It’s easy to be a company officer when you’re surrounded by all-stars. Coming to the fire station, running calls, even mundane tasks like cleaning the cobwebs out of the ceiling of the apparatus bay can be the stuff of legendary “good times” when you have a great crew. As a result, we tend to guard our personnel and work hard to keep them in their positions until promotion, or retirement, drags them from us.
It’s natural to want to surround yourself with good people–as firefighters, the public demands much of us. And at any given moment, you might have to place your life in a fellow firefighter’s hands. You don’t want to be thinking, “Are they really up for this?”
But we don’t get to choose our crews; every organization has high achievers and poor performers. The question is, what are you doing about it?
The Promotion Dilemma
Company officers will, at some point, find themselves in the land of misfit toys, commanding a group of individuals who are perceived as being poor performers. The officer has two choices: Run from the challenge and seek refuge in the safety of all-stars, or accept responsibility and work to improve the company.
It’s easy to push the responsibility for poor performers back on the “organization,” but when you blame everyone, the ultimate outcome is that no one has to take responsibility. In reality, when you blame the organization, you’re blaming yourself.
Too often, the solution in the fire service for marginal or substandard performance is promotion. As counterintuitive as this may seem, examples abound of individuals who have been moved to positions of greater authority under patently false pretenses with such phrases as “career enhancement,” “to diversify their career experience” or “because it’s time for a change.” Often the promotion places them further away from situations in which they would have to make life-and-death decisions, in effect limiting the potential exposure to liability for the organization. Under such false pretenses, the member thinks they’re an all-star when, all around them, others are acutely aware of their shortcomings. This is tremendously problematic for several reasons.
First, a lack of accountability–a willingness to accept responsibility for unacceptable performance–results in widespread mediocrity. There’s no way for an organization at any level to demand excellence without being willing to hold its members responsible for their actions.
Second, it sends a clear message to everyone in the organization that mediocrity, or worse, is the road to promotion. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but one cannot escape the criticism that we’re only as strong as our weakest link. If our weakest link is not intact, we are organizationally broken.
Third, failure to address substandard performance, particularly on the emergency incident scene, is the functional equivalent of telling the emperor that he has a lovely new set of clothing when in fact he’s naked. Too often, company officers who themselves are not taken to task for making bad decisions will fail to demand accountability from their subordinates.
Finally, mediocrity kills firefighters.
This is why it’s fundamental that, when confronted with substandard performers, company officers hold their personnel and themselves accountable, rather than trying to push the poor performers out of the firehouse, through promotion or other means.
The Company Officer’s Role
Combating mediocrity in the fire service rests with company officers, and that starts with instilling a powerful sense of self-review within the company. After every call, the crew should return to quarters and, in a formal way, talk about what went right and what went wrong.
Individual members of the company should be required to self-report when they believe that they, or a member of the company, including the officer, failed to meet expectations. Company officers should demand that their personnel identify every opportunity to improve the service delivered to citizens.
I read a story recently about a Little League baseball coach who consistently fields championship teams. He doesn’t recruit or select the best players during tryouts. Instead, he does the opposite; he picks the worst. And then he does something incredible:. He teaches them how to play baseball and, in doing so, shares his love for the game in a way that captures their spirit and wills their bodies and minds into believing they’re baseball players.
This does not happen by accident. There are no substitutes for hard work and perseverance. And the reality is that not everyone is cut out to be a baseball player, just as everyone is not cut out to be a firefighter or a paramedic. But company officers can be like that Little League coach, turning a group of “misfit toys” into a successful team.
Company officers are the key to survival on the emergency incident scene. They must be willing to be accountable for their own actions and the actions of their crew, and in doing so, demand excellence from everyone. Talking to your personnel in honest, forthright terms is the most important thing you will ever do as a company officer.
Don’t let indifference or complacency define your reputation.
