someone else to do it. If I were in a situation like this, I'd work with my local fire department to get them funding. I would help with fund raising. I would be a total pain in the ass to my elected officials and agitate to resolve the problem. But I wouldn't just stick my head in the sand and hope nothing happened.

Please don't take my tone as being disparaging to those of you who feel the urge to help regardless of whether the person pays or not. I certainly believe in selfless service to my neighbor. I am happy to be there in their time of need and regardless of their ability to pay. But I have a question for those of you who are getting emotional: "How many times does it have to happen before the elected officials in these communities get a clue and ensure that sustained funding is provided for fire protection?"

I feel stupid just repeating it, because the subject has been covered SO MANY TIMES; these trucks cost money. The fuel to send them costs money. The equipment on them costs money. The insurance costs money. The protective gear we wear costs money. The station we respond out of costs money. It's not even an issue of paying salaries and benefits; just the most elemental of operations at least requires the means to put out the fire and that requires funding. Do the citizens in these neighborhoods just assume the fire department will pay for these needs and they can get by without paying for the service?

You take a gamble when you decide to go uninsured, or in this case, live in a community who won't pay the bills. While I agree that there are likely some contributing factors, it is as simple as this: If I lived in a community and there wasn't police protection, I'd find out why. If the community leaders refused to help, I would do something about it. Or perhaps (which will make the pro-gun advocates jump with joy) I would arm to protect myself. But I wouldn't keep quiet and accept that I would be without help in the event I needed it.

The real tragedy is that over the history of our nation, when "real" leaders realized fire protection was substandard, or too far away, or wouldn't be available to them, they organized their own fire protection. In this day and age, one could even add sprinklers to one's home, you could be fire safe and maintain your home and property correctly, and if you absolutely had to, you could even provide your own fire apparatus (people still do this). But even if one can't afford to pay a subscription, there should be some alternative solutions, like a community grant to pay for those who haven't the means, or maybe even some work equity to pay the subscription off.

This leads into discussion on the situation in these communities in regard to "service". Volunteerism is a highly commendable and altruistic calling, not just in the fire service, but in many community services who lack the resources afforded to other projects. I volunteer as an advocate for those with Down syndrome; I volunteer to help the homeless and hungry; I served for years with a camp for children who have vision challenges; and I support a whole range of other causes. I would never withhold assistance to someone who needed help. In fact, that is why we are there, to help. But if the people who need the help can't fund the service, it is incumbent upon us, as leaders of these projects, to find out where to get those funds. I may seek corporate funding, or community funding, or tax funding, or pay for things out of my pocket. But the money has to come from somewhere, and if we were in the situation of helping someone who could afford help, I would certainly expect them to have some equity in the solution.

"Pay For Spray" is a pretty derogatory descriptor of the situation. I would bet that the firefighters in these communities are challenged between doing what is right to help their neighbors and the elected officials who chose to abandon their responsibility for ensuring public safety needs are adequate. This is not an enviable position to be in. But frankly, those of you who are so aggrieved by this situation should really consider moving to these areas and offering your services free of charge, putting diesel in using your credit card, and paying the light bill, because it sounds like they would love to have you pay for it all out of your pocket.

Instead of bashing the department's chief for having to make a tough decision, perhaps we should focus the blame squarely on those who created the problem: The taxpayers and politicians who knew they had coverage issues and elected to abandon their neighbors out of convenience. If you have a subscription service, as I said before, you'd better have an alternative plan in the event someone doesn't pay and you have to go into action. And if the answer from the town fathers is, "Too bad", that should be widely known in the community, in the media, and everyone involved, and there should be no shock when it actually occurs, because trust me, it will.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on January 28, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, leadership, News • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, altruism, Arizona, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, Dave Statter, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, firearm, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, gun, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, South Fulton County, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, values, vision, volunteer, warfare, zen zone

Who Built The Pyramids?

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My Grandfather, Earl "Smokey" Mayers; with my cousin Tom, my sister Colleen, and Smokey Bear himself.

I was reflecting on things we find iconic and recalled a feature on NOVA from years ago. The documentary was intended to shed light on the builders of the Pyramids and their techniques, in an effort to better understand just what civilization had the ability and the knowledge to be able to construct these amazing structures.

A quote of Mark Lehner's from the website that I recalled from the segment was this:

I first went to Egypt in 1972 and ended up living there 13 years. I was imbued with ideas of Atlantis and Edgar Cayce and so on. So I went over, starting from that point of view, but everything I saw told me, day by day, year by year, that they were very human and the marks of humanity are everywhere on them.

What they found was that these craftsmen were actually pretty ordinary. They were able to apply certain techniques that employed an excellent knowledge of physics, and they were also able to utilize the resources on hand to handle certain aspects of the construction plan, and to obtain the appropriate resources necessary for other aspects as the year evolved.

But the thing that struck me was that these were, in fact, craftsmen, who were good at what they did, but they used what they had available at the time to overcome their hurdles, and they created something that has lasted for time immemorial.

While this might not sound very intriguing to you, it seems to me that they didn't have advanced engineering degrees back then. They didn't require the craftsmen to have a laundry list of certifications or other formal education. You could either do the job or you couldn't. And while that might, to some of you, be an indictment of the formal education requirements we put on people today, I suggest that it is instead that the ancient Egyptians probably could see pretty quickly if you had it or you didn't. You probably either had the aptitude to construct certain structural components correctly or you were assigned a different job, and that is a lesson to be learned for all of us.

My grandfather was a well-respected fire officer and fire marshal. He, however, had only a ninth-grade education and yet he was a chief fire officer at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and then at Warminster Naval Air Center, and also the Chief Fire Marshal for Montgomery County, PA until his death. Smokey had common sense, he had a feel for the job, he had been doing the job his whole life, and he was dedicated to it. He got to be very good at it, to the point where he was teaching others. He even has an award for leadership named in his honor.

Those kind of credentials wouldn't fly these days. Experiential knowledge only goes so far in a society where value is placed on where you went to school and who you know as a result. I am certainly not coming down on the need to have professional standards, but I also suggest that there were people who were doing the job long before a degree was required to do so and perhaps we should give a little credit to those individuals when they have something to say.

Scientific knowledge is becoming more and more important not necessarily because the way people have been doing things for years is wrong; the process is more necessary now in order to confirm we are right. Fires go out sometimes, despite our best efforts. We should be able to understand more correctly what it is we are doing that works, and what factors are on our side that have literally been saving our asses for years and we didn't even know it.

Credentials are important to reassure us that you at least had the discipline to follow a course of study long enough to get a lambskin out of it. But I think it is important to remind ourselves sometimes that at one point, there were no HAZMAT experts. There were no EMS experts. There were no US&R experts. These and many other subjects were discovered by individuals who had an idea, talked with others about it, and ran with their findings to develop a solution to a problem. These pioneers didn't say, "You know, we should really wait for someone to tell us how to do this". They did the legwork, they figured out the answers, and they created the disciplines that the rest of us aspire to today.

When you have a problem you think is unique, I would bet that you are not alone. Finding the answers to problems requires the courage to ask questions and to assert your desire to learn, not to sit on the bench because you don't have the piece of paper saying someone has conferred their perception of the problem on you. The way someone else handled the problem isn't necessarily the best way. Be a leader by being an innovator. Learn all about your job, treat it like the craft it is, and learn from each experience. The knowledge you gain and share with others can last as long as the Pyramids if you nurture it in the right people.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 25, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, credentialing, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, degree, disaster, discussion, Earl Mayers, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Giza, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, Montgomery County, motivation, NOVA, NPR, officer, opportunity, PA, PBS, Pennsylvania, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, pyramids, resources, Smokey, Smokey Bear, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

If You Want To Be Treated With Respect, Look The Part

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I’m sure the morale in in some departments is pretty low right now. With all the venom coming from the haters and the constant attempts to defund our services, the attacks seem to come one after another anymore. I was looking at a video recently of a fire department going through some tough times and a close-up of their front pad prompted a double-take.

I didn't post a link to the video specifically because I'm hoping it was of one of their closed stations, because I'm pretty sure no self-respecting fire department would allow their station to grow cabbages in the cracks on their front pad. There are, however, departments out there who are very much like that, then they can't understand why there is no confidence from their customer base, and the whole thing makes me wonder about the culture of some of these departments to begin with.

I have often shared my views regarding the impression we make on others, and how important that impression is to maintain, not just when you WANT that impression to be professional, insightful, forward-thinking, etc., but at all times. Why? Because if you have to convince others that you are what you say you are, it isn’t going to happen overnight. It has to be a perception of everyone at all times because when you really need others to see those qualities in you, it will be too late to change the perceptions when that moment occurs.

A clean fire engine, a well-kept uniform, a coiled up garden hose (instead of just thrown in a heap) are all just stupid little things that may not be important to some of you. But to the casual observer, they indicate an attention to detail that indicates your organization has self-respect, self-discipline, and that the individuals value the opinion of the community. More importantly, though, is that these details aren’t just window dressing, that the organization actually must live those values and demonstrate through their interactions with the community that they are those things and that they really do provide the best possible service. Positivity breeds positivity. If you look and feel professional, you are more likely to act that way.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 19, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, image, improvement, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, Lowcountry, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Gone Shrimping

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I grew up in the urban Northeast. In the thirty years I have been in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, I have had a few laughs about my cluelessness with the things a "boy growing up in these parts" would have experienced in life so far. One of these things is learning to throw a cast net to catch shrimp.

A week or so ago, having no idea how to perform this stunt and reluctant to discuss those inadequacies with my Southern born and bred peers, I studied the logic behind cast nets and how they work. I researched what makes a good cast net, watched several videos on technique, and pursued other facts. I determined the best places to throw, when to throw, and what to do when I catch something. I then bought a net and over the last week, practiced a little. Then yesterday, three little girls in tow, I went to a nearby tidal creek, threw the net, and realized more work was necessary.

This is probably an amusing anecdote for most of you, as it is for me. My daughters thought the whole thing was hilarious; first, the other day as they revealed my plan to my wife (who is herself Southern born and bred and had a good laugh, I'm sure). Then, yesterday, when my bucket fell into the water and I lost an hour's worth of casting when both of the shrimp fled for their lives.

So later in the afternoon, while buying shrimp from the fresh local seafood guy, I was actually smiling as I recounted my efforts, knowing that I still had some work to do. But in reflecting on the lesson, I realized that I had gained an extraordinary experience, one that maybe a lot of people will never face. Furthermore, I had something to share with you all.

Finding I had something I wanted, I decided to do something about it. I figured out the challenge and did something about it. Now, in the wake of my relative success, I also understand that further analysis is necessary, the process needs to be refined, and the improvements implemented to see if they result in success.

I know officers who, when they have a problem on their watch, say, "I have a problem" and expect others to solve it for them. It isn't an issue of not knowing how to solve it. It is an issue of not trying to learn. I didn't know how to throw a cast net, so I took some initiative and learned about it. I asked questions. I created a hypothesis, tried it, and upon failure I did not throw up my hands and whine about it, I decided to look at what I did wrong and made adjustments.

I am not there yet. I may even end up a miserable failure as a cast net fisherman. I may, however, realize my goal and be able to get shrimp out of a tidal creek instead of out of an ice bin at the supermarket. I choose to remain positive about it, even as my family snickers behind my back (they love me and understand me, so I'm okay with it). Hopefully, however, I am showing them a life lesson in that I didn't wish change to occur, I made it happen.

As the saying goes, "You can hand a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he can eat for a lifetime". Real leaders don't wait for someone to teach them; they seek opportunities and grab them. They hold opportunities like a shiny object and examine them, marvel over them, understand them, manipulate them, and seek to solve them. As I see it, if you do the homework and figure out everything about fishing, you can teach it to others as well, and grow from the experience.

In the meanwhile, however, we are going to enjoy our shrimp dinner.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 13, 2012 • Filed under: change, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, Training & Development • Tagged: advice, altruism, boy, cast net, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, daughters, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, humor, integrity, laugh, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, lessons, Lowcountry, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, shrimp, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Happy Independence Day! And Here’s What Your Firefighters Are Doing Today…

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In light of recent actions by our elected officials and the trolls who support their draconian "cost saving" efforts, I wanted to present to you a little slide show of what your local firefighter might be up to over the holiday.

I think we all agree that the economy is pretty rough right now and almost everyone is struggling. That is, everyone except our clueless politicians, the bankers, Wall Street executives, and lawyers. But while municipal budgets are shot and retirement systems are going belly-up, it isn't the risky investments, poor leadership, partisan politics and mismanagement by these mutts being blamed for the problems. No, the talking heads and pundits like to use the lowest common denominator to create circumstances portraying the American Public Servant as a greedy, lazy government slug. It is the local firefighter who is the bad guy.

So I am going to give you some examples of stellar community decision making and I will also show you a few pictures of firefighters not earning their keep…

In an example of best practices, the Mayor of Detroit, amidst an arson spree, last week elected to cut 164 firefighters out of a job. While an effort was finally made to keep these positions through a federal grant that seems to ALWAYS be on the chopping block, a lot of people worried about silly things, like whether or not staffing would be sufficient to put out a fire in your Detroit home. As usual, though, these people failed to consider that putting out fires was just one issue. In most communities firefighters do a lot more, like CPR on a loved one, inspecting occupancies for safety hazards, or helping a little old lady off the floor at 0330 in the morning. But hey, we are lazy government slugs…

On the other side of the globe, firies are held in a little higher esteem as their American brothers and sisters but they do the same job. Could it be that their culture is different there? Possibly, but the reality is that in the United States, there are a number of people who fail to realize that fire department budgets are a drop in the bucket compared to other municipal spending. There are people in our country who will parrot anything someone says without even thinking about the realities.

In this case, firies from the Country Fire Authority risked their lives to protect homes and even lend a hand to the displaced local fauna, in this case, a thirsty koala. Most firefighters will go out of their way to lend a hand, even if you aren't a member of homo sapiens. Most firefighters are motivated by a desire to help others, not to siphon off your hard-earned tax dollars needlessly…

You see, Baltimore City seems to also be having some struggles keeping firefighters busy, so city leaders are proposing to close down two truck companies and a squad. I would hardly say that BCFD's Truck 10, who ran over 2200 calls last year, is sitting around looking for something to do, but they are scheduled to close. The irony is that they were recently credited with a great rescue which would likely have not happened if the closure had already been in place. Any tea bagger will tell you, though, all these fire trucks are pretty much sucking the money out of our pockets and are just one more case of government waste…

The cushy jobs that firefighters have permit them to work in dangerous situations for long hours and little pay. These overpaid and overcompensated government workers happened to run into this refugee as they rushed to save Colorado Springs from a fast moving and stubborn fire. These are the same firefighters who I'm sure catch crap regularly about how much it costs for a fire engine, or why is it that they can't just keep those 15-year old air packs instead of buying the most modern safety equipment. But I don't know what I'm talking about, since I don't even know what department this guy is from. The funny thing is, I visit many fire stations each year around the nation and even the world and guess what? They ALL continually face the EXACT SAME ISSUES!

For example, in Kansas City, they want to get rid of 105 firefighters. The elected leaders say we are drowning in debt and this is necessary despite an increase in revenues and several years of salary freezes. So it sounds to me like the firefighters have been taking one for the team, but the same article mentions the Mayor's office is getting a new receptionist, another policy analyst, and a grant writer, as well as paying for an efficiency consultant. So much for being no "I" in "TEAM"…

But in sunny South Carolina over Independence Day, firefighters will be again sitting around playing checkers because nobody really needs them. We won't talk then about all the issues we look to firefighters to help us solve. Not that every community has a loggerhead turtle population, but just out of curiosity, if you did, and one ended up in your pool, who would you call? The cops? Nope. You'd call the same people you call if your water heater ruptures in your attic, if your kid got his arm caught in the stair railing, or if you smelled a strange chemical odor in your kitchen. You'd call the fire department because there really are no jobs to do that firefighters say, "That's not my job" to. Firefighters are your neighbors, they are your kids' sports coaches, or they are your local tradesmen. They are really there to help you, even if you don't know what kind of help you need.

So while the pictures of firefighters fighting fires portray our efforts as heroic, and the haters out there like to portray us as working the system to get one over, I think there are thousands of stories about the good that we need to share. Who is really gutting the American Way of Life? I'm proposing to you that it isn't us. We're people like you; we work hard, we have good days and bad ones, and we like helping people. In fact, the great majority of our ranks do volunteer, and in communities where that arrangement doesn't work, we get paid, but with rare exception, we aren't getting rich doing it. We are not the enemy, the enemy are those who would have you watching us so you aren't paying attention to them. It is an age-old tactic to find a scapegoat to take the attention off of the crime you are conducting and while so many are focusing on the public servants, they aren't watching the real crooks.

I hope each of you have a great Independence Day weekend and that if you aren't a firefighter, you don't have to use our services. And if you are a firefighter, you have a safe one. Pay attention. We are on your side. KCCO.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 30, 2012 • Filed under: change, leadership, politics • Tagged: advice, altruism, Baltimore, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, Detroit, disaster, discussion, draconian, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, Kansas City, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, pictures, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, scapegoat, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, Wall Street, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 22: The Ballistics of Change

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Change has been likened to many things. When we have to make meaningful change in our lives, there are different schools of thought as to how to implement change. In my blog post from the other day, I discussed the need for considering all the facts whenever possible, to digest the issues and to savor them, in order to get all perspectives available.

But while identification of the problem and analysis of the facts might require a little more time, when it comes to making the decision and implementing it, we are talking about some different concepts, none of which stick out to me as being better one way or another. This morning I very briefly saw a piece on the advantages of getting right up when the alarm clock rings, or hitting the snooze button, and how that translated into the way the rest of your day panned out.

Are you someone who likes to jump in the pool or do you dip your toes in? Do you rip the bandaid off or do you ease it off? The way in which you deal with the pain of change might involve the amount of pain, your tolerance to pain, and how much the pain affects those around you. How change occurs has as much to do with you as it does with those who also have to endure the change. And just because it is you making the change, we do have to consider the impact on others, especially because the way we process it might result in pain for others.

In especially emotional change, such as in the termination of a relationship, a poor evaluation, a painful revelation, I almost wonder if it isn't better to just make it happen, to make the statement, or to not even permit a reaction. I am, of course, considering that the fast delivery of such a change and the cleanliness of it passing through our lives might be preferable to the slow, tumbling death that comes with a low-velocity round, ripping apart our souls as we pore over every inflection, every word, every alternative consideration.

As a leader, there will be a day when you have to provide a scathing review, or provide advice that might hurt, or to stop an action from occurring. We all hate to change that relationship from what might be considered acceptable, or to avoid the stress of conflict, but when it comes down to it, which is better in the long run? In which scenario do you believe that healing can quickly begin again? Or that we can learn from our mistakes and move on?

I guess that is a question for the ages. Our lives evolve around the changes we face daily and the way we react to those events shape our perception of the reality around us. My reality isn't necessarily your reality. By being enlightened about the issues we deal with we can hopefully understand that the fabric of time moves on. From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khyyam:

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

As we change, we grow. We must seek the opportunity to learn from what the hell just hit us and try to survive it. If we learn, we can avoid making the same mistakes again. If we survive, we can improve. But in any case, nothing we can do to change it back will do so; you can't un-ring a bell. Enlightened leaders turn every moment into a learning moment.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 29, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, environment, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, gifted, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, IQ, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, Lewis Terman, Malcolm Gladwell, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, observation, officer, opportunity, Outliers, parent, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, talented, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 21

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None of us wants to be in the situation where the things we do are restricted because we happen to fall under a "broad brush" response to certain exigencies, such as what happens often when a situation is particularly pressing and requires immediate action, but time does not permit a more careful study of all the facts. We have likely all been in a situation like this and we may likely have responded to certain situations with this kind of approach, but as transformational leaders, we have to understand how this translates into a worsening of the situation. A considerate response to certain problems is almost always warranted, even if time does not permit, because of the unintended consequences of these broad brush statements.

While some of the aftermath can even prove humorous, some have disastrous effects, even resulting in fatalities. Therefore, it is important that we try as often as possible to consider the ramifications of our decisions, even when doing so might seem to take up more time than is allocated.

In emergency services, too many problems are treated alike: we are in the business of responding to disasters. Usually, though, those disasters are not OUR disasters, they are of someone else's making. While expedience is the normal requirement for decisions we make, a knee-jerk reaction might cost us big-time. But I also see where issues of administrating a fire department or an emergency medical system are treated identically to the decisions we make on the incident scene. If lives are on the line, then the time for careful consideration of alternatives is appreciably short. If a significant cascade event will occur without an immediate decision, likewise. But the day-to-day operation of things generally do not fall into those categories, so the way we solve these challenges should not be similar.

Don't let someone else's perceived urgency push you into making less-than considered responses. Understand your situation, size up the needs, consider your resources, and then, and only then, decide. Like my dear ol' Dad always said, "Do it right the first time." You'll be surprised at how many times doing that will save time rather than squander it.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 28, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Firefighter Safety & Health, leadership, Training & Development • Tagged: "Do It Right The First Time", advice, altruism, broad brush, change, chief, Chuck Mayers, Command & Leadership, conflict, consequences, consideration, customer service, Dad, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, irony, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, policy, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, unintended, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 20

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In celebration of the 20th installment of this series, Firehouse Zen presents to you a little message from the Dalai Lama. If I could really get the Dalai Lama to comment on here, that would be pretty impressive, but alas, I only have a six month old quote from the Buddhist Channel that I found to be highly appropriate. You see, the Dalai Lama himself, in regard to the many problems facing society right now, called on people to be "responsible human beings…and to think more of the entire world they live in, rather than caring about their own narrow interests alone, as a way out" of these crises.

His comments were directed at the participants of the Copenhagen summit on climate change, where "some of the participant countries expressed that their own interests were more important" than interests of the whole world. "Avarice and short-sightedness are to blame", he said, adding that people were guided by emotion and did not think of the long-term consequences. Now if that isn't an indictment on the views of our current mindset when it comes to leading, I don't know what is.

You see, I hear all the time about leaders who say that representing the needs of management is the most important facet of their job. And I see and hear of those who think representing their personnel would be the most important facet of their job. What really should be the most important part of our jobs as leaders is to focus on who we really should be representing, and in the case of emergency services, it should be the public.

We can't, as leaders, avoid believing that our own ideas are the best for solving the wrongs we are faced with. We became leaders, after all, because of our expertise, our vision, and our ability to channel the respect people have for us into forward motion. However, when faced with any challenges, the first place we should be looking when it comes to change should be in our own hearts. I am guilty of it myself, but we have to consciously understand that introspection is an important element of leading that even the best fail to do sometimes.

We have to seriously challenge our own beliefs and perspectives when faced with the big decisions because we all develop biases over time and it is easier to assume we always have the answer, especially when we have always HAD the answer. This little short-cut, however, causes us to leave out the views of others and the other possible solutions to problems and causes our ideas, sometimes, to become stale or inadequate. We should always seek to understand all sides of each situation and decide when we have all the pertinent facts, not just when we think we have them all.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 25, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Buddhist Channel, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, Dalai Lama, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, environment, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, gifted, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, introspection, IQ, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, Lewis Terman, Malcolm Gladwell, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, observation, officer, opportunity, Outliers, parent, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, talented, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 19

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I began this post before I left and upon reading it, didn't like how it fell into the order of things, so it is an entirely new post. Part of the reason was that it seemed like things might be wrapping up, yet there was still a lot left to be said. I, like many of you, will probably always be concerned about the legacy of leadership, or rather, what becomes of what we placed in motion when we are gone? Being a leader is very much like being a responsible parent, or rather, it is EXACTLY like being a responsible parent, in that you set forth values and vision of what you want your child to be in life and hopefully, it sticks.

While parenting is sometimes a crap-shoot, as I know really responsible parents whose kids ended up as delinquents and vice-versa, there is a certain element of parenting that relies on the responsiveness of the child to what they are learning. Conversely, the environment provided to the child to reinforce that what they are learning applies as well as opportunities to develop and to enjoy success.

Simply letting your child develop into whatever it is they feel like developing into doesn't work. Simply letting the people you mentor figure out what it is they need to do to succeed doesn't either. Mind that I am not a sociologist, I am just an observer of human nature and a student of the art of leading. But it has been my observation that individuals who are provided an opportunity to succeed, learn to succeed, and if that success is reinforced, they expand on it. If not, they shrink from it.

In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, he discusses Terman's studies on the gifted (relative to intelligence) and how IQ presumptively factors into success. The inference originally was that those with high intelligence should likely rise to the ranks of esteemed scholars, scientists, and other leaders of society. Instead, these gifted children evolved much like the rest of society: there were successes, there were failures, and there were those who simply existed in the middle.

The short version is, that after this situation was observed, the study revealed that the influence of parents, or the opportunities provided to those successful students by parents, were the difference in failure and success. Thus it also figures that the influence of good leaders can create success opportunities in a similar fashion.

When you create chances for your charges to better understand their jobs and their own strengths and weaknesses, you provide an opportunity to grow. You can make your team, your battalion, your department, or whatever area you influence into an incubator for future leaders. If that isn't transformational, I don't know what is. Fill the vacuum with good stuff and don't give the negative and the marginal a chance to fester. Individuals with any motivation whatsoever will thrive in a positive and motivating environment, and that kind of atmosphere will recharge your own batteries as well.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 20, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, environment, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, gifted, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, IQ, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, Lewis Terman, Malcolm Gladwell, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, observation, officer, opportunity, Outliers, parent, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, talented, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 18

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From Forbes.com

I walked away from the blog for a little while to catch up on some priority items. In the meanwhile though, another blog was born from Capt. Tom (ems12lead.com) named Customer Service, Technology and Social Media and I'd recommend you check it out. He's also got a Facebook page that you all should "like" because he's already begun to link some really pertinent articles on there, one of which I want to discuss in regard to this forum as well.

The article I wanted to share was written by Carmine Gallo at Forbes.com, titled Customer Service: The Disney Way. In the article he discusses three points that should be addressed by every business in order to improve their customer interactions, and all three are well-advised. The point I wanted to touch on, however, is contained within his advice to "Provide Communications Training". He states:

Every team member at Disney Parks is trained to be an effective communicator. For example, everything at Disney runs right on time – rides, shows, and trains. If the train is a second late leaving the station, the conductor gets on the speaker and explains exactly why the train is delayed and how long it will be until it gets going. The staff is also trained to answer common questions, even if it's "not their job".

Related to our conversation, this is incredibly important. As we have alluded to before, as leaders, our customers are not simply the obvious ones: the external customers we know as victims, patients, taxpayers, etc. Our customers are also our internal ones: our own bosses (Fire Chief, Deputies, etc.) as well as the fire marshal's office, maintenance, the administrative staff, the social club, the training division, and any other number of interactions we share even as volunteers or career emergency service personnel.

Most importantly, in the aspect that we are serving, our customers are those we are leading. If you aren't seeing the point here yet, let me clarify; what makes that customer interaction so valuable in this Disney scenario is that there is an emphasis on communication, and even more so, on honesty, transparency, and a shared interest. As the customer, you are likely more willing to forgive a delay or any other kind of "disappointment" if you understand the cause, especially since, if everyone is on the same page of being committed to the customer interaction, the customer understands that you were already trying to put your all into it.

This requires a certain sidelining of ego. If I am serving, I have to be able to put YOUR needs before MINE. I must be able to admit if I am wrong. I must try to provide that positive experience and demonstrate a reason why you should trust that I am. This requires, sometimes, some pretty candid conversation. For example, there was a project that I was working on that failed to achieve support by the administration. The troops felt like it was a priority item, but unfortunately, there was another item with a higher priority for all resources available, including manpower, funds, etc. While the unsupported project was very important to the guys on the line, in the big picture it was obvious to me and other chiefs that we needed to take care of the other project first.

Realistically I could have said, "This is what we are doing. I am the Chief and just do what I tell you". And there are times when we have to do that, like on the fireground, for example. But the times that you handle communication by decree really should be as limited as possible, because then when you issue that order, it is taken that much more seriously. But by taking the time to explain the bigger picture, you not only show others what the true issue is, but you educate them in the process and you bring them up to a better level than the one they were previously in. Doing this gains you support because you show that you are worthy of trust, you demonstrate concern for their perspective, and you let them know what to expect.

So long as you do things for the right reasons, there should be nothing to hide. If you govern others like you would want to be governed yourself, and consider their perspectives on each situation, you should have no reason not to be transparent and you should be able to count on those individuals to work together to support the greater good.

Take an example out of the Walt Disney Company playbook: treat others not as you would want to be treated yourself, but even better. You'll find that the interaction pays back exponentially.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 26, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Carmine Gallo, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, Customer, customer service, development, disaster, discussion, Disney, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Forbes.com, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 17

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If your organization doesn’t value altruistic leadership, after a while, the enlightened will get so worn down from beating up against that wall that they will give up or move on. There are plenty of places in which this environment exists, and while I like to think that eventually good triumphs over stupidity, I know plenty of cases where not only did the “leaders” fail, but they dragged down the whole organization in the process.

In one case I am familiar with, the CEO was not only beating down everyone around them, but performing criminal acts as well. His more worthwhile subordinates were trying to save the company but those whose interests were to save themselves only managed to prolong the inevitable. In the real world, judgment doesn’t come swiftly from the heavens to reward the just and to punish evil. This company slowly and painfully went into default and ultimately, the people hurt the most were those who tried to keep the place afloat to the bitter end. Life isn’t always fair.

But if anything can benefit from transformational and altruistically motivated leadership, it is indeed the organization. The reason is that regardless of how well you perform, crises will occur over time, and the organizations that weather those challenges best are ones that are value-centered to begin with.

Entities who are untrue to their expressed values find that when a storm arises, there is ambiguity in how to right the ship. Those who see that integrity isn’t necessarily rewarded will lean toward the solutions that cover their asses the best. There is discipline in transformational behavior, in that people take actions based on the greater good, or for the right reasons, rather than based on self-interest. People enmeshed in a mercenary culture won’t be manning the lines when there isn’t anything left to reward them with, they’ll be sneaking onto the lifeboats.

When as a leader you can point at certain values and say, “This is what we expect you to do, regardless of the situation”, you can expect that the people who are on board will act accordingly, especially if you personally hold those values to be true. If you don’t adhere to those values yourself, don’t be surprised if your followers act exactly as you do.

Morale, it is said, is the great force multiplier. Transformational leadership can exist in a culture that doesn’t value it, but unfortunately, if it doesn’t get the chance to root, it dies on the vine. If you say you value excellence but settle constantly for mediocrity, mediocrity is what you will get. If you say that you value innovation and settle for the status quo, be prepared to see stasis. If you say you value integrity, but the back stabbers and ass-kissers are the ones who get promoted, you can be reassured those will be the characteristics of those who desire promotion.

The only way to develop transformational leaders is to demonstrate that you value transformational leaders. If individuals see that altruism is acknowledged and rewarded, they will act accordingly, and they will begin to develop those characteristics not because they are rewarded, but because they realize that it is the right thing to do.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 21, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, development, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 16

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 18, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, birds, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, Facebook, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, helpless, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, Lt. C, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, MN8 Products, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, Zach Green, zen zone

LTM, Part 15 Continued

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 17, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 15: The Bag of Tricks

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 16, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, analogy, bag, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, dictatorship, disaster, discussion, donut, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, paternal, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, steak, thought, Training, transactional, transactional leadership, transformational, transformational leadership, tricks, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 14

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 15, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Australia, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, crew resource management, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, EMS12Lead.com, engage, ENTJ, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, FRI, government, Heart Safe Community, hfacs, Hilton Head Island, human factors analysis and classification system, integrity, irony, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, Myers-Briggs, officer, opportunity, Paul LeSage, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, stoned, style, The Hammer, thought, Tom Bouthillet, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, W. Edwards Deming, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 13: Ironies

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 11, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Australia, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, ENTJ, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, irony, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, Myers-Briggs, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, stoned, style, The Hammer, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 12

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 10, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, analogy, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, dictatorship, disaster, discussion, donut, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, paternal, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, steak, thought, Training, transactional, transactional leadership, transformational, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 11

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 9, 2012 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Blue Hills, Bozo the Clown, change, Command & Leadership, commissioner, conflict, customer service, Dave Statter, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hartford Courant, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, lights, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, POV, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, STAT911, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 10: In Someone Else’s Shoes

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 8, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Desire

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 6, 2012 • Filed under: change, leadership • Tagged: altruism, attitude, change, dissatisfaction, ego, EMS, FHZ, fire, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, greed, Hilton Head Island, integrity, Mick Mayers, motivation, positive, South Carolina, stone cutter, story, understanding, values, zen

Leadership That Matter, Part 9

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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.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 5, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, cadet maxim, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Geoffrey James, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Maslow, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, self-actualization, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, West Point, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 8

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A good friend I have known since our teenage years is a writer (and a reader of FHZ, thanks!) and upon catching the Twitter link the other day re-tweeted with with the comment that what she loved about the post was "the exhortation to THINK". And really, it's what I am truly asking you to do when you read this series. Not only that, it does no good for us to keep this to ourselves. I am also exhorting you, to use this very appropriate word, to share it with others and to get THEM to think.

The only way you will achieve this ability to lead with altruistic values is to do it yourself and make it a hallmark of your leadership. You alone must develop your own instinct as to what works and what does not, but as I tell my people all the time, "If you are caught between two alternatives and can't decide, choose the right one."

I can't tell you what the right alternative is. Only you can know what is and isn't. In the First Book of Kings, when Solomon was asked in a dream what he desired, his answer was not riches or fame, but an understanding mind, by which he might discern between good and evil. With the knowledge of what is right and wrong, you can truly achieve greatness. But what is right, like beauty, can often be in the eye of the beholder.

There are those subordinates, however, for whom altruistic leadership is poses challenges, in that they are either unable or unwilling to receive the message. We'll talk about the first one here today and the latter in the next post.

The new member of your team requires your empathy, your efforts to understand, and your patience. Depending on their level of competence, however, your efforts at leading them must be more directorial in the tasks that keep them safe (and the rest of the team) and the soft skills, like dealing with people, can be handled in a more approachable manner.

Eight years ago, when I was still a Captain, I wrote an article for Withthecommand.com about the analogy of training your family pet as related to training your personnel. A Dog's Lesson In Discipline was one of my first online articles and it was about the techniques I encountered in training our long since deceased Dalmation, Beau. If you have firefighters who require closer supervision because they are new or they are learning a new facet of the job, the expectations must be made clear, the expectations must be appropriate for their skills or abilities, and if the subject fails to comply, either remediation or discipline is warranted, depending on the nature of the failure. Like the article says, when you give an order, you should expect that it is followed. If it is not, there MUST be consequences: either the order needs clarification, the subject requires more training, or the subject requires discipline. Failure to comply must create a reciprocal action, or plan on never having your orders followed.

However, as people begin to become more competent, as they learn to understand exactly what you expect, and they learn to do these things with a minimum of conscious thought (actions become more automatic), you can start increasing the side-by-side type of guidance that altruistic leadership provides.

As a little analogy, if you just ran a long race yourself and found yourself exhausted, yet were running with a friend who is also exhausted, if one of you is too week to walk across the finish line a few feet away, what is the best way to do so? If you have to do all the pushing, you won't make it. If you have to do all the pulling, you won't make it. Likewise, it is so for your friend as well. But if you both work together, side by side, it becomes a force multiplier. Two of you together can create the strength to move forward.

Working together implies sharing the load when it is necessary. If we sit back and let someone else do all the work, the team gains nothing. If we do all the work, same result. If we work together, amazing things happen. Try it and see.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 4, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 7

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So here we are on Day Seven of this series; while I see my numbers are up, the comments are surprisingly few. I’m always hesitant to say that you agree with me or disagree, but what I think I’m hearing from those of you who have commented or PM’ed me is that you appreciate the nod toward what is often termed “servant leadership”, as far as altruism is concerned.

And really, altruistic leadership IS servant leadership, in that leaders who practice these ideas put others before self. It takes a leader who is very secure in their own skin to serve rather than to flex their muscle and wield their power to get things done. As we said much earlier, anyone who has something to offer in return can practice transactional leadership. So long as you can pay, you will get.

Ultimately, however, there will come a time when you need your charges to dig deep, to exert themselves in a way you can’t compensate. In a quid pro quo existence, when you really challenge your followers, if you can’t reward them now, you will have to pay them later. It is in these situations where the balance now falls in favor of the ruled rather than to the ruler. If you really believe this to be true, then you are at a serious disadvantage when you must ask them to take on yet another challenge. In an office setting, this might work out. In jobs like fighting fire or tending to the ill and injured, you will not be able to keep up with this tab.

I'm going to give you an example that isn’t for the faint of heart, so you will have to excuse me, but it serves to illustrate my point:

As a servant leader, I tell my troops that there is nothing I will ask them to do that I won’t do myself. My job for a long time was to lead our special ops teams. For those of you who aren't emergency service types, special operations involves work with a great deal of additional training to our normal emergency duties of fighting fire or practicing as EMTs. Special operations often encompasses response to hazardous materials alarms or technical rescues, or other work that most people would find too terrifying, too dangerous, or beyond their own physical or mental capabilities.

One night we just finished dinner and got a phone call at the station. An engine company and a medic were already out at a residence where they suspected a deceased patient was located. The last time anyone had seen the deceased was several days before, and the statement was that the situation was beyond the capability of the personnel on scene. As they even got close to the front door, the smell was overwhelming and the flies already swarming; nobody could even get into the house to determine what the issue was.

I took my company down there and getting the face-to-face report, I brought my crew together. I informed them of what the report was, I told them what I expected we would find. And more importantly, I told them that while I was concerned about the entire situation, especially with the very real potential for a gruesome finding, if any of them were not comfortable with handling this situation, I would understand. However, since the job needed to be done, I would personally lead the team in to investigate and solve the problem.

As it was, my team did go in, with the proper PPE, and in fact, the scene was entirely horrible. Nothing in our training prepares you for things like that. However, my relationship with the team members enabled us to get through the situation together. One individual was struggling more than the rest of us; I asked him to stay back out of the room itself and help us with logistical support. The rest of us performed our grim task in extraordinarily bad conditions, secured the remains, and brought them to a point where the coroner’s office could then retrieve the deceased. We then exited the home, performed our decon, stowed our equipment, and returned to service.

Talking with the crew later, I asked them how they felt. Even the most stoic of our team showed a little bit of stress over the event. The thing that stuck with me, however, was their insistence that when they saw I was willing to do the job and I placed my concerns for their own well-being first, they were all willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, even if it meant challenging their own abilities beyond what they thought they were capable of.

No amount of reward would have changed the attitudes necessary to do this kind of task. Many teams I know would have refused the job; it really isn’t OUR job to remove remains. But someone had to do it, if it wasn’t me or my crew, it would have been someone else. I trusted my crew to tell me what their limitations were and they trusted me to take them to the absolute limit and not put them in a situation that mentally or physically, they would not be capable of handling. This required leadership from the heart; showing your subordinates that you placed their welfare above your own, but being firm about the job that had to be done, and motivating the team to do what it took.

Back in July of last year, I wrote about taking my daughter Caroline on a Ferris wheel for the first time:

She was tentative at first and I was watching her eyes as she was taking it all in. She sat in my lap and clung to me in fear as we made the first few rounds. While she was crying, it wasn't hysterical crying, and we all kept reassuring her until she finally turned around and saw the Ocean City Boardwalk's lights and sights trailing off to the north. She dried her eyes and was immediately enthusiastic. By the time she got off the ride, she was so excited she could hardly contain herself.

This is the heart of transformational leadership. I could have bribed her with something to get her on there and in some cases, that's what it takes for us as parents to get our kids to try something. But when you CAN pull off something like this, where you can convince them to trust you and it pays off with a positive experience, it pays off multifold. They see they can trust you to look out for their interests and in return, they are willing to make the leap, even at the risk of failure sometimes. That takes a very mature relationship and purely transactional leadership won't get you there. It requires a bond, sacrifice of your own comfort, and a willingness to work through the issues.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 30, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, Caroline, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, customer service, disaster, discussion, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, ferris wheel, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, management, marketing, Maryland, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, Ocean City, officer, opportunity, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, thought, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 6

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Altruism is not group-think and shouldn’t be confused as such. Altruism is considered what is better for others based upon societal norms, not on the populist vote. And selfishness isn’t the absolute reason why others fail to consider the altruistic option when faced with a choice. Many other factors can fall into play, but an important one to consider in our leadership context is that of the overwhelming desire to fit in, to be part of the “gang”. Because if being part of a bigger whole is important for very primordial reasons, sometimes that urge to be part of the group supersedes what is really right as part of society.

A person’s maturity levels obviously factor in; their ability to stave off impulsiveness to do what is right for others as a whole compared to what seems to be right for themselves or for the group we happen to be in at the time. Helping a fellow member of a criminal gang escape detection at risk of your own incarceration, for example, might seem to be altruistic. In the sense that self-sacrifice for the group might meet that definition, what about the rest of society? Really, what is and isn’t altruistic, then, is entirely based upon what the individual considers to be right. We have to really look at what is right by being fellow human beings, or int he context of your faith, or whatever values you happen to have. Eating other humans, I think we all agree, is wrong. But there are those who, in certain contexts, might legitimately argue otherwise. I'm not trying to tell you here what is wrong or right. The purpose of this series is to get you to THINk about what is wrong or right and PERSONALLY lead and set the example in the regard of what is right.

Take for example in World War II Germany, German citizens helping oppressed Jews escape, which at the time, would have been considered contrary to German law. While we would all consider ignoring those laws and assisting escape to be demonstrating altruistic behavior, given the atrocities being conducted and the values of our society, there are things we also must consider in the scope of right and wrong. While I certainly don't defend it, perhaps those who were “law abiding” members of German society might have considered those life-saving actions to be against the values of that society. Given the importance in Germanic culture of conformity to society and lawfulness, I can see, while I don't agree, that their perspective has some context worth discussing. It is all very much contextual as to what is and isn’t valuable and sacrificial when it comes to the actions we consider altruistic. What is for the good of man versus what is for the good of society, on a daily basis, causes us to disagree as to what actions are for the good.

So this conflict we endure is very real, very tangible, and while we personally may feel that the actions one takes are not necessarily “good”, one might reason otherwise in the context of for whom the good is being served. Bad decisions sometimes don’t come about because someone is a sociopath, but because their judgment as to what is right is temporarily clouded for any number of reasons.

Take another recent example: the crying kid at the Yankees game and the “terrible” couple who wouldn’t give him the ball that had been tossed into their seat. This story went rabidly viral. People were shaming the couple. Supposedly less than altruistic behavior, most of us thought, the selfishness, the greed. What we didn’t know was this: the couple was to be married this weekend and they were celebrating at the game together. According to the child’s PARENTS, who have gone on national news, the couple, in fact, offered to give the child the ball. But the PARENTS, sensing a life lesson on not getting what you want through screaming and throwing a tantrum, opted NOT to take the ball.

We don’t always have the facts before we rush to judgment of another. It takes a lot of discipline; discipline that I personally don’t always have, to take a step back, gather the information, and then make a determination of action or inaction. We have a spot detection of what is right and what is wrong. So not every act that defies what we consider to be altruistic is. It isn’t our place to say it is either. But we can focus on ourselves and make better decisions in that manner. And we can educate others in how to be better themselves.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 29, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, anger, book, Cars, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, conquest, customer service, Dale Earnhardt, disaster, discussion, E.O. Wilson, Earth, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, foul ball, government, group, Harvard, Hilton Head Island, I Am, insects, integrity, Ira Flatow, kid, kin, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, loser, management, marketing, math, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, NPR, officer, opportunity, organization, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, Rangers, resources, Science Friday, screaming, selection, social, South Carolina, thought, tom shadyac, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, viral video, vision, winner, Yankees, zen zone

Leadership That Matters, Part 5

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My inner cynic reminds me that many people are selfish. One trip to an amusement park, your local Walmart, or even trying to get out of the church parking lot, can reinforce that observation. In western society, our philosophy has been to tell our children that they need to “look out for number one”. Survival is attached to being the fittest.

This aspect of our culture has driven us to become bigger and better. I certainly don't believe there is anything wrong with improving our situation, with developing and becoming a global leader in everything from innovation to education to any number of advances. There is, however, balance that can be achieved, because the competition comes at a price. Again, in the documentary I Am, Tom Shadyac discovered that cooperation may be nature’s most fundamental operating principle. As I brought up in LTM4, Professor Wilson's discussion regarding social behavior and the advancement of species, how altruism actually increased the propagation of humans and insects. But consensus decision-making is not limited to these two either. Altruistic behavior has been found amongst many species, including fish, birds, deer and primates.

Competition implies conflict by its very nature. A favorite line of mine in regard to competitive behavior (which I heard first in the movie Cars, but after searching, I have found attributed to Dale Earnhardt) is: "Only the winner wins; second place is the 'first loser'”. The call to be competitive has been drowning out the call to work together for a long time, but seems even more so in the last decade. The “Me” Generation has not left us and may not ever, unless a sea change occurs. The attention span of the average citizen of Earth isn’t more than a few seconds. "Why should I consider the effects of our actions on others?" one might ask. "All I care about is what is happening NOW."

Again, we return to context. While one might not be inclined to do what is best for society because of their own selfish reasons, the facts illustrate that adversarial relationships within groups hinder success while altruistic behavior increases the chances for success. From a purely objective outlook, there are more rewards for practicing altruism than not. The question is, then, why won't people see this from that objective point of view?

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 28, 2012 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: advice, altruism, book, Cars, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, conquest, customer service, Dale Earnhardt, disaster, discussion, E.O. Wilson, Earth, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, engage, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, group, Harvard, Hilton Head Island, I Am, insects, integrity, Ira Flatow, kin, lead, leaders, leadership, learning, loser, management, marketing, math, Mick Mayers, mindfulness, mission, motivation, NPR, officer, opportunity, organization, philosophy, planning, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, Science Friday, selection, social, South Carolina, thought, tom shadyac, Training, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, understanding, values, vision, winner, zen zone

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