By Calen Maningas
What’s the difference between a skill and an ability? Almost all departments will say they hire and promote based on knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) but very rarely, if at all, do departments delineate the difference among all three.
Jones and Bartlett’s Principles and Practices 4th ed. (Ward, 2021) and Management in the Fire Service 4th ed. (Carter, 2008) both discuss that the fire service should hire and promote based on the KSAs of the applicant, but they give no guidance on what that looks like. In fact, in most fire service books, KSAs are used as one word. Treating KSAs as one thing to gain, learn, or do does the fire service a disservice.
Look at this dilemma from the candidate’s angle. Say a candidate “falls short”/does not make the cut. You advise him that he needs to develop his KSAs. Awesome, what does that mean and how does “falls short” take clear steps toward developing KSAs? On the other hand, how does your organization acknowledge that “falls short” no longer falls short?
There is an answer to this question that applies to the fire service, but it is found in psychology and adult learning.
KSAs
Walk through this exercise with your team. You can be the chief directly making organizational hiring and promoting decisions or a company officer who just had a new member added to his company. Ask your team to define KSAs.
What is knowledge? You will get a wide variety of answers: “understanding our job,” “knowing our craft,” and “applying water appropriately,” to name a few. Here is the first misunderstanding. Knowledge is gaining and applying what you have learned. This may come with power bases such as expert power, but the reality is, being an expert is just a mastery of knowledge. Gaining understanding and growing in knowledge are known as the Cognitive Domain.
Let’s introduce some context. In the late 1950s, an educational psychologist named Benjamin Bloom developed what is now called Bloom’s Taxonomy. (Ruhl, 2021) Bloom’s Taxonomy addresses three domains; the first is identified above. While the taxonomy has progressed over the years, the theory was based on the fact that someone could master a subject if provided the right conditions based on complexity (Ruhl, 2021).
What does this mean to us? Let’s discuss the other two domains and then their application.
Ask your team what the difference is in a skill and an ability. During this discussion, ask more questions and be accepting of having thoughts challenged. Many will say something along the lines of “a skill is being able to do, like throw a ladder, and the ability is doing it effectively.” This does not describe an ability but rather describes the mastery knowledge, Cognitive Domain, and a skill, known as Psychomotor Domain.
Psychomotor Domain focuses on the physical movement and motor skills. Throwing a ladder is muscle memory or mastery of Psychomotor. Knowing when to do it and how to do it effectively is mastery of the Cognitive Domain. Almost all answers to the question of skill and ability will fall to some combination of Cognitive and Psychomotor Domains.
One response received to this question was, “I will never be a ropes guy.” The individual was asked, “Why?” During that conversation, it was clear that the individual understood ropes and knots, Cognitive, as well as could tie ropes and knots, Psychomotor, yet felt he would never be a “ropes guy.” He felt the answer was that he could not master an understanding of ropes, again Cognitive, or how to tie multiple knots, again Psychomotor. The reality is, the answer exists in the last domain.
Ability falls into the classification of Affective Domain. Affective Domain is the internal belief system that determines behavior. The “ropes guy” was correct in that he will not be a “ropes guy” but not because he can’t master the knowledge or skill but because he characterized himself as “not a ropes guy.” Our Affective Domain has a lot to do with how we were raised, our world view, and who we think we are. This is where the Emotional Intelligence conversation fits in.
Why?
Why does any of this matter and how does it apply to the fire service? The answer is culture. If we don’t understand the difference between a skill and an ability, how can we test for it? How can we require it to be added to our team or promoted to be in charge of our team? Ultimately, are we choosing an organizational culture or letting one happen to us?
There are three aspects of culture to consider: what culture is, how we carry culture, and how we protect culture.
The culture of our organizations will be defined by the things we are creating and the things we are condoning. The policies, procedures, and systems we create, or fail to kill, define only a piece of our culture. What we are condoning, allowing, whether good or bad, within our firehouses also defines our culture.
Think of culture as a bubble. We are currently living in our bubble. Feeding our bubble are the things created and condoned. Carrying our bubble, our culture, are the stories we tell. What are the stories that we brag about, the legends and narratives we share for generations?
Figure 1. Culture
How are we protecting our culture? We protect our culture by who we allow in and who we put in charge. Who are we hiring on our teams and who are we putting in charge of our teams?
Figure 2. Protect Culture
Departments all over right now are wondering why it is hard to hire, why many people are quitting. They wonder why a good firefighter who gets promoted turns out to be a poor leader. The answer is in Affective Domain.
Ask your team this: “Are you hiring and promoting those individuals who truly characterize the values of the organization?” The answer is most likely no. We are not hiring or promoting members who truly internalize what our organizations value. Does your organization even value what it says it does?
If you were to audit your values and look at what you do vs. what is written on your walls as a value do, they align? If the generation before us asserted the values, we will assume them, and the generation we hire will abandon them.
This does not mean we sterilize the fire service into one way of thinking. Every recruit and new promotion will lead from how and who they are. One leader may look like a circle and the other may look like a triangle, but the key, is they both should have the same spots and stripes on their shape. The spots and stripes represent the values of the organization.
You should hire and promote those who align, internalize, and characterize the organizational values. Why? Because their internal belief system, which dictates how they behave, will be in accordance with the mission and vision of the department.
Develop Your Team
The good news is, a department can specifically grow and develop its members’ Affective Domain to be in line with the organization. Most departments provide a formal track for development. All members must go through the same books, classes, and tests, all to speak the same language. The side that a department rarely takes on is fostering the informal side of developing leaders–how we behave, speak, act, think. Common beliefs within your teams will result in common behaviors.
Informal development occurs at every firehouse, but it is rarely guided with the specific intent of aligning the members’ internal belief system with the department’s values. To do this, the organization must take on intent-based conversations with the goal of discussing hard topics. Furthermore, leaders must specifically guide the performance of their other leaders. Your shifts and battalions should not be looked at as separate individual stand-alones but as one team. A battalion is not eight separate stations but one team and, as such, your officers should be accountable to challenge and grow together.
To do this, an organization may use books, leadership podcasts, near misses, and line-of-duty death case studies–all to generate conversation. The goal is not to create group think and end with the same thoughts but to bring up hard topics and discuss what each member values in the topic and not their position on the topic.
An example of this would be having a discussion with your leadership team on how individuals lead up when they are not in charge or how feedback within the department should be given and received. A leader’s position in the discussion is not as important as what he values. As another example, you may argue that Santa Claus is real and a different leader may say he is not. Your stance is not as important as what you value. In this oversimplified case, the question for discussion is not whether Santa is real or not but what you both value.
The value of Santa falls in line with giving, service, and another’s first mentality. Both of you value putting others first and meeting the needs of those less fortunate. Take this to the next step: Say your organization values preventing harm to the community. By discussing Santa Claus, you are really discussing aligning your values of giving to those less fortunate with the organization’s value of preventing harm to those in need.
Of course, discussing a holiday-based tradition is not the actual conversation but may be asking, “If we could do XYZ over again, would we?” is. “What is one thing we should be or should not be doing and why are we still doing it?” Or, challenge your officers to put your current organizational values into an actionable statement for each. If you value loyalty, you can’t loyal something, but you daily can decide to put the needs of the team and department before your own.
While there are many tactics for intent-based conversation and guiding performance, the goal is to move an individual from just hearing the information to truly characterizing it. Bloom’s Taxonomy shows us that just listening is passive, but moving an individual to add value to what is said, then believe it, and attach his own worth to it is the goal (Ruhl, 2021).
How?
Here is the difficulty. Every department will have different needs and will create an internal hiring and promoting practice or use an assessment center. The question for hiring and promoting teams is, “Do we know what we are hiring and promoting for?” Is it merit based, character based, or simply based on some interview questions answered well?
There are many great assessments to type an individual such as the Meyer’s and Briggs (Myers & Briggs, 2023) or newly created Working Genius (Lencioni, 2023). Out of these assessments, an individual will be classified, but the challenge lies in if your team knows what classification it wants or needs. A candidate being classified as a “blue 42 ranger” is great only if you know your team needs one. Furthermore, what happens when we add pressure? Does the “blue 42” turn purple when squeezed hard enough and maybe purple is the last thing your team needs?
To hire and promote those who truly align with the organizational values, first decide on the true organizational values. Next, in the absence of a way to verify an individual’s Affective Domain, consider his track record. When hiring, put more emphasis on gaining an understanding of the candidate’s previous history, who he is.
Keller Williams, one of the largest real estate companies in America, teaches its teams to do a “sniff test” (Keller Williams Realty , 2019). The intent is to dig deep into the candidate and see if anything smells funny and consider if he aligns with your desired culture based on your true values.
When considering a candidate for promotion, remember that the most important thing you can do for your culture is tightly control who you put in charge of it. Whether internal or external assessment centers, take a deep dive into the track record as well. Consider if the candidate lives and characterizes the department values.
Figure 4. Track Record
Application
How do we apply this understanding?
- Ask hard questions.
- Identify what your organization values, not just what you have written on the wall.
- Develop your team.
- Hire and promote your true values.
Ask Hard Questions
Discuss this topic with your team. Ask if you truly understand the difference in KSAs and if you are developing the Affective Domain, the internal belief system that dictates how your members behave. Remember that what your crew, shift, and department believe will determine how they ultimately behave.
Identify Your Values
Deep dive into the values of your organization. Does what you say you value align with how you act? If not, change your values. Look at your high performers, those behaviors you want to see more of, and ask, “What do they value?” Understand that your crews, shifts, and teams all need to identify their own values. These values should never conflict with the organization’s values but should concur or correspond with them.
Develop Your Team
Do not promote someone to officer and then say he can be an officer. Promote those who are already acting as such. Develop your team’s beliefs to align with the organization. Do this by asking hard questions and driving conversation. The goal is not to have group think but to challenge how we think.
Hire and Promote Your True Values
The best way to protect your chosen culture is by who you put in charge of it and who you allow into it. Does your team truly understand what they are testing for in KSAs–merits, character, values? Know what you want as an end result, and truly test for it. No more days of promoting someone based on a good score on a written or a good tactical. Promote those who behave and believe what the organization believes.
The fire service is in a pivotal time where we are having to redefine who and what we are. Don’t allow a lack of understanding KSAs to affect the culture of your organization.
References
Carter, H. a. (2008). Managment in the Fire Service 4th ed. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Keller Williams Realty . (2019). Leverage One: Career Visioning. Austin: Keller Williams University .
Lencioni, P. (2023, February 7). Working Genius. Retrieved from The Six Types of Working Genius: https://www.workinggenius.com/.
Myers & Briggs. (2023, February 7). MBTI Basics. Retrieved from The Myers & Briggs Foundation: https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/.
Ruhl, C. (2021, May 24). Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. Retrieved from Simple Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/blooms-taxonomy.html.
Ward, M. (2021). Fire Officer: Principles and Practices 4th ed. . Burlington: Jones & Bartlett learning.
BIO:
Calen Maningas is a battalion chief and 16-year member of the Rapid City Fire Department, has led regional response teams, and teaches multiple high-risk disciplines. He is an instructor for the National Fire Academy (NFA), a member of the South Dakota State Fire Marshals Advisory Board, and a nationally published research author. He is a graduate of the NFA’s Executive Fire Officer Program and has a master’s in executive leadership.
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