At the moment my desk, computer, and brain are overwhelmed with leadership and management concepts as I complete a project. The results of the Company Commander survey showed that 45% of you that responded want additional skills to “improve emergency scene performance” and 28% wanted additional skills in “leading a company or unit.” Susan Fowler’s book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging provides an interesting perspective when dealing with disinterested firefighters.
Fowler points out that the psychology of motivation does not match traditional supervisor training. Let’s consider her assertion that each of us has a need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence to be satisfied before we are motivated to do job tasks.
Autonomy is our human need to perceive we have choices. It is our need to feel that what we are doing is of our own volition. It is our perception that we are the source of our actions.
We need to feel like we have some control and influence in the workplace. We respond negatively when the boss tries to manipulate a false sense of autonomy, triggering our well-developed BS detectors.
Relatedness is our need to care about and be cared about others. It is our need to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives. It is our need to feel that we are contributing to something greater than ourselves.
The aloof and unapproachable fire supervisor does not get much engagement from firefighters. You can be a task-master but your firefighters need to know, by what you do, that you care about your crew. The nature of our work makes it easy to feel that we are contributing to something greater than ourselves.
Competence is our need to feel effective at meeting everyday challenges and opportunities. It is demonstrating skill over time. It is feeling a sense of growth and flourishing.
The nature of a firefighter’s craft means that incompetent bosses are a danger to their team and the community. A stark example of this issue is found in the Internal Safety Review Board (ISRB) report of Nathan Flynn’s 2018 Line-of-Duty-Death in Howard County, MD (page 59):
The ISRB, through the informal interviews conducted by the ISRB for this investigation as well as discussions among HCDFRS personnel, also identified a widespread belief that department leaders are not promoted or assigned based on merit or experience.
Whether this belief is true or not, it has a negative effect on unit cohesion and trust in leadership. This lack of trust with department leadership has been exacerbated by previous decisions to not widely publish previous safety reports, which has led to rampant conjecture and rumors.
During this incident, this belief and lack of trust between officers and firefighters likely had a deleterious effect on tactical decision making, impacting overall safety on the fireground. Moving forward, HCDFRS must take steps to regain trust between firefighters and leadership.
While this is a blunt and harsh assessment, there are many other fire departments that have the same lack of trust between the officers and firefighters.
Considering your department’s history, and our practice of never forgetting (or forgiving) how can a company officer create trust and meet the three psychological needs identified by Susan Fowler?
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Fowler, Susan (2014) Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging. San Francisco CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Internal Safety Review Board (2019) Line of Duty Death Investigation Report: Lt. Nathan Flynn. Marriotsville, MD: Howard County Department of Fire & Rescue Services.
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