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Principles For Effective Leadership

By Jeff Bertok
Webmaster - Hoopieworld.com
Captain, Lincoln VFRC

A while ago I took a Leadership class through my employer. Even though the class was business oriented, I realized that much of what was taught could be applied to firefighters as well. I would like to discuss five steps to becoming a better leader.

Let me first start off saying that I do not claim to be the best officer in the world, nor am I slamming anyone that I work with. My intention of this article is only to try to help people become better leaders if they want. I try to follow the following principles, but there is always room for improvement and every situation is different.

The first principle is Focus on the situation, issue, or behavior, not on the person. The idea behind this principle is to not get caught up in petty personal politics with other people or companies. This can be internal or external. An example of an internal use is eliminating the buddy system for officers. Whether you are casting a vote for someone or you are a chief officer appointing offices, you should choose who is best and most qualified for the job, not the person that bought you the most beers or sticks up for you the most. An external example is not calling a neighboring company for mutual aid just because they didn’t call you at their last call, or some silly reason like that. Focus on the situation, will the incident be cleaned up faster if that company was called instead of one coming much closer or not? Sometimes the closest company isn’t always the fastest or most qualified one, so there are other factors, but hopefully you get what I am trying to get at.

The second principle is Maintain the self-confidence and self-esteem of others. This is pretty self explanatory and most often times happens with guys that try hard but just don’t know any better.. There is no better way to chase off firefighters than to embarrass and scream at them around the station and on scene. If you are more experienced and see someone doing something stupid, take the high road and work with them to make sure they do the job right.

The third principle is Maintain constructive relationships. This has mutual aid companies written all over it. As an officer it is important to quickly address any mudslinging that may start between your company and another. Finding the source of the trouble isn’t always easy to do, but communicating with the other company will help ease over any hard feelings. We are all here for a common purpose, and there is no reason that fire companies shouldn’t get along. Maintaining internal member relationships is important as well, because you want to make everyone feel they are part of the company and needed. If not, you will lose valuable members at a time when finding new members is difficult. Don’t chase away current members by ignoring their ideas or not giving them credit when credit is due.

The fourth principle is Take initiative to make things better. A lot of times things could be improved very easily, but aren’t because “We’ve never done it that way” or “This is how its been for 30 years”. Instead of accepting that answer, find ways to prove how a change would benefit your company or community. Do the research that shows you can save this amount of money if you change how you do XYZ. Or if you feel your company doesn’t offer enough training, set up training events to see if others are interested and start training more. Another example is many people constantly say we should do this, or we should do that. They play the what if game and are a Monday morning quarterback. They have a thousand ideas, which is usually a good thing, but they don’t follow up on them. If you have an idea on how to make something better, take the initiative to come up with a game plan and get it implemented.

The final principle is Lead by example. It relates to the fourth principle but is a little different because it is based on your actions. This is another self-explanatory principle. Act how you would like the others in your department to act. A lot of times, people copy bad habits from others more easily than good habits, especially with people in charge. If you are a chief officer, and you are cutting corners on something you need to be careful because you are sending all the other members below you that it is ok to cut corners. Referring back to training, if you feel your department needs more training, setup the training sessions and participate religiously to the newly setup training sessions. If you start coming every session, others may follow.

I hope that this article can help someone out there become a better leader, whether you are a new officer, or you have been an officer for 30 years. Also remember that you don’t have to be an officer to be a leader. You can apply these principles in everyday situations.

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