Hilton Head's Engine 1 company using Truck 6 in training.
There comes a point in every organization where evaluation must be made of the over-arching vision and determination made if that is the direction that is desired, or if not, does it need to be recalibrated. While that recalibration is really incumbent on the legally controlling entity (city or county council, commissions, or boards), it is the issue of recalibrating the organizational culture that I wanted to discuss today. Because regardless of your organization, you are going to have personnel who are resistant to change, and while the troops may or may not decide to go willingly, it is a requirement that your officers or supervisors are. If your small unit leaders aren’t on board, don’t count on the personnel they supervise joining in to resist them. It will be much easier on those troops if they can get along with their misdirected officer than if they embrace the change, so you can count on the message not getting through when it is most needed.
If you have officers who are unwilling to evolve, they must make a decision (as do you) as to whether their personal contribution (or lack thereof) to the mission is causing a bigger problem. People are going to disagree on issues for a number of different reasons. They may disagree on how the overall vision is met. But if both the supervisor and the subordinate can work to capitalize on their personal views and collaborate (or develop by consensus) on solutions that take us to that goal, then that is positive and constructive. If you simply don’t agree as to the mission, or you can’t work with others to develop solutions, then maybe that’s your signal to start looking elsewhere.
There will also be those who just won’t let the past go. That total distrust in authority can be chalked up to a lack of maturity. It’s easy to hold on to fear, it’s hard to make that leap again and trust. But for some, it’s a game. It’s cool to be the rebel. It’s easy to make fun of what you yourself are incapable of creating. If you are rebelling for a just cause, that commendable. If you are rebelling to make fun and to be “cool”, you’re a tool.
Vision must be shared to make it effective. If you ask your team what their vision of team success is, if you get an answer other than what you desire, you have conflicting vision. Teams all the time make assumptions that their individual visions are one. That’s all fine on issues where concessions can be made, but if these decisions affect the core values of individuals, you will find irreconcilable differences. If these issues become counter to your values, this is where the team will break apart or survive. These are your true watershed moments.
It is important that vision is shared. Otherwise, the desired result will not be what comes out. You can have the most charismatic leader in the world out in front, but when you reach that waypoint where visions are divergent, there will be a strong oppositional pull. Several things can happen: They will go one way or another, or they will split the team, or there will be such a struggle for control that we go nowhere, or the team will go off on a path no one wants, or people will pull together and reach for a common goal. When those power struggles occur, these are the points where a leadership vacuum occurs. Like it or not, when it does, something will fill that, sometimes to the detriment of the team’s overall goal.
If you are the legitimate leader and it really is your position to say, “THIS vision is your reality”, then you need to do so. If others don’t (or won’t) share that vision, they need to get on board or get off. You can’t deal with incompatible vision. Conflict management and resolution is imperative. You must either accept their way, convince them of your way, or accept a compromise- which may make everyone upset.
Each of these waypoints are periods to stop and evaluate our direction and reconfirm that we are doing what is important to us, as well as that this is the direction in which we want to go. This provides people a place to jump off if they aren’t comfortable with the direction.
While not all of us can be inspiring, we can at least strive to be transformational. We can know what qualities that entails, we can identify and point people toward those resources, we can listen and empower our people. We can be open to others’ ideas, permit change when change is needed, and especially when others are strong in talent, encourage their strengths and passions to benefit the whole team. When you can do this, it permits others to trust you. When people have been burned so many times, you have to earn that trust and it won’t happen overnight. You have to keep doing it and keep reinforcing it, even when it is frustrating.
Happy New Year!
Recently I was dwelling on an inventory of stupid and dangerous things I have done in the past. Since the list was way too long to go on about, I began to wonder why I did those things. While some of them were from my youth (like jumping off a roof with an umbrella), and some were from my bachelorhood (getting my Suzuki GS750E up to very unsafe speeds), it occurred to me that a lot of them occurred during my adolescence after watching the movie “
Author’s Note: I updated this post from the original due to what looked like, in hindsight, to be mostly whining. My apologies to those of you subjected to the original garbage.
For some of the new readers here, not only is Firehouse Zen about enlightened leadership, it is about management issues and creative solutions to ongoing problems in the emergency service industry. If you are a long-time reader, you may recall our discussions in the past regarding 
Distance separates us. Of course it does, you are probably thinking. That’s not that much of a revelation. But distance separates us all the more so because by being distant, or more so, by not being alike, it also indicates a schism between you and I. The fire and emergency services are united in our history, but at some point we evolved into many different representations of the same idea: service to others. As to whether that space can be broached or not is the big question. While we can all claim brotherhood and a desire to do this job, whether we are career or not; whether we are urban or not; whether we provide EMS or not; and a whole host of other differences keep us from effectively saying “We Are One”.
Right now there is an interesting discussion on 
Just this week, not only on our relatively quiet haven of Hilton Head Island, but right here in the community in which I live (Palmetto Dunes), comes a story which has become national news. Before I knew it would be on CNN and everywhere else, I read in our 
For the past year or so, our department has been building a training facility of our own. We officially dedicated it on the 29th and christened some of the props with a little demonstration burn to wow the VIPs who came out to celebrate with us. It’s a nice facility and was designed with more than just training in mind, given our organization’s desire to find multiple uses for things. The site was designed to also be an effective staging location for after hurricanes, or to be used as a distribution center in the event of the same, and can support our semi-annual HAZMAT roundup. But to me, one of the best things is no more begging.
I’m Mick, and I yell. I think this is the part where you all are supposed to say, “Hi Mick.” Why do we yell? I started to say, “I’m a yeller”, but that doesn’t sound right. And I don’t scream. Screaming to me indicates panic or total loss of personal control. But anyone who knows me knows I have a little bit of a fuse and when you light it, I’m liable to say some things I wouldn’t intentionally repeat around the God-fearin’ folk.
My final group of people who are not happy with credentialing efforts are the “outsiders”. To me, they are the ones with the most logical and compelling concerns about credentialing. Ironically, these people are often those already with some responsibility for response, or they are in the process of trying to improve the capability. In more than one case I am aware of, these efforts went about to fill a vacuum where poor or absent service existed. And interestingly enough, the people working hard to improve the service have been effectively kept out of the loop by those who guard the credentialing development process.
There used to be a day when warriors considered it less than chivalrous to take cover or to shoot from a prone position. Most of us in this millennium probably would never consider it a good idea to stand up and march forward upright into a withering hail of bullets unless we were certain we wanted to end it all right there. While Napoleonic tactics continued to be used on the battlefield well into the 1900’s, for centuries, experts in the art of warfare were aware that when fighting a battle with an enemy that had a decided advantage, less than conventional tactics had to be applied.
Recent Comments