For decades, the fire service has all but ignored the elephant in the room: dealing with how the job affects its membership. Whether it’s job-related issues like performance, attendance, promotability, administrative problems, or discipline or even beyond the job with home issues like relationships, marriage, drinking, balancing the checkbook, or taking a family vacation, the fire service hasn’t exactly had a healthy maintenance program for those who call it their career. Along with these often-ignored problems comes the mental health crisis that plagues the entire first responder culture and has caused serious issues like job loss, divorce, and even suicide.
Around the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the fire service started to address some of these problems as some of them, especially admin issues and divorce, began to get media attention. The problem is that we waited too long, and now it’s a systemic problem. Most of the time, solutions to these problems are not put into motion until things have escalated to their breaking point. Much like the situations we respond to for our jobs, we wait until there’s a full-on catastrophe before we act in ways to then fix the issues. This has proven to make problems worse overall.
Whether from the COVID-19 pandemic, the low salary, the younger minded generation, or just a lack of interest in doing a dangerous job, we are now seeing more and more departments having a new series of problems. Retention and new applicants are at an all-time low. Longevity has gone down, so much so that it is getting rare to see large numbers of members retire with more than 20 years. Departments are having a smaller pool of qualified candidates for promoting to higher positions. Along with this is an overall loss of comradery that once defined the job in firehouses across this nation. More and more members seem to have lost their drive and maybe even love for the job. So, what can be done?
What Is Coaching?
Structured like a meeting, once a week for an hour, coaching is a proactive instead of reactive approach to wellness. Currently, we wait until something happens to intervene and “fix” it, which is like a first responder’s job in that when something happens, we REACT and go mitigate the situation, hoping for the best possible outcome. The corporate world has been using coaching for more 50 years to build stronger, more resilient leaders and board members.
Think of coaching as a plan for whole life wellness. You establish a relationship with a coach, work on improving listening and communication skills, while setting up goals in different parts of your life. Your coach holds you accountable for these goals, pushing you toward positive changes. These changes could be regarding the job, promotions, transitions, retirement, injuries, or even the stress. Or, you can work on the parts of your personal life like relationships, finances, health and fitness, education, or just getting out of your comfort zone to become a stronger, more mentally healthy individual.
How Coaching Impacted Me
I received my first experience with life coaching through First Responder Coaching. Its founder and CEO, Jennifer Anderson, reached out to me via social media. After establishing who each of us were and what we do, Jen and I began working on setting goals and changing perspectives through her style of coaching. One of the first obstacles in my life that we approached through coaching was better understanding my comfort zone. All of us have one. As first responders, it tends to be a little more flexible, but once trauma is introduced into your life–in my case, I left the job, essentially losing my identity–that comfort zone springs back to a minimum size with high walls.
I was doing better healing from my traumas, along with learning how to better function having complex PTSD, yet my comfort zone that I was operating in was very small. Through coaching, I established a partnership with my coach where I trusted not only what they said but what I shared with them. Once that was done, I was asked powerful questions, which drew me out of my comfort zone to see a different perspective. Those questions allowed me to really see that by staying in that established comfort zone I had built, I was holding myself back from some bigger accomplishments.
Almost immediately, I began to see the positive effects and rewards of what having a supportive coach could do. Opportunities began happening that weren’t there before. Fitness goals were achieved. I was a stronger, more determined person and my overall mental AND physical health began to improve.
How Can Coaching Help the Fire Service?
There are many benefits to coaching, and the business world has been using it for some time. Coaching builds stronger, more resilient leaders who not only work on their ability to communicate their needs, wants, or desires, but who are thirsty to climb that promotional ladder and bring positive changes to their department. Coaching can instill a behavior and mindset in the current membership that can be passed down to the next generation of responders.
A happier, more satisfied employee will stay with the company longer. When potential applicants hear that those on the job are being cared for and listened to and are not just a number, a shift in the ability to bring people in the door is possible. With all of that comes what may be a forgotten obvious benefit: responders who can handle themselves and better communicate on an emergency scene. Coaching could produce more thorough, confident leaders who make clearer, more concise, and safer fireground or emergency scene command decisions. Think of the effects this could have regarding line-of-duty deaths and injuries.
Let’s just look at the results that could be achieved by proactively working with responders and their families regarding the lifestyle that comes along with the job. Having better communication skills alone could result in someone being able to reach out for help before a crisis sets in. Better, open dialogue could save a marriage or, better yet, reduce the amount of miscommunication that we face during our shifts and tours.
How to Implement Coaching in the Fire Service
Within most departments/organizations, there are standard operating procedures (SOPs). These govern how we operate on shift, at emergencies, trainings, inspections, etc. Within these SOPs is typically how to deal with injuries, aftermath, death of a member, leave, and the other administrative parts of the job. We need to start implementing an SOP that focuses on the proactive approach to ensure our membership stays as mentally healthy as possible.
Departments/organizations now can partner with resources–in this case, coaching–to set up a system of proactive plans. These are proactive conversations that the membership can have with a coach to work on the parts of their life they wish to improve. They can work on their communication to be a better private, captain, or even chief to better serve not only the public but our brothers and sisters. Having a resource in place that membership can use before a crisis hits (because it inevitably does), they’ll be better prepared to not only reach out to the appropriate resource but have the support from the job to do so.
Let’s stop waiting until something happens to react to the stress of the job and better prepare ourselves to live a more mentally healthy first responder lifestyle.
BIO:
Keith Hanks is a retired firefighter and EMT and 21-year veteran of the fire service. He was a training officer, certified educator, and field training officer. He was diagnosed with Complex PTSI in 2015. He has since dedicated his life to advocating for mental illness, substance and alcohol abuse recovery, and suicide awareness. In March 2022, he completed the filming of his first feature length documentary focusing on PTSI in the first responder community. He is a national speaker, podcast personality, and soon to be published author. He is currently a life coach and employed as the director of promotions for First Responder Coaching, based in Massachusetts.
