Tag Archives: fire service leaders

Be a leader not just a manager. Model the behavior you expect to see. Empower personnel to make decisions befitting their rank. When personnel and officers are given the freedom to do this with the expectation that they make decisions supporting the mission, vision, and values of the department and the town an amazing thing happens, they do the right thing every time.

With my acceptance into the program, I joined a cohort of 21 other members who are newly appointed fire chiefs and aspiring fire chiefs from around the nation. Before our first session in May, retired Fire Chief Mary Beth Michos, the coordinator for FSEDI, sent out biographies of each cohort member. As I read through the other 21 biographies, I was “floored”, awed, daunted, and honored. Impressive is an understatement for the biographies. I fumble to find the right word to describe the group of individuals I was reading about: remarkable, inspiring, extraordinary, amazing… No pressure.

In this latest installment of Reader “Mailbag” I’ve collected several of the reader comments in response to the blog post, The Sexual Sexual Harassment Strike OutAssault and Rape of Women Firefighters: Survey Results. I gleaned the representative comments from across the various social media platforms where this blog appears, e.g., LinkedIn Groups, Facebook, and Twitter.

Many of us first became familiar with Dr. Clark and his “big thinking” approach to fire service issues when he was among the first fire service leaders on this firefighter safety issue: Firefighter “Mayday”. Dr. Clark was the first to bring awareness to the issue by asking the tough questions...