Developing a Program as a New Training Officer

Training Notebook ❘ By DAVID DOUGET

Great leaders will always strive to make their group the best it can be. As a leader in the fire service, one question always comes to mind: How do you measure the successfulness of a fire department? There are several ways to determine your department’s success. For me, I always look for one question to answer: How successful is your training division?

Highly successful fire departments, no matter the region, all have one thing in common—a training program that delivers results. These results can be a variety of things such as progressing all emergency medical technicians to paramedics or having all captains and lieutenants achieve Fire Officer 1. What we really need to address is not how many departments are achieving progress through their training but how many aren’t and what can be done to help them succeed.

Find a Starting Point

Every great scientist, athlete, and business executive started from the same place: the bottom. They all had to enter their respective fields as a student and put forth the drive and determination to be better than they were. If we take the time to measure the effectiveness of our firefighters and officers in our departments, we must remember that they were students at one time and started at the bottom to work their way up the ladder. The problem is, What was available for them to learn from and grow within their ranks?

Often, we have good firefighters or great potential officers, but they fall short of our expectations. This is usually the result of the caliber of training to which they had available or were subjected. We must look at the development programs available to our people and make the difficult determination of the programs’ effectiveness, which can sometimes take the unfortunate turn of critiquing their effectiveness from a long-term perspective. Ask yourself, How effective is the program and how effective can it be? Sometimes, the effectiveness of the program is just not what it should be, while other times it was never given a chance to be what it could be. This is when it is necessary to look at starting over. Starting over could mean different things for different departments, but this usually means major changes to the program (i.e., staffing, program development, budgeting, and so on). And, although this seems like a daunting task, it is normally necessary.

(1) Fulfilling an officer role means to accept personal responsibility for the men and women under your command. Playing an active role in their training and emergency response not only builds trust between individuals but allows you to develop your own skill set as a better officer. Having one of our newly promoted lieutenants lead a hose team during this training exercise allowed him to become more comfortable in a command situation while the firefighters on the hose crew were able to experience his command style. (Photos by author.)

The major question now should be, What kind of program do I have, and what kind of program do I want? The answer to this can usually be found by asking one person: the training officer. It’s fairly easy; ask the person responsible for the training of your people how he feels about his program. Take a “deep dive” into where he sees the successes and failures and why he thinks each one has become the way it is. There are usually two reasons: (1) the teacher and (2) the students. Although this seems straightforward, it is a very difficult problem to ascertain. Is the training officer not giving the program the due diligence it deserves, or are the attitudes of the personnel attending the classes making it difficult—even impossible—for the trainings to be effective?

Get Everyone on the Same Page!

The only way to find a starting point to make changes is to determine where the starting point needs to be. Get everyone on the same page by seeing where everyone’s page begins. If you have talked with your training officer and gotten his side of things, the next obvious step is to go to your company officers to ask the following questions.

How do you feel about the training programs and the effectiveness of the sessions or the educational value to your company?
What types of trainings would you like to see conducted and why?
What do you think your personnel need to train on?

This inquiry will reveal if your company officers are on the same page as your training officers and, if they are not, how to find common ground from which to start and make the push forward. As a training officer and chief, I have the unique ability to see both sides of the leadership spectrum. I get to develop a training program and derive which direction to go for the entire department. My primary duty is to determine an overall objective and start the process of how to get there. Now, I have begun the process of using my opinions of the department and reflecting them on firefighters from my stations to get their opinions, and the decision for the overall program is a collaboration of my thoughts of their needs and their thoughts of their needs. This process is unique to our department in St. Martin Parish because of our organizations structure.

The St. Martin Parish (LA) Fire District (SMPFD) is a parishwide (countywide) agency made up of one fire service district and 12 fire departments, totaling 17 stations and 215 firefighters. We started the evolution of the training division, which has one dedicated training officer in each department who is responsible for his own station training schedule and personnel development. These personnel range in age from their 20s to 50s and ranks from firefighter-operators to assistant chiefs. We have quarterly meetings to assess each department’s progress, setbacks, problems, and goals, and we also decide on the annual drill schedule and program development. This has led to an increase in the activeness of the program because each department is involved in the process and their opinions and ideas are from what we develop and grow the program.

As a chief, I am responsible for the overall operation of my fire department, the Iota (LA) Fire Protection District. When I assumed the role, I made a few changes early on for what I felt was the betterment of the department. One of those changes was an assistant chief-level position that was solely responsible for departmental training and fire prevention. The chief of training was given the ability to determine the program as he saw fit and to implement schedules and methods to accomplish these goals.

(2) Once a training program has been determined, a training officer must take an active role in its implementation. Working alongside your students not only builds their confidence in your ability to coach and mentor them, but it allows you to determine their strengths and weaknesses and lets you grow them as firefighters and individuals.

We have a small group of instructors who assist regularly and are involved in developing the program’s overall focus. From the chief’s perspective, it is important to monitor the effectiveness of the program but also to let these instructors get their program to where they want it to be. There are many classes that stress the detrimental effects of micromanaging; it is important to “let go” and allow your people to do their jobs. Our purpose as leaders is to guide the ship, not control every oar or sail. We must ensure that the end result is where it was always meant to be, and that is to answer the question, “What is the best way to serve our citizens?”

Analyzing Your Department

One of the many steps in developing changes to your department is recognizing what those changes are. Any training manual or self-help book will almost always identify performing a needs analysis, which is the process of research and evaluation of collected data to determine if the material or subject matter should be included in your program. If you are just entering your department as a training officer or have just received your promotion to the rank of chief of training, this may seem a daunting task, because how many of us have done this before? (Good luck finding any reference material on what one looks like.)

I had the privilege of being a student in Louisiana State University’s Fire and Emergency Training Academy pilot “Instructor III” program. One of the skills required for this program was the ability to develop a needs analysis, which is the first step in creating any successful program. We sometimes overlook this critical step, as we assume that we know what our program needs when, in fact, we should often take a step back or attend a few emergency incidents to see where we are lacking or need improvements.

This process includes many steps—examining injury reports, determining a pattern from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports of line-of-duty-death incidents, and simply determining our colleagues’ weaknesses with skills or abilities. However, to develop a program based on progressive success, our organization must have a documented and defined starting point, and there is no better way to accomplish this than through a proper and thorough needs analysis.

Determining the Change

After we have sat down with our officers and heard each side’s point of view, along with a needs analysis of the program, we must make the difficult decision of determining which steps to implement for the betterment of the department; this is usually the most difficult task to decide. Is the problem the training officer, the training program, or the company officers? The answer can sometimes be a combination of all three. Has the training officer been as effective and passionate as he could be? Does your budget allow for additional instructors so the training officer isn’t overwhelmed or allow for the purchasing of needed training props to make his vision of the programs a reality? Are the company officers so completely disgruntled and complacent that they disrupt and negatively affect the rest of the group?

(3) Focusing on the fundamentals doesn’t have to be a challenge. This drill was a mock fire using forcible entry. A wall of pallets simulated the structure dimensions, and a forcible entry door was placed to allow the firefighters to use their skills and techniques while advancing a line inside. Sometimes, a little outside-the-box thinking will allow your program to surpass the availability of training props. Remember, keep the designs realistic.

It may be easier to find the problems than to find solutions to fix them. However, it is your job to fix them! Anyone can walk in with a hammer and start swinging, hitting every problem found. We can all call out everyone on their issues and have our moment on the soapbox, but without a plan on overcoming the adversity presented, we are setting ourselves up for failure. We must have a plan to keep the group calm while also bringing to light the issues holding you back. In my experience, identifying the groupwide issue while also mentioning individual successes allows everyone to see our accomplishments and failures. Once we isolate the main problems we need to address, let them all decide on how to fix them. This not only brings in new ideas from everyone, but the collaborative session allows for the instructors to take ownership to their people because it was partly their idea.

Determining the problems can sometimes be more difficult than we plan for and can often lead to a longer process of evaluation. We have gone through a lot of changes in our organization, and we have found that one-on-one sessions are much more effective than group sessions, especially on questioning problems. We have also found that no one wants to admit problems or issues with coworkers. Having one supervisor and one administration affiliate with an individual can result in more admittance of observed issues and solutions on how to remedy them.

I always try to see both sides of any situation, which can many times make me talk in circles and cause an unusual amount of stress. This is a feature and a flaw, but it allows me to see all angles of a situation. When I advise colleagues, I like to a recite Toni Tone’s quote to remind them of how best to help others: “Some people aren’t good at asking for help because they are so used to being ‘the helper.’ Throughout their life, they have experienced an unbalanced give-and-take, so their instinct is usually ‘I’ll figure it out on my own.’ Their self-reliance is all they’ve ever known.”

Implementing Changes

Have you ever decided that a technique or program needed to be replaced or completely altered so the end result would be completely different from where you started? If so, you know how difficult and stressful it can be to not know if the changes made will be successful. Imagine a new training officer walking into a fire department and telling the members that what they have been doing is “not good enough.” Imagine telling a chief that the entire program needs to be overhauled. Now, where do you begin? What if this process fails; where does that leave the department? Our decisions affect more than our jobs or departmental friendships—they can be detrimental to the citizens we have all swore an oath to protect. Our job as training officer is to develop competent, capable firefighters, not because it’s good for us but because it’s what is good for the public.

Any changes to the program need to reflect what does the most good for the department. If taking an outdated rapid intervention team practice and implementing modern tactics and practicals improves the training program, it needs to be done. However, if the older program was eight hours total and the newer program is 60 hours, discuss why the extra extended hours are beneficial to the department.

One of the hardest things to do is implement change, especially if there is no buy-in from the organization. When I became an instructor, I found that adults will only dedicate the time and express seriousness in the training if they determine that they directly benefit from it. If the change is for stats or your “personal best,” then they won’t care, but direct benefit for them will result in the needed buy-in and acceptance of the new standards.

Sometimes, the steps we make toward change are so small we don’t even notice them. Sometimes, these steps are just a little bit in the right trajectory, one step at a time, with the result of all of the small steps ahead in the future. It’s the little steps that take today, tomorrow, and the day after that that will allow us not just to be successful but to thrive as an organization. An old joke goes, “How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” How do we walk up the mountain of success from where we are? One step at a time.

Remembering the Fundamentals

I’ve been privileged to attend classes around our state and region, and I have found that we sometimes lose focus on what really matters. Training should focus on “the basics” because this is what we will be doing on the majority of our calls. We should practice stretching lines and throwing ladders because, when we run a call, we stretch lines and throw ladders. Seventy-five percent of our training should be on the basics, and 25% should be on the “not everyday stuff.” There is a difference between training on the Denver Prop once or twice to ensure we have grown more competent in its training focus and doing it for two months straight so we can be “experts.”

Note that I am not saying that some repetition drills are not necessary; I am saying that we should focus our training on whichever emergencies our department usually responds to. If you have a district full of interconnected three-story brownstones that share cellars but limited staffing, your training parameters should be different than when you respond to an area of the suburbs with single-story, ranch-style homes and a full complement of trucks. Structure fires in each of those districts require two different skill sets. One crew may not need to focus on rappelling as much as another crew, and the same goes for search tactics or ventilation. No matter your first due, you should still be knowledgeable in the basics.

When I became a training officer for the SMPFD, I was unsure as to everyone’s skill set, so it was made clear that we were going to be starting with the fundamentals, then working our way past them. We have grown past these basics to incorporate more advanced tactics and strategies into our training repertoire because the skill sets were developed and enhanced. This was only because of the diligence of the firefighters themselves, who accepted the changes and worked with the program. This has also been relevant with our recruit academy that started out as a few classes to cover a basic skill set and has grown into a full Firefighter 1 program. The changes that were determined needed to be made were made and accepted, and we have grown as a firefighting family toward greater achievements.

Are We Setting Our Departments Up for Success?

A question that has always resonated with me is, How do our organizations and their memberships view themselves? I once heard that every great presentation has at least one Oscar Wilde quote, so here is mine: “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you will get the result.” The real question we must ask ourselves is, “Are we setting our departments up for success or failure?” Everything I have talked about so far will determine our success rate. Have we identified problems in our organizations? Have we determined that changes are needed? Have we begun the task of implementing the changes? Have we focused on the fundamentals while continuing to develop a more robust program that can allow for all our tribulations to be overcome? Lastly, are we taking a step back and allowing ourselves to measure our results and see if we are going to be successful or not? Have we given members the tools they need to overcome their hurdles and, if not, what do they need for success?

Training officers have a pivotal role to play in determining the success of any organization. We are responsible for setting the building blocks of the organization and continuing to add to every level necessary. Have we researched alternative methods to our own ideas? Have we purchased test preps for some people? If necessary, have we given them enough attention to feel included as part of the team so the whole team can succeed together? Have we dedicated enough time to everyone so the team has the capability to be as successful as they can be?

Anyone’s success begins with how they are treated and encouraged to develop when they start. Anyone who comes into a profession will do whatever it takes to be successful. You will realize or have already realized that the next generation of firefighters are the future of our culture. In many ways, they are light-years ahead of us or even our mentors when we started. I have sat through many classes—even developed some myself—on how to deal with the new generation. The new generation has more heart than ever, but they are waiting for us to make them feel worthy enough to hold that torch, to carry the burden, and it’s our job to ensure we are passing on the information and passion in the right way.

The fire service has been around long before us, and it will be around long after us. We are just stewards of knowledge from generations of firefighters, and it’s our job to instill into our new people all that information. We have a limited amount of time to make an impact on our firefighters lives and their careers, and it is our duty to ensure we can instill as much passion and inspiration as we can. The keys to a successful training program aren’t hard to find; they just may take more than two weeks to accomplish. Our departments can only be successful if we are dedicated enough to ensure they can be.

DAVID DOUGET is a 15-plus-year fire service veteran, beginning as a career firefighter with the Crowley (LA) Fire Department. He is the training officer for the St. Martin Parish (LA) Fire District and chief of the Iota (LA) Fire Protection District.