Most chief fire officers started as firefighters. That orientation and the nature of our work makes many of the business-based “how to manage your boss” guides not useful in our world. The fire station supervisor or manager is the last place within the fire service rank structure where an individual supervisor has maximum control over the workday and the workspace with a dedicated team of colleagues. The company-level supervisor is a hands-on boss when achieving tactical and task objectives.
Moving to the chief’s rank means almost all of the required work is done by directing supervisors (Captains and Lieutenants) to complete tactical and task objectives. It also means receiving assignments and organizational expectations from many sources. The chief is held accountable for all of the activities, accomplishments, incidents, and misadventures that occur within the battalion. The well-known method of doing something and then “… beg for forgiveness” rapidly erodes as an acceptable technique at the chief’s management level.
Here are five ways to manage the professional relationship with your chief:
1: Determine the way the chief wants to communicate – urgent and routine issues. Chiefs need immediate notification of incidents and events that require a managerial response or a notification up the chain-of-command. Do they want a phone call, text message, or an alert from dispatch? At the end of the work shift, they will need a complete and comprehensive documentation of the incident or event.
There may be a different process for routine communications like a start-of-shift issue or a monthly report. Determine how your chief communicates and model your communications to match the chief’s preference.
2: Identify how the chief handles personnel issues. When should you consult with the chief on coaching, work performance, or positive/negative disciplinary matters? If this is your first supervisory assignment, anticipate an initial period of close collaboration. No formal personnel action is delivered in a vacuum, it must go by the chief before it is issued.
3: Know what your chief’s goals are. The chief is usually required to establish a set of goals as part of an annual performance evaluation. How do the chief’s annual goals impact the evaluation of the company-level supervisor’s? What can you do to help meet the chief’s goals?
4: Assure competent and confident company-level performance. Identify what the chief defines as “good” performance, both on the fireground and within the station. Become the “go-to” company for challenging fireground assignments.
5: Be a servant-leader. The most frequent response from a July survey of chief officers to the question “What is the MOST IMPORTANT leadership concept you want your new first-line supervisors to know?” was the concept of servant-leader. Servant-leader characteristics are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of others, and building community.
James L. Jester provided a review of Robert Greenleaf’s book The Servant Leader. You can read Captain Jester’s FireRescue article “Servant Leadership in Today’s Fire Service” here.
… the dividends realized by taking the needs of the crew into consideration will create buy-in among the group and furnish them with a sense of belonging and ownership. A crew that feels their needs are being addressed will perform at a higher level than one that feels their leader is only thinking of himself.
In essence, the most valuable outcome is increased trust between the crew and the officer, between those who lead and those who are led. That trust is displayed every shift by increased ownership: crew members fixing things they didn’t break, picking up trash that isn’t theirs, and finishing jobs left by the previous shift because they got dispatched to a late call for service. (Jester)
We will explore more of the servant-leader concept in later articles. You can start by exploring the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership website.
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Great responses to last week’s fire officer survey: What are the issues that affect you?
The survey will remain open this week. Please take 3 minutes to answer 4 open-ended questions describing your challenges as a fire officer. Click here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YKMGGWB
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Photo used with permission from PIO Pete Piringer, Montgomery County (MD) Fire Rescue Service. Battalion and Deputy Chief conducting a “hot wash” with the company officers after a structure fire.