Last month we started a discussion about how critical it is for an effective boss to understand and bring out the best in human behavior. Developing this ability is a major factor (deal breaker) in leadership success. It is very difficult for bosses to outperform the level of their understanding of how humans think, feel, and perform. Organizational flubs in just about every category are pretty much always human flubs-this (no-brainer) does not require much detective work, simply because virtually everything within pretty much any and every system is directly or indirectly connected to something involving humans. Another no-brainer is that everyone has a boss, so every flub involves a boss in some way; a major boss job is to predict/prevent flubs, manage flubs when they occur, and recover once they have occurred-and then do all that over and over pretty much forever. Humans will be involved in everything pretty much forever.
Given the current topic of a boss understanding and then effectively dealing with human behavior, I am not suggesting we all become clinically trained social scientists. That is certainly an admirable thing to do, but I am attempting to write something every month that is pretty simple and practical and that might nudge the reader to think more about the monthly topic. My hallucinations, thankfully, are published in a very tactical, oriented, long-standing, generally pretty technical fire journal. My comments are a reflection of working in every position in my fire department; and although I bounced into and got bounced out of a couple of universities (thank you for both), the most profound, practical experience for me was being on the receiving end of always having a boss and on the sending end when I got to be a boss. A lot of what I learned was the result of road rash-I guess you could say I attended Road Rash University. I now share with you my very “unacademic” human behavior observations.
Human Behavior Observations
All humans are basically two-sided: We have the natural capability to be perfect and imperfect. Built into us originally at the human assembly plant was a set of characteristics that occur along a range of from very positive to very negative. As an example, when you open the morning paper, you routinely can read on the front page about a very admirable person who selflessly assists the downtrodden, disabled, and displaced and in the article right next to that one about a vicious, violent, human monster who commits, say, an incomprehensible school shooting. Both individuals are human. Sadly, negative news is presented more often and is read more often than positive news. A reporter once told me that the only cats that are news to his readers (and editors) are those that get stuck in trees.
Bosses should not waste a lot of time being surprised when a human acts as a human both inside and outside of the organization. We live in the fire service with an interesting contrast: We maintain the most positive behaviors of our members so they will continually be fit for duty (biological/cognitive/emotional/social) and can respond to situations caused many times by the worst human behaviors. When there is a school shooting, we are the first responders. We don’t waste time (right then) trying to figure out why some individual did what he did to a classroom full of beautiful kids. When this happens, we just do what we do and follow the standard operating procedures. Sometimes our inside customers, our very human troops who on some days have really difficult jobs, get out of balance based on the normal wear and tear (school shooting) that occurs to public safety workers. When this human behavior imbalance occurs, it is another time when a functional boss had better not be surprised because it uses up a lot of valuable time (think of the predictable surprises that occur on the fireground).
The Boss as a Mental Health Service “Dispatcher”
We now realize that effective bosses must become mental health service “dispatchers.” We have a huge head start because we recruit young, potential firefighters who were assembled on a really good day at the plant; we use the selection process to stack the deck so we get to operate way up on the positive end of the behavior scale. Our service is beginning to develop and operate a full range of wear and tear (read mental health support) prediction, prevention, and recovery support programs. Many fire departments now provide employee assistance programs (EAP); behavioral health services; counseling programs that provide addiction support (drugs, alcohol, stress, sex, gambling, and so on); mental health services; and family assistance, for example. Everyone must be involved and do their part in giving and receiving these services, but effective bosses on every level must understand the problem signs and symptoms, have a trust-based relationship with the troops, and be skillful in referring and using those support resources. Bosses are distributed throughout the organization, so they have direct, constant contact with their workers. No one else in the system has that close relationship.
I have been pondering how to present something you can connect with that might be helpful in this discussion of how critical the understanding of human behavior dynamics is, particularly as we go up the boss capability scale. The following story is about the real-world human affairs lessons I learned in an unusual way when I was a very young boss. My story is now safe because the statute of limitations has long expired, and most of the players have since departed this earth. Although every part of the story is pretty standard, the way the pieces and parts came together is a little special.
Human Affairs Lesson, Part 1
I became a member of a fire department in a city that was rapidly expanding. This growth created the need to build more fire stations, hire more firefighters, and to do a lot of promoting. I got in that line; hit the “up” button; and, based on continuous promotions, I spent 10 years assigned to Engine 1 at Station 1 on the A shift as a firefighter, an engineer, and a captain.
Our department had three work shifts (A, B, and C), and, like most fire departments, each shift had its own special profile and historic reputation. The A-shifters were the handsome (except me), well-behaved, efficient warriors. The B-shifters were the middle kids and were unruly, funny, and a little disruptive. C-shifters were very well-behaved and under control and carefully followed the neat and clean rules. There was a good-natured level of competition among the shifts, even though all three delivered service about the same within the framework of their personality. When you were assigned to a shift, you quickly assumed the characteristics of that group. This initial socialization had a powerful effect of keeping the shift “game” rolling along.
Then, the style, approach, and philosophy of the administration were very old-fashioned, commonly referred to as authoritarian. Even though it was the 1960s, we were gearing up for about 1945, particularly as it related to human relations management (notice I didn’t say leadership). We had a ton of rules and regulations that were contained in an organizational scrapbook (rule book, very big) of creating an endless supply of organizational boundaries designed to define, correct, and always create the fear to prevent future mistakes, misdeeds, and disruptions. Punishment was the major tool a typical senior boss used to “keep order.”
These same bosses also used the power of station assignment as a reward for obedient compliance and as a punishment for any behavior, response, or attitude the big boss regarded as unacceptable. Where a firefighter works is a big deal, and having unilateral assignment control created a constant capability for the boss to exert himself in a powerful way throughout the organization, particularly a boss who felt the workers might behave unruly or become out of control unless they were constantly threatened by authority. The big bosses ascribed to the philosophy, “If you give them an inch, they will take a mile.” This misuse of authority, designed to create fear on the receiving end, created a huge internal process among the troops to “avoid the punisher”-an employee could unexpectedly learn during the next shift or even in the middle of the current shift that he was being shipped to a station 15 miles and an extra hour in rush hour traffic beyond inconvenient.
This assignment abuse and the effect it created were just organizational realities that the members learned to live with. Firefighters are great problem solvers. If their boss is a problem, they will create a solution for living with that boss. Virtually every place in the department was a positive place to work, so the bosses played games with where the members were assigned. This approach showed that the bosses basically had their heads in a place the troops would describe as “very dark.” This assignment punishment/favoritism idiocy also produced another (equally insane) part that I got caught up in. This is the basis of my story, which I call “land of the misfit toys.”
At that time, the department had four battalions: Battalion One covered downtown and the principal business district. Battalion Two was a middle-class residential, small retail/commercial area. Battalion Three had a large ghetto with lots of large industrial, commercial, and storage occupancies. Battalion Four protected upper-class residential places and properties. Three had the most activity-big fires and typical lower socioeconomic response activities. Every night was Saturday night in Battalion Three. This is where the story really starts.
Human Affairs Lesson, Part 2
There was a very special group of fire department members whose behavior was not effectively controlled or approved of by the organization’s autocratic management style and approach. This group’s members were basically nonconformers, a little bit nutty, and very smart (I later discovered) and did not respond well to misapplied management authority. They were very skillful at living right below the level of rule breaking and just barely above the level of voluntary compliance. The big bosses (punishers) did not like or approve of the “attitude” of this group, and they were frustrated because they were not skillful enough leaders to change them into behaving at an acceptable level. The frustrated management response to these behavioral outliers was to ship them to one battalion, on one shift (out of sight/out of mind); that place was Battalion Three on the B shift. This became the Devil’s Island for the department; it was pretty much career doomsday for you when you got your marching orders to report to that place on that shift.
All this organizational Devil’s Island assignment insanity was well-established long before I was going through the battalion chief (BC) promotional process. I was barely 30 years old and had been on the job for 10 years. At that time, a typical candidate taking the BC promotional exam was in the mid-40s or older and had 25-plus years of experience. Until then, I had been promoted to a “safe” level a couple of times (engineer and captain), had a fairly quiet career, was beginning to teach in the new fire science program; the old firefighters regarded me as a bookworm college boy who was sort of mysterious but basically harmless. One of them observed that I never played cards because I was always reading.
Then I quietly took and finished okay (#1) on the BC promotional exam. I instantly became a “Boy Wonder,” a designation that was not complimentary. The front office conversation indicated it would sink the organization and put an end to the Western world to promote a kid to such a lofty position, but there was no explainable or acceptable reason they could give the city personnel department for not promoting “the baby” because he met all the requirements on the recruiting announcement that was, by the way, produced by that same city personnel department. The desperate command geniuses had a dilemma: They were stuck in between this punk kid who only thinks he wants to be a chief and the Personnel Department. What would they do with him? They reasoned, “The boy is obviously a wacko, so let’s make him BC 3 on the B shift and let those other wackos rough him up as they did the past four chiefs we sent there.” I got a new badge and a prison sentence. I cleaned out my locker, packed my belongings, and trudged off to my new assignment. Little did I know it would be the most educational and the most fun experience of my life! (Continued next month.)
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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