Since I’ve been in the fire service, the services we provide–as well as how much training we undergo to provide these services–have changed drastically. Combine all the new services and extra training with additional unfunded mandates, OSHA stuff, pre-planning of buildings, fire inspections, and oh, yeah, running a few calls, and you’ve got one busy day ahead of you.
Of course, nothing helps motivate the troops more than a constant diet of unfunded mandates, OSHA requirements and discussions on how not to get sued (aka, “cover-your-ass training”). If we weren’t constantly worried about ending up in court, our training programs would be significantly different. But lawsuits and mandates aren’t going away anytime soon, so we must adjust our training philosophy.
In my opinion, because of all the “extras” that have been added to our job duties over the years, the responsibility of providing training should be shared throughout the department. Why? Many training divisions are grossly under-staffed, which causes them to focus only on the items they’re legally obligated to complete. But this isn’t the way anyone wants to run a program.
In my department, our training captains are responsible for everything under the sun related to training, in addition to whatever else gets thrown on their desks. (I was a training captain, so I speak from experience.) It’s physically impossible to complete every single training exercise during an annual training cycle, so something has to give, and for many companies, that “something” is basic firefighter skills training.
As a result, the responsibility of training firefighters in basic skills falls right into the lap of company officers. But keeping your crew up-to-date on basic skills is a challenge for all company officers because it takes a tremendous amount of dedication, planning, organization and time.
A 24-hour shift may sound like a lot of time in which to get things done, but we all know a day can fly by without us accomplishing a single thing, because we don’t always have control of our day. If you want to maintain your crew’s basic firefighter skills, company officers must have two things: an initial plan and a scheduled plan for follow-up. Developing a training plan is fairly straightforward, but if you don’t include some follow-up, you’re wasting your time.
Training programs are challenging to develop and even more challenging to implement. So I developed a set of steps that seems to work pretty well when I’m faced with a training issue.
Step 1: Ask Yourself, Why Do We Train?
A few months ago while I was teaching a class, I asked a simple question: “Why do we have to train?” I got a few surprising answers, such as, “So we don’t get into trouble by our chiefs,” and “Because we don’t want to look bad.”
These guys were looking at the question from the surface, which focuses on consequence and ego rather than the real root of why we train.
There are two fundamental reasons why we train: 1) We have dangerous jobs and as company officers, we’re responsible for the safety of our crew, and 2) we have a responsibility to provide a well-trained firefighting crew to the people we serve.
There’s no one better suited to train a company on basic skills than a company officer. If you’re a company officer and you’re relying on your training division to train your crew, you’re not doing your job.
Step 2: Determine Your Crew’s Skill Level
It’s very challenging to develop a training program that covers all the legal stuff, maintains our basic skills, challenges us to become better firefighters and helps us advance to the next level. Training divisions typically don’t have the time or resources to make sure everybody maintains the competence to pull a hose and throw a ladder.
When working with a new crew, every company officer must first complete a “company-level needs assessment.” Every fire company has slightly different training needs; therefore, every company should be trained in response to those needs.
Base your needs assessments on how your crew performs on calls and how they train on the basics. If they have a hard time with basic firefighting skills, that’s where you start. It seems fairly simple and straightforward because it is.
Step 3: Identify the Problem& How to Fix It
Figuring out your crew’s skill level is pretty easy when you use some simple observation skills, but finding out why someone is lacking a skill is a little different.
Consider this scenario: You’re working as a company officer on a new crew and you realize one of your crewmembers has some performance problems during drills and emergency calls. To say this firefighter is embarrassing on the fireground would be kind. How do you handle this?
During company officer promotional interviews I’ve observed, one common answer from many candidates is, “I’d get the firefighter in line and take care of the problem because it’s my responsibility.” If every officer were able to “get people in line” and “take care of the problem” with as much ease as it took to answer that question, there’d be a lot less gray-haired or balding fire chiefs.
The truth of the matter is that dealing with a training issue isn’t as easy as it may sound in an interview. Supervisors often spend a considerable amount of time trying to correct a mistake before they realize why somebody made a mistake or is having trouble, which is like trying to treat a symptom, not the disease.
When I was a captain, if one of my crewmembers had a problem, I used a fairly simple strategy to figure out what the deficiency was and how to address it. If I only treated the symptom, I rarely fixed the problem and usually did a lot of work for nothing. Having a strategy to find out what’s causing problems will help you fix the actual problem, not the mistake that led you to uncover the problem. Consistent mistakes are usually the byproduct of a larger problem.
From my perspective, people make poor decisions or mistakes based around three “root problem factors”: a competency/comprehension problem, a training problem or an attitude problem. And this doesn’t just pertain to the people I supervise; it pertains to me as well. If I have a problem that resulted in a mistake, the problem generally stemmed from one of these three root problem factors.
The chart above is a quick and oversimplified reference guide I’ve made for myself so I can try to figure out why someone, including myself, has made a mistake, but it gets me going in the right direction. If you can figure out why someone has made a mistake, you can most always get to the root of the problem and fix it.
Conclusion
I don’t see our training responsibilities fading or becoming less complicated anytime soon, so everybody has to step up and share some of the responsibility of training. All the additional services we provide to our communities these days are great, but if we don’t remember to take care of the basics, we’re doing a disservice to our crews and the communities we serve.
