Last month, I discussed how critical it is for us to develop the inclination and practice of being a lifelong student and to develop the personal habit of reading. A major way that we stay connected and informed as an effective student is to continuously read. It sounds simple (because it is). Reading is a very special way to learn, to understand, and to stay current. There is no other way to access everything that is written except to read it. There is not much difference in not being able to read (illiteracy) and not reading even though you are able to (voluntary illiteracy). Another type of student ability is effectively expressing oneself by writing in a clear, understandable, and convincing way. There is a reason for describing school as a place where we learn readin’ and writin’.
I observed that most of us were attracted to the fire service because the job of a firefighter involves tactical action and not a lot of administrative processes. In fact, our service is so action oriented and directed that we routinely go to work for Mrs. Smith with no application, forms, paperwork, or interview. We will engage a greater alarm all night to solve the customer’s problem and not even require a signature on an application. I also commented that although we were initially attracted to the physical activity of our job, when we become bosses, we are then sentenced to a career of reading and writing, so we might as well learn to do them in our early student stages.
When I had been a fire chief for a while, every day when I heard the Grover blast, I watched out the window of my office as a lit-up fire machine responded on its way to the “show.” As I watched this machine pass by, I routinely grumbled, “Why are they having so much fun?” I then returned to the stack of reading and the half-written memo waiting for me on my desk (sorry for the whining).
Student Advice Learn from Everyone, Everywhere
Be careful of being an exclusive learner who will acknowledge and listen only to someone you approve of and respect or who is similar to you. When you are closed to any input because of a negative value judgment you made that the person who is the source of the information is “not legitimate,” you are committing student suicide because you are separating yourself from a universe of lessons that could make you smarter, safer, and more effective. There is an avalanche of differences in our service (career-volunteer, big-little, east-west, and so on). This diversity can create an expansive curriculum for potential learning or forge those differences into a self-limiting framework that restricts your learning.
Don’t Be a “Learning Snob”
When you exclusively grant permission to be taught, you are a “learning snob” and will become progressively dumber instead of smarter. There are amazing (and surprising) examples and lessons in the most unlikely people and places, but we must be open to sources beyond those that match our personal perceptions because that mentality is comfortable and basically agrees with our ideas, concepts, or opinions. Active learning can create great discomfort because it disrupts and disagrees with our preferences, priorities, and prejudices.
I notice in my travels when an “outsider” attempts to participate in a way that could be educational (for us), we many times react with the standard question, “Are you a firefighter?” If the person says he is not a firefighter, he is almost instantly disregarded/disrespected by us because he does not belong in our club. We discount and disconnect from that person because we disqualify his status. Sometimes that person can represent what could be enormously positive and productive, but we stopped listening simply because we defined him as invalid within our learning standards. Lifelong, serious students will continually learn things they should have already known and must learn. The longer you go to school, the more you come to recognize what you don’t know. Lessons are everywhere. Sometimes, a diner waitress makes more sense than a management professor.
Be Passionately Curious
A successful student must develop a natural learning inclination to continually ask, “What’s next?” This mental curiosity becomes a major energizer for continual learning. Our brain development must work hard to keep up with the current rate of change occurring inside our service and in the outside world that affects us. If we become mentally exclusive and stop learning, we fall behind that rate of continual change, and it can become very difficult to catch up. If we stay stuck, we will soon become obsolete.
We all should imitate young people who have the natural curiosity that causes them to ask, “Why?” It takes a while for the wear and tear of life to beat that natural curiosity out of the young and inquisitive (“Ride backward, and keep your mouth shut.”). Many times within an organization, the senior citizens react to a questioning young person as if he were being disrespectful. It is foolish to tell our baby humans to be curious and then get mad at them when they ask, “Why?” Generally, when someone asks that question, he simply wants someone to explain the details of something he wants to know more about.
The basic objective of an educational system is to foster and support the process of teaching, and the organization should be happy, supportive, and encouraging whenever a person acts like a student. One of the characteristics of a positive internal organizational environment is that what occurs inside that system is both sensible and logical, particularly to those who must directly do the business of the business. Many times, young people who are new to the system will try to understand operational details and will ask the most fundamental questions (out of the mouths of babes). It is the role of elders (a big boss function) to provide such explanations.
Assessing why a person asks “Why” can be a big time lesson for a boss. A major role of a boss is to create effective action by giving orders. During that order-giving process, it increases the effectiveness of completing those directions if the boss naturally and instinctively describes the “why” that connects to the” where” and “what.” Many times, including the “why” can be done quickly with just a few words. The time it takes to include the “why” generally will save a much longer verbal investment the boss will have to make to help the worker effectively and safely complete the ordered task because the worker did not get it right the first time. I don’t believe including “why” applies only to the kids. I am old enough to be their great grandfather, and I perform a lot better when I don’t have to wonder why I am doing what I was directed to do.
You may be wondering how we provide the “why” information on the fireground when time for communication is typically compressed. Let’s look at this example: The incident commander (IC) orders an engine to “take an attack line in Door A.” The engine crew would have been better directed had the IC made a short, simple addition that quickly described the “why” in his direction: “Take an attack line in Door A, and protect the stairway.” How long does it take to say, “protect the stairway”? Unless the engine company boss is a mind reader, there are generally a variety of tactical actions and options his crew could take after they enter Door A. If the IC wants to prevent vertical fire extension by specifically saying “protect the stairway” as part of his order, he can prevent a lot of confusion later when the IC discovers the company is in a different place taking a different action than the IC had expected. Sometimes, a boss can clarify the “commander’s intent” simply by adding “why.”
Forgive the following prehistoric example of an organizational policy and practice that was plain, simple nonsense (gibberish). When I was a young firefighter, I was assigned to a busy downtown engine company. Our fire engine had four really sturdy cases; each contained one self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). No one on the truck used those units, even though we attended lots of smoke-producing fires. Being a new department member (very curious), I asked my boss, “Why?” He told me that their use required the department to buy very expensive breathing quality compressed air, so the big bosses downtown prohibited using them. I then asked him why we even carried them on the rig. He said that while that was a good question, it might be a good idea for me to keep myself busy working and asking questions directed to a more solvable problem. When I became an officer, I remembered the goofy SCBA administrative response early in my career, and that memory caused me to adopt for the rest of my career a really short, simple respiratory protection solution, “Do not breathe smoke.”
Looking at this experience as a student caused me to reflect that lessons will naturally come to you from both positive and negative experiences. To be effective, we should ideally and logically use the positive lessons and avoid the negative ones. This is pretty simple to explain, but it is bewildering to me as a student of human behavior to watch what sometimes happens. When we are on the receiving end or even just observe or are aware of something negative, dysfunctional, mean spirited, or just plain dumb (locked up SCBAs), our appropriate reaction should be that we say to ourselves: “If I ever get in that position, I will never do that.”
Many times, I see the person doing just the opposite. Sometimes, he becomes what he hated as a worker on the receiving end when he gets to be the boss on the sending end. I have asked many really smart folks for an explanation. Most say that it’s human nature that personal history repeats itself, no matter how negative the history. It seems that this is clearly out of balance with anything functional, logical, or explainable. Why, for example, do those who were abused as children many times engage in that same abusive behavior when they are adults? When we become a boss, we can behave in a way that will create the same nightmare for our workers that our bosses created for us. I use this unfortunate example to illustrate how profoundly such behavior should affect all of us as students. You don’t have to do a lot of complicated research to determine how your treatment of others as a boss will be regarded. Simply ask yourself, “How did I react and feel when my boss did that same thing (positive or negative) to me?”
To effectively sort this out, a functional boss must be observant and empathetic- understanding or feeling what another is experiencing from the other’s frame of reference. Such a functional leader has a set of his own experiences from when he was in his former worker role. We should be very careful of promoting anyone who has amnesia when it comes to remembering and reacting to his memory of the feelings he felt in the past; now, he is in control of that very same scenario. Being empathetic requires a sensible level of personal humility and humanity.
Keep Your Brain Engaged
Always have some ongoing, under-construction “mental projects,” issues, problems, and just subjects you want to be smarter about. Every great thought cannot be scheduled, and an idea doesn’t always come all at once. When it shows up, grab it, and record it. You will also have brain jolts and mental breakthroughs at odd times-like when you are working out, in the shower, or sleeping. Have a notepad/pencil on a night stand to record sleep brain jolts because when you wake up, you will remember you had a brilliant 3:30 a.m. idea, but you won’t be able to remember the topic or the details at 6:45 a.m. Be careful of writing in your shirt pocket notepad [hard copy (old) or electronic (modern)] when you’re driving, which happens to me a lot. My wife, who is not completely dialed into my current mental student project, reminds me to pay attention to driving instead of writing. Sometimes, some stray thing bounces into your noodle that really doesn’t relate to anything current. When this occurs, just put it in staging (as a note), and then your memory gets a test to see if you can bring it up on deck so you can fit it into the doing zone. Today, I hang around colleagues who keep a journal of handwritten meeting notes. This creates a catalog of subjects, topics, and comments to later access. I guess you could look on the journal as a tactical worksheet for the brain.
Be Careful About Promoting Your Way Out of Being a Student
Most of the things we learn and do on the lowest level follow us up through the chain of command. As we get promoted, we take on a different level of understanding of the current status and realities of those very same things we used to do. The higher you go, the more challenging it becomes because those same activities are still relevant to our organization. However, in just about every case, the details have changed-in some cases dramatically. We generally get promoted because we are good at our current job. This is a smart thing, except that the current details of that same job very probably have changed. A boss must realize that the job is not the same as it was when he held it. This is one of the reasons a boss must continually directly interact, listen/talk, engage, and hang out with the workers.
I started riding on an engine company in 1958. I promoted off that same engine in 1978 and retired in 2006. It is now impossible to imagine the changes that occurred during that period. I always attempted to be a student of those changes, and my teachers were very capable firefighters born about halfway through that period. I basically spent most of my time as a boss listening to those gifted “kids” (grandchildren are great teachers). I happily survived mostly because of them.
When you think you have learned the last thing because you are mesmerized by the blinding light reflecting off your badge and now you know it all, you are committing suicide as a (high-ranking) student. You should appreciate and enjoy any improvement in your personal capability, and that improvement (like getting promoted) should motivate you to keep going as a student. As we learn, our self-esteem and our curiosity should increase. This combination keeps us enrolled in school. When we are done learning, we are done (really done). All of this applies to the effectiveness of a boss. A functional boss knows a lot but realizes that he will never even come close to knowing and understanding everything.
There isn’t any recess. When you act as a student, you learn academics in the classroom and human relations on the playground. Both are critical. This process starts in kindergarten, the critical beginning of your formal education where you get basic directions for living your life. Don’t forget the beginning lessons. I heard a worker use a short and sweet description of his dysfunctional boss, “too much college, not enough kindergarten.” Wow!
A major lesson is that the only thing a boss leaves behind is a memory. We should be serious students of what it takes to leave a positive one.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
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