Tag Archives: leadership

So, if you’re “scouting” the potential officer talent in your fire and EMS organization to see where your future officers might be coming from, what should be your scouting criteria?

What traits do you believe make a firefighter a good candidate to promote to Company Officer? I asked several fire service colleagues the question: What traits to you look for in firefighters as potential company officers? Two of those colleagues, Fire Chief Bud Backer and Division Chief Susan Tamme, provided some really good insights back to me via e-mail. I could only use a few of their comments in the finished article, but the rest were so good I just couldn’t leave them on the “cutting room floor.”

People--especially those who enter the fire service--generally want to be successful and feel like they are making a contribution to the organization. Lack of clarity from their organizational leaders, and especially their first-line supervisor, in the form of clear expectations can be a significant "roadblock" to their success.

We can change the culture in the fire service, but not through solutions like policy or procedure or training or lawsuits. The change must come from the “majority stakeholders” in the fire service: Men. Men must take responsibility and ownership for the problems we face in the fire service. And right now, they must also take responsibility for seeking and implementing the solutions.

It is your responsibility to teach respect, pride, accountability, teamwork, and ownership. You have to encourage and motivate your team to be decision makers by paying attention to the simplest details. As the leader, it is your obligation to pay attention to the little things and hold your crew accountable for their actions. They will never accomplish the big tasks if they have not completed the little things.

So how do we in the fire service become better at recognizing that one of our own is “drowning”? How do we get better at asking for help? How do we get better at providing help?

We're not "carrying the day" with effective public fire and life safety programs that provide the factual information about residential fire sprinklers. We're allowing the builders and developers to promulgate the "half-truths" and myths.

Without a residential fire sprinkler system, this fire quickly grew to a size and magnitude that engulfed the majority of the structure before the first firefighters even arrived on scene. Those firefighters were faced with an overwhelming situation from the very beginning.

A powerful piece of prose about one firefighter's "come to Jesus" moment with firefighters and cancer. An equally powerful message about how everyone in the fire service needs to "get on the bus" concerning firefighting and the dramatically increased risk of developing cancer we--and our families--face.

Let me introduce you to the “sacred cow” in the North American fire service: interior firefighting. Once again we hear the same tired arguments against changing our default tactics for combating structure fires...