You are a company officer at a busy fire station with an on-duty crew of 14. There are two industrial-grade washing machines in the station. One broke 4 months ago and remains unrepaired. The second machine, doing the work of two machines, broke two weeks ago. The municipality has repeatedly promised to repair one of the machines, but as of today both washers remain broken, what will you do?
Having influence is all about getting things done without resorting to wielding your authority. It takes time. Leadership coach Cheryl Breukelman recommends two principles in building influence: being human and being transparent.
Influential people are human
The new fire officer needs to invest time in other people and get to know them. Most of the time our interactions are not under the umbrella of an incident management team during an active event. Learn what motivates the people you work with. What are the goals and objectives in their emotional contract with the department?
This effort is especially important when reaching out to the folks who work administrative and support jobs in the fire department and municipal government. Since they are not part of the uniformed emergency service workforce, the fire officer has little need to care about their perspectives. But these are the folks the fire officer needs to add to the sphere of influence.
As an apparatus operator at the busiest fire station, Tex invested time in getting to know the mechanics and the warehouse staffers in the Apparatus division. Tex understood the needs of the apparatus staff and found a shared mission with them. When Tex transferred to a rural fire station with its tired first-line pumper, Tex was able to get help from the Apparatus Division to get the rig to a better-than-new condition with safety upgrades. People will take a risk for a person they trust and like.
Six steps to get others to like you:
- Become genuinely interested in other people
- Smile
- Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
- Be a good listener – encourage others to talk about themselves
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
- Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely (Carnegie)
Influential people are transparent
A key in increasing fire officer transparency is sharing context and background that establishes a shared foundation for your conversation. Having a shared foundation allows the listeners to focus on what you are saying instead of making assumptions about your motivations.
It is very difficult being transparent when you work in an organization where the members are tribal. Career versus volunteer, management versus labor, A-shift versus C-shift, fire company versus fire company, etc. Tribal conflicts are a real barrier to transparency.
In a scene from the film Gangs of New York, set in Civil War-era Manhattan, a crowd gathers in the night as a fire breaks out. A volunteer fire department arrives, and then another.
Instead of cooperating to extinguish the blaze, the rival fire companies head straight for each other in an all-out brawl as the building burns. According to the curator of a new display case exhibit on American firefighting in the 19th century, there is a certain element of truth behind the scene. (Landers)
Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the Harvard Negotiation Program, provides three methods of addressing modern tribalism:
7) Get Interested in Identity. As stakeholders in the conflict come to better appreciate each other’s stories of grievance, the forces of tribalism start to fade. Disputants come to see each other as human beings with complex motivations and morals, and identity turns from a source of division into a basis for unity. Learning about the other side’s story takes courage – it may go against a disputant’s fundamental values and may cause them to be seen as a traitor to their own tribe.
8) Engage a diverse set of stakeholders to disrupt the tribalistic mindset and address the broader issues at stake. Inviting otherwise unassuming stakeholders to engage in a conflict is the equivalent of holding up a mirror not only to the stakeholders but also to the conflict itself, revealing dynamics that may not have otherwise been apparent.
9) Address the substantive and identity-based elements of conflict. Shapiro has developed “The Tribes Exercise”. This approach helps parties jointly problem-solve their differences and repair the torn social fabric. You can request this resource through http://www.danshapiroglobal.com
Meanwhile, at the fire station
The opening situation occurred at the Gaithersburg-Washington Grove Fire Station 8 in Montgomery County, Maryland. Like many suburban-based departments in the northeast part of the United States, there is a 70+ year history of tribalism between volunteers and the municipality that is as complex and nuanced as the efforts to get peace in the Middle East.
Resolving the broken industrial washing machines at Fire Station 8 may be a convoluted process. The fire station is owned by the Gaithersburg-Washington Grove VFD corporation. The county fire department may or may not be authorized to replace a volunteer corporation owned appliance. There are issues of authority, turf, and power.
After two weeks without resolution, Montgomery County Career Firefighters IAFF Local 1664 took action, as posted on social media August 28:
After repeated assurances of repairing or replacing the existing washing machines not occurring, Local 1664 had a washing machine set up at Fire Station 8 within 2 hours.
In an interesting twist, once the Department was notified Local 1664 was having a washing machine delivered, a new washing machine was delivered with the promise of another ‘within a week or so’.
Huge thanks to the Rent-A-Center on West 7th Street in Frederick, MD, especially Fabio & Matthew, for assisting Local 1664 and making a positive impact on the health and well being of the members of IAFF Local 1664!
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Breukelman, Cheryl (2017 May 5) “How (and Why) To Build Influence Within Your Organization.” Forbes Coaches Council. Accessed August 30, 2018, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/05/05/how-and-why-to-build-influence-within-your-organization/#3d89cf493399
Carnegie, Dale (2011) How to Make Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. New York: Simon & Schuster. ebook ISBN 978-1-45162916-3
Landers, Jackson (2016 September 27) “In the Early 19th Century, Firefighters Fought Fires … and Each Other: Fighting fires in early America was about community, property, and rivalry.” Smithsonian.com. Accessed August 31, 2018, at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/early-19-century-firefighters-fought-fires-each-other-180960391/#j6Siu4TMeEV8Vzmo.99
Shapiro, Neal (2017) Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14311017-0