By Frank L. Frievalt
This article is the fourth and final article of a four-part series based on “Directives on My Watch,” originally published in Fire Engineering to provide additional explanation and background of the directives, organized around Organizational, Operational, Personnel, and Public Trust matters.
Of the previous topics I’ve covered in this series, this is the most important. Striving to master organizational, operational, and personnel matters are enabling objectives in public service delivery; earning public trust is the terminal objective in public service delivery. Brace your egos; the general public devotes less time to considering fire service issues than they do for road maintenance, park lawns, libraries, and public pools. It’s not that they don’t care; a good structure or wildland urban interface fire takes top priority and attention when in progress and shortly thereafter. The reason most people don’t think about it any other time is twofold; these are infrequent events and they believe we have our act together.
Our citizens don’t wring their hands once a day, wondering if we’ve done a good equipment check, trained on foam operations, or properly maintained our garage doors. No, our citizens are generally consumed with the details of their own lives and have an unspoken confidence and expectation that if something bad happens, we will save the day. If you ever have the inclination, do a little reading on the civil service history in China and Britain during the 1800s; ours is modeled by both. At a time when civil service has been criticized as a haven for the self-centered and lazy, we would do well to rediscover our original intent. Civil servants were to be the best and brightest so that good governance would be the foundation for great societies.
I fear we’ve placed our labor contracts as firefighters above our social contract as public servants. I fear that we’re more concerned about our rights than we are about our responsibilities. When we forget (or never really understood) our place in public service, we necessarily forfeit our public trust. Post-9/11, people were reminded of the commitment we made to protect lives and property; our public trust was reinforced. Post-recession, we were exposed to financially driven scrutiny. An unintended consequence of that scrutiny was a revelation of what some of us were doing, and were not doing, with our time and discretion; our public trust was battered. It should come as no surprise that the worst scandals and loathsome examples were paraded in the news as commonplace in the fire service. As Don Henley had it in his song, “We [the media news cycle] need dirty laundry.” The wretched behavior of the few broke public trust with the many, and we have to earn that back one day, one call, and one firehouse visit at a time. The three directives that follow are about earning and maintaining the public trust:
Behave, and demand behavior that is above reproach. The idiom, to be “above reproach” may be best known from the Bible in Paul’s first letter to Timothy in describing leadership traits. The Greek word used in that phrase (Anepilēptos) describes behavior that is much more than legal innocence from wrongdoing; it is behavior so excellent that it dismisses the possibility of accusations of wrongdoing. There are no perfect people in this world, beginning with me, so how does one remain above reproach in public service? There are three commitments we can make that will keep us above reproach.
The first is transparency in our public service. Even when our lesser selves might be tempted to take a shortcut or place self above service, we will refrain from it if we know we’ll not be able to legitimately defend it among our peers, our direct reports, and the public.
The second is establishing a moral and ethical foundation that extends past individual circumstance (i.e., don’t make it up as you go, crisis by crisis). I’m making no plea to a specific religion or code or set of mores. I am making the plea that you intimately explore and commit to one. It must be something you own and live by. Leaders make decisions. Being above reproach does not mean that everyone will agree with or approve of your decisions; it does mean that they will not assign wrongdoing, maliciousness, or self-service as the motive behind your decisions that they dislike. Sometimes it’s easier to point to an example of what right looks like than to describe it. Consider the example of this basketball coach from 1987 (http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/25/us/for-town-and-team-honor-is-its-own-reward.html). He rightly noted that people may forget the score, but they will remember your character.
The third part of staying above reproach is knowing that you can fail. My biggest mistakes come shortly after I have forgotten or disowned my previous ones. William Bennett comes to mind as an example. He published two well-known books (The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass) which were compilations of literary moral, ethical, and religious examples of good or right behavior. Bennett served as the secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 and received much praise (and sales revenue) for putting these together as examples for children and adults. There was never any consideration that these works were about anything but their content and application. However, scrutiny revealed he gambled a great deal. There was nothing legally wrong with his gambling, nor was he reportedly in any debt, but that chosen pastime was so inconsistent with the messages he was supporting as to be reproachable (i.e., the motive behind the books was no longer above reproach); it caused disappointment and disapproval among supporters of the books and the principles therein even though they had nothing to do with Bennett’s gambling and despite the fact he wrote none of the primary content.
The real tragedy is that the literary treasures complied in his two books became associated with his behavior, and I suspect fewer people read them afterward. My belief is that if this could happen to him, it can happen to me, and to you for that matter. Therefore, behave, and demand behavior that is above reproach.
If you’re wondering if it’s not ok—it’s not. Honestly, this one is so simple it needs no explanation. It’s the opposite of the Nike battle cry: “Just (don’t) do it!”
People expect extraordinary performance from us, especially in matters of discretion and stewardship, so deliver! “Discretion,” based on the Oxford American Dictionary, carries two meanings and, as public servants, we are expressly expected to fulfill them both. Discretion means “the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.” When people are having their worst day, they call us to help them. We are not called to judge them or their behavior; we are called to help them through the immediate situation that is bringing harm to them and/or their property. Also, we are to keep the particulars of the situation private.
The second meaning of discretion is “the freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation.” We are given broad powers to conduct emergency operations in our communities; people expect us to make good decisions about how we do that. They expect us not to crash on the way to the call, kick in a front door that’s not locked, drop the gurney they’re on as we load them into the ambulance, or shut down their business for a code violation that’s really not an immediate threat to life or property. If proper discretion is one of the bookends to extraordinary performance in matters of public trust, then proper stewardship is the other.
Stewardship is a concept we—especially our new recruits—we are not nearly familiar enough with. A question I nearly always ask during an entry level interview is what the concept of stewardship means to the candidate; about two in 10 are able to give a close answer. It means managing the affairs or estate of others, of being asked to care for property and possessions that are not our own. Make no mistake, public service is stewardship, and the fire service is literally about being selected and entrusted to protect the lives and property of others. “Our” stations, and engines, and equipment are not ours; they belong to the taxpayers. We are the stewards passing through, and we should leave our departments in better shape than we found them. It’s not about us as individuals; it’s about our delivery of emergency services with proper discretion and genuine stewardship.
Deliver.
As I close this series and this article in particular, consider the tale of the sleeping guard. I don’t recall how this came to me, but I’ve never forgotten it. One night, a guard in the army of Alexander the Great was caught asleep at his post. As this was an egregious dereliction of his duty, the guard was promptly brought before Alexander for a determination of punishment. The guard was both fearful and exhausted, for he had recently returned from battle in the field. Alexander keenly observed the guard’s fear and exhaustion, and asked the guard his name. The guard’s shoulders slumped, his head dropped, and he mumbled something Alexander could not hear. Alexander stepped closer so he could hear and again asked the guard for his name. Motionless and downcast, the guard again quietly mumbled, “My name is Alexander.” Alexander the Great stiffened on hearing this, and then slowly leaned in close to the guard’s ear, saying quietly yet sternly, “Change your name or change your behavior.”
Likewise, if we are going to carry a great namesake—that of public servants—we too must align our behavior with our title.
(Photo found on Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Saperaud.)
Frank L. Frievalt is the assistant fire chief for the Mammoth Lakes (CA) Fire Protection District. He has 35 years experience in city, county, state, and federal fire services from the ranks of firefighter to assistant chief. He has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, a master’s degree in fire and emergency management, and is currently working on a Ph.D. in political science.
