Every firefighter starts to build their reputation from the first day they walk into a fire station. The reputation grows with each activity, on or off-duty adventure and emergency incident. These reputation items are collected in your backpack and are seen by all. Truths, rumors, gossip, and stories fill the backpack. People can add to your backpack without you knowing about it. You cannot see all of the items in your backpack. Your backpack is closely inspected three times in your career: when you graduate from the academy, take your first assignment as a fire company officer, and take your first command as a chief.
Reputation is the overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general. For example, if you are considered trustworthy and kind, you have a good reputation. The three critical factors underlying a good reputation are your character, communication, and trust.
Character is your values and how you live them. Desirable firefighter characteristics include discipline, commitment, initiative, aggressiveness, and courageousness. Some fire departments identify their mission, vision, and values that can link to your individual values.
Action Item 1: You must be genuine and clear, strong in your values, and stand up to scrutiny. You must be authentic in your ideas, your excitement, your enthusiasm, your pride, and your ability to share thoughts with firefighters, fire officers, and chiefs. Abraham Lincoln said “Character is like a tree and reputation is like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it and the tree is the real thing.”
Communication is how you relate to others. Information creates the basis on which people have the opportunity to understand what you do and why you do it. That information educates others, helps them understand what is being done and why, and increases awareness that leads to understanding. Your goal as a fire officer should be to educate and build understanding.
Chris Komisarjevsky, author of The Power of Reputation describes the challenges in the digital world:
Our rapidly growing digital world has dramatically changed not only the way that individuals and organizations communicate but also the way that reputations are built, questioned, or thrown into doubt.
Access to the Internet on laptops, touch pads, mobile devices, smart-phones and other hand-held digital devices has made expressing thoughts and opinions —whether thought through or not — a quick and easy matter. Regardless of where someone is or the time of day or night, he or she can share thoughts about an event, an organization, or an individual.
Researched and well-founded or unfounded and biased, those comments and opinions travel around the world at mega speeds and are read by people who may have no frame of reference for what they are reading. (Keyboard Commanders! – Ward) You may never have met those who are writing about you or your organization — nor have they ever seen you — but you will feel the brunt of their comments.
As we know, once something is on the internet it can never be completely erased. As a fire officer, your sphere of influence has expanded beyond the fire company you are assigned to.
Action Item 2: Be thoughtful about your communications. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes to frame the discussion. Be an active listener. Be credible by researching the issue or problem until you completely understand the situation. When responding, talk straight and explain the situation in clear terms. Acknowledge other opinions about the issue or problem and ask for feedback.
Komisarjevsky points this out:
Keep in mind: Today’s “water cooler” is digital. Nearly everyone is talking to everyone else online by means of mobile devices, e-mail, text, or instant messages. This includes the people you work with, whose ability to reach more people in less time has never been easier or faster. Nothing happens without giving voice to some sort of communication using the latest in digital technology.
As an EMS Chief, I observed a picture of an internal management email on a public FaceBook page. The email was summarizing confidential information that was discussed in a supervisor’s meeting about a policy change. The email was posted on FaceBook a few hours after it was sent to the supervisors. You have no more than 12 hours to respond after a social media attack. After that, your ability to make an impact dissolves.
Trust is the underlying success goal for fire officers. Firefighters assess the new fire officer’s reputation backpack to determine how the officer approaches firefighter requests, company-level problems, and fire/ems incidents. Does the new officer “walk the talk?” Are the fire officer responses consistent and predictable?
Action Item 3: Share your power and authority with your fire company crew. This is accomplished through learning from those around you, delegation and training your crew to move-up to the next assignment (firefighter to apparatus operator and apparatus operator/senior firefighter to acting fire officer).
Building fire company trust requires the company officer to be authentic and consistent. The fire officer must enforce performance and behavior standards identified as important. Observing an unacceptable level of performance or behavior and not acting on it has the same impact as if you endorsed the substandard behavior.
It takes daily work to maintain your fire officer reputation. Here are five suggestions to build a career-long reputation:
- Manage your career – no one else will
- Seek new skills – be prepared to move up into other fire department divisions like code enforcement, community risk reduction, training, administration or emergency management.
- Build a network. Create relationships with people inside and outside the fire department who can help build your career.
- Foster work relationships with your supervisor and human resource professionals.
- Exceed expectations. Do more than what was asked of you
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Komisarjevsky, Chris (2012) The Power of Reputation: Strengthen the Asset That Will Make or Break Your Career. New York, NY: American Management Association. ISBN 0814417973
Here is a great example of a rookie firefighter getting his reputation backpack evaluated: Kleinfield, N. R. (2014 June 20) “Baptism by Fire: A New York Firefighter Confronts His First Test.” The New York Times Accessed June 24, 2018 at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/22/nyregion/rookie-new-york-firefighter-faces-first-test.html