By John M. Buckman III
There is no cookie cutter for creating competent firefighters. Although NFPA 1001, Standard for Fire Fighter Professional Qualifications, provides a means for determining competency in written and practical skill examinations for certification purposes, there are limits placed on the training at the local level because of time constraints and funding. Very seldom is NFPA 1001 used in continuous education or in service training to measure the capability of the skills to which firefighters are originally trained. Seeking higher standards and professional and personal development, it is doubtful that any two firefighters who follow this path will end up with the same result.
We are all unique; we bring our own special talents, strengths, and weaknesses as well as our physical attributes to the job of firefighting. We also bring our own attitude, which can be about personal excellence, noncompliance (excellence’s polar opposite), or somewhere in between. We should not expect—or seek—uniform results in a quest for professionalism. However, there are common traits that are measurable, beginning with what it means to be a professional.
Every profession has established and accepted standards that are used as benchmarks for assessment, competition, evaluation, and self-improvement. Yet the firefighting profession is void of anything more than a small set of skill-based criteria for individuals to gauge their own personal development, and those standards are most often only used for the initial training and certification. The skill-based criteria used during recruit school are, in most cases, at a minimum. The training that goes along with the skill and written examinations is also many times a minimum and does not necessarily measure one’s ability to be highly competent and to maintain that competency. Skills degrade over a very short period of time when not put to use. Firefighter skills, for the most part, are not used very often and are very seldom those which are necessary to save one’s own life or that of another.
The reasons for this peculiar lack of continuing education standards are debatable. Perhaps the origin of this apathy can be traced to the modes of career advancement within the fire service. Career firefighters desire promotion to make more money. Volunteer firefighters desire a promotion for self satisfaction. Very few career or volunteer firefighters desire promotion because they want to influence others or to make a difference in their company or department. In some cases, promotion is tied to seniority. This is certainly not to say that firefighters do not need to be highly skilled; they certainly do. But once a certain level of competence is reached, there is often no incentive—beyond personal pride and professionalism—to strive for a higher level of expertise.
I have interviewed scores of firefighters from around the world, and many are content to work their shifts, show up at the weekly drill or meeting, and go on about their lives. Striving for personal firefighter excellence is not a requirement for promotion.
Today, the model for many firefighters seeking promotion is to have an educational degree, which requires a huge time commitment. That degree, in most cases, has little or nothing to do with acquiring and maintaining excellent firefighter skill competency. Once a particular rating or certificate is obtained, the external motivation is gone unless one seeks a higher certification. All of these factors may account for the lack of a comprehensive set of professional firefighter skill maintenance standards. Perhaps none have been developed because we all thought none were needed. A combination of seniority, experience, and basic competence has traditionally satisfied the requirements for climbing the career ladder or achieving the necessary competence to practice our “hobby.” But, we may have been missing something. Although comprehensive firefighter standards may not have been necessary for organizations, they are absolutely essential for individuals who wish to improve themselves. Loss of efficiency, effectiveness, and compromised safety continue to result from poor fire suppression tactics, poor command decisions, and human error mishaps. As an industry, we have searched for decades to find an answer to this problem, and it may have been closer than we thought. Personal improvement and peer-to-peer accountability are the keys to greater safety. By establishing a clear, albeit uphill, path to good individual firefighter skills, those who seek self-improvement can and do so through a systematic means. Any of us who has the willpower and discipline to improve can tackle the ills that plague firefighting as a whole. The cultural change toward good firefighter skills occurs from within, firefighter by firefighter, until the judgment error mishap becomes the exception rather than the rule. The day is coming and the means are here.
There are several inhibitors to personal improvement. The first was a lack of an accepted definition and model for improvement. In theory, if not yet in practice, NFPA 1001 has remedied that oversight if we use the standard for more than certification purposes. Use the standard to identify core competencies or mission essential skills for the firefighters on your fire department. When you have developed those mission-essential skills, train toward the flawless execution of those skills, 100 percent of the time. It is the flawless execution of mission-essential skills identified by your department that will, in most cases, be the difference between immediate reaction to a life-threatening event and hesitation.
There are lots of reasons firefighters do not seek to become highly professional and competent in their skills, but these reasons are most often poor excuses for an inappropriate attitude. “Professional” is not about pay or not being paid; it is about your ability to demonstrate competency when lives are at stake. Make the commitment; today is the day to change your attitude and commit to being the best trained and skilled firefighter on your fire department. Don’t wait for someone else to mandate a standard with which we can’t live. Embrace the need. Evaluate your personal ability to successfully accomplish the skills associated with a NFPA 1001 certification course. Take the NFPA 1001 certification exam and see how you score!
I recently attended a research demonstration at Underwriters Laboratories and learned really quickly my need to study building construction and the associated information I was missing. I would hate to think what my score would have been on the building construction chapter for any of the publishers.
There are several inhibitors to personal improvement. The first was the lack of an accepted definition and model for improvement. In theory, if not yet in practice, the Firefighter Model has remedied this oversight. But there are other, more personal reasons pilots choose not to seek higher professionalism. There is little doubt the pace of life has increased significantly in recent years. The volunteer staffing component of the fire service is struggling to meet the time demands of preparation, response, and returning to service with an increased emphasis on fund-raising. There is only 24 hours in a day. We have to balance our personal needs, work requirements, and obligations that we make to outside interests. The desire must come from within because there are significant obstacles in our way. A personal obstacle to professionalism and continuous improvement is born of simple neglect. Often, a firefighter is content to rest on his laurels after achieving a professional goal. Perhaps a new rating, a promotion to captain, or a job with a new company gives a firefighter the opportunity to relax and, as a result, they forget to reenergize. When people fall away from professional growth, it doesn’t happen in an instant; it happens slowly, through disregard for changing regulations or technical manuals. Before long, they are far enough behind in several areas to make the recovery significantly difficult. They rationalize that because everything has gone well so far, they don’t really need all of that study, skill, and proficiency. Just like any living thing, professionalism dies through neglect. As neglect is a process, so is its remedy. Center on one area, and do something to revive it.
Occasionally, however, it is not the will but the energy that the firefighter lacks. Exhaustion often emerges in the individual who finds himself chained to a high-stress job or a series of unending professional and personal demands on his time.
The demands of focus, concentration, and attention can be seriously and dangerously degraded by mental or physical exhaustion. In a culture that rewards workaholics and sneers at underachievers, burnout and exhaustion are very real threats to safety and attention to detail. When you take a stressed, dulled mind into a burning building, it can—and often does—end tragically. Self-awareness is key to understanding and coping with exhaustion as well as the next obstacle to personal improvement: compromise. This occurs when a rationalization process begins to degrade solid standards and personal potential. It can happen from many places. For example, it can come from peers or even well-respected superiors, who demonstrate less than professional attitudes and behaviors. The temptation to mimic their behavior can be strong, but if the herd instinct is one of compromise or apathy, it must be resisted if personal professionalism is to be advanced. Or, maybe you see your personal professionalism as adequate because you are “much more professional” than some other individual. The Desiderata gives solid advice: “Do not compare yourself to others, for always there will be those both greater and lesser than yourself.”
Even the best-intentioned individuals need motivation to improve. The fire department organization can and should provide incentives designed to motivate an individual firefighter’s improvement. These incentives could take on a variety of forms, from certification awarded for continuing education firefighter courses to linking promotion and advancement to demonstrated proficiencies across the spectrum of firefighter skills. Firefighter awards can also reward steady performance as opposed to miracle recoveries. Uniform badges could represent something more than rank, longevity, and firefighting time; they could be tied to completion of specific firefighter training across all areas of the firefighter model. Instructor upgrade in all areas of fire department organization and operations should be based on demonstrated proficiency across the firefighter skill spectrum and not be viewed as merely another rite of passage for which everyone eventually qualifies. Every organization should be a cheerleader for personal professional development and provide encouragement and concrete reinforcement for those who choose to improve themselves.
The organization should make resources in firefighter education and training materials easily accessible and readily available to anyone who desires to improve. Education material not directly related to the fire service should also be made available. These materials can run the gamut from pamphlets to structured courses. It is important that materials on all areas of firefighting are offered because individuals will vary in their self-assessed needs. The temptation will be to target recent problem areas or mishaps, but this is a mistake. A troubleshooting approach is reactive in nature and defeats the entire purpose of self-assessment and individual improvement.
If the organization dictates what training materials should be on the shelf, they nullify the principle tenet of personal accountability for improvement based on individual needs. Cost factors will certainly come up in any discussion about providing a new service or training, but this must be viewed in terms of future savings. What would you be willing to pay to make your organization 10-, 20-, or even 50-percent safer and effective. How much is that worth? And what about efficiency, effectiveness, job satisfaction, and retention? Improving firefighter competency makes sense to the bottom line. But the competency must be relevant to each fire department and its firefighters.
Finally, the organization needs to remove obstacles to firefighters. These obstacles come in a variety of forms, but three of the most critical are undisciplined firefighters, training programs without clearly defined outcomes, and unnecessary task assignments. A single, undisciplined firefighter who is allowed to continue to operate within an organization does immeasurable damage. Others see examples of poor firefighter behavior as evidence of the organizational malaise and react accordingly. Having a training program that does not have defined outcomes is an insult to your department’s firefighters. Defined outcomes are more than just “check the box” type of training; they are training sessions with defined goals, measurable objectives, consequences for failure, and reward. The organization should also seek to eliminate unnecessary task assignments. Perhaps the single largest inhibitor to individual firefighter improvement will be time. By freeing up time and communicating the organization’s reason for doing so (so that firefighters can pursue personal improvement), you can send a clear message of sincerity and organizational commitment to the cause. Don’t create busy work to make the firefighter appear to be productive with his downtime.
In a sense, this approach makes the organization into a “servant leader” by empowering individuals to improve themselves through motivation, resources, and by removing obstacles. Some individuals will use the opportunity wisely and productively, and others undoubtedly will not. By taking a proactive rather than the traditional reactive troubleshooting approach, you will maximize all individuals’ ability to improve their competency in a meaningful and personal way within the organizational setting. No matter how hard a leader tries, you will not be able to motivate every individual to have the desire to be proficient in the identified skills. No matter how hard a leader tries, nor how gray his hair becomes, some people will only perform to the minimum level. Accept the minimum, but reward those who go above the minimum. Create competition and provide rewards for those who exceed the minimum departmental standard.
Subordinates cannot be allowed to speculate as to the values of the organization. Top leadership must give clear and explicit signals, lest any confusion or uncertainty exist over what is and is not permissible conduct. To do otherwise allows informal and potentially subversive “codes of conduct” to be transmitted with a wink and a nod and encourages an inferior ethical system based on “going along to get along” or the notion that “everybody’s doing it.”
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series next month.
Photo found on Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Joe Mabel.
JOHN M. BUCKMAN III is the director of firefighter training for the State of Indiana. He has served 41 years as a volunteer firefighter and 35 years as chief at the German Township (IN) Volunteer Fire Department. He was president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 2001-2002 and founder and chair of the Volunteer and Combination Officers Section from 1990-1998. He is a co-author of the 3rd Edition of Recruiting, Training and Maintaining Volunteer Firefighters, editor of the Chief Officer’s Desk Reference, and co-author of Lessons Learned from Fire-Rescue Leaders.
