In January of this year, a family of six died in a fire in a relatively new home (built in 2005). Investigation showed it was electrical in nature and a dry Christmas tree contributed to the fast building and spreading fire. All six were determined to have died from smoke inhalation. There were smoke alarms […]
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A Perspective On Women In The Fire Service
Recently there was an article in the local newspaper regarding harassment charges brought forward by several women that work for a local and large, fire department. Some of those charges included the fact that there were not separate sleeping arrangements for men and women at a majority of the stations. The department I worked for has had […]
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Aggressive or Reckless?
Recently a neighboring department had a fire that involved 2 structures. The department called for mutual aid from 2 neighboring departments and together made a great stop with no one getting hurt. Later, after the situation was mitigated the Chief used social media to express how proud he was of the team for their aggressive […]
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Fire Prevention/Public Education – Where Do You Stand Or Sit
35 years ago, my department had very little to do with Public Education. There was a Prevention Division, but no real accountability on what businesses got inspected or how often. It was not uncommon to have a business go for seven or more years without a visit from an inspector. In the early 1980’s, a […]
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Trust
Trust. Only a five letter word, yet it carries so much weight. When we leave home in our own vehicle for work or travel, we automatically are trusting of the other drivers on the highway. On a two-lane road we trust that the driver coming towards us will stay in his lane. On a larger […]
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Motivation
Motivation can be defined as a term used to explain behavior. Motivation drives people’s actions, desires, and needs. A motive is what prompts the person to act in a certain way, or have a tendency to exhibit a specific behavior. So, how can we, as leaders, motivate our people? Here are two schools of thought. […]
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Leadership, Another View
“Leadership is the privilege to have the responsibility to direct the actions of others in carrying out the purposes of the organization, at varying levels of authority and with accountability for both successful and failed endeavors”. What leader made this statement? It sounds modern and something right out of current leadership books. Actually, the statement […]
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What Firefighters Should Expect From Their Leadership
Much has been written about what leadership is, how management is different than leadership, and what you can do as a leader to improve your department. Do we remember what it was like to be a firefighter and how we reacted to the many different leadership styles we were exposed to? I remember thinking, in […]
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Important Qualities for Fire Service Leadership – Part 5
To summarize so far – As part of the National Fire Academy (NFA) Executive Fire Officer Program (EFOP), the student is required to author an Applied Research Project (ARP) within six months of completing each of the four classes. For the executive Leadership class ARP, I sent a survey to 50 metropolitan departments including my […]
Continue readingImportant Qualities for Fire Service Leadership – Part 4
To summarize so far – As part of the National Fire Academy (NFA) Executive Fire Officer Program (EFOP), the student is required to author an Applied Research Project (ARP) within six months of completing each of the four classes. For the executive Leadership class ARP, I sent a survey to 50 metropolitan departments including my […]
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