BY MATT MARIETTA
The transition from line employee to supervisor is challenging in any profession. The nature of the fire service can make the promotion from firefighter to officer very challenging because of the close camaraderie (a lot of us live together every third day) and the mutual physical and emotional obstacles we have to regularly overcome (not everybody sees what we see).
The new officer’s conduct must change to reflect his new role in the department, and it can be a very hard transition. A company officer is not simply a senior firefighter who is being rewarded for his longevity by getting to wear horns and take first vacation picks. Rank means responsibility for some aspects of departmental operations, although some may see this as “selling out.” The fire officer should be promoted because of a personal ability to improve the quality of the service offered to the community and the safety of firefighters.
This promotion is especially difficult if the firefighter is not a senior member of the company but instead is a go-getter who has worked hard; has always looked for new opportunities to learn; and has demonstrated an ability to make good, solid decisions on and off the fireground. Department seniority does not necessarily guarantee that you can lead firefighters or make good tactical decisions. However, because other firefighters may perceive that seniority is everything, the new officer may also have to overcome the perception that, regardless of qualifications, drive, or natural ability, he is unprepared for the transition.
Promotion is not just adding a horn on your collar. Responsibility increases with a promotion. In addition to study, hard work, and experience, becoming a fire officer also requires several changes in a firefighter’s approach to the job, including the technical approach to a fire/incident, supervising subordinate firefighters regarding department policy and discipline, and adapting to a new social role as a member of the usually close company unit. To succeed, the new fire officer needs to integrate all three aspects to create an effective and safe emergency response unit that provides professional, conscientious community service.
A New Technical Approach
When working as a member of a company (generally following orders and the directions of incident command) as a firefighter, you are only responsible for yourself. As a new company officer, however, your tactical perspective needs to expand to include not only doing your own job well but also ensuring that two or three other company members are working together to accomplish a task that may be high risk and critical to the safety and success of the entire fireground operation. Although it is true that every member of the company is responsible for safety and situational awareness, tactical decisions based on the big picture-especially coordination among companies-are usually the company or chief officer’s responsibility.
Technical firefighter knowledge is essential to making this first change in how you conduct yourself successfully. The company officer will not know everything. That’s why the Insurance Services Office (ISO) requires 240 hours of training annually-there’s always something to learn. However, the company officer should be well-grounded in the basics of how to fight a fire, how to manage an emergency medical response scene, how to address a broken sprinkler pipe, and so on. This knowledge is not just the result of riding backward on an engine for 20 years. This kind of time-in-grade seniority represents a passive approach to the professional techniques of the fire service. Instead, the technical knowledge needed for a successful transition to the role of fire officer comes from active experience.
Active experience involves moving beyond the rookie mentality and embracing professional development, applying lessons learned, and honing the craft of fire and emergency response through those years. Consequently, the quality of the experience is much more important than the quantity. Seniority does not automatically make a technically knowledgeable company officer. Finally, in a career field as complex as firefighting, the new officer has to have the humility to realize that there are some things he does not know and must be willing to consult those who do know to make the best tactical decisions possible.
Unlike active experience, passive experience does not afford sufficient technical knowledge and career growth to make a successful fire officer. Passive experience includes running your calls but not analyzing them with your crew afterward; reading trade journals for new techniques and building construction methods and not sharing the information with your crew; and not obtaining advanced training. It is purely reactionary-no technical (or personal career) growth occurs beyond reacting to the tones dropping and applying skills learned in rookie school. As a training officer once told me at the beginning of my career, “You can have 10 years of experience, or you can have one year of experience 10 times.” Although a good firefighter should be engaged in this kind of growth all along, the need for this technical knowledge really kicks into high gear when you become a fire officer.
Supervisory Responsibility
Tackling the supervisory aspects of the company is the second transition needed, including overseeing subordinate firefighters in matters of policy and discipline. It could involve just the administrative responsibilities such as scheduling, payroll, reporting, and statistics. However, it may also include soft skills such as counseling, mentoring new firefighters, or even encouraging subordinate (rank) firefighters who may have more years in the fire service. This can be more of a challenge than the technical knowledge aspects above. The firefighter has been-or should have been-experiencing and learning about the necessary technical skills all along. The knowledge, however, needs to be applied differently (that is, the officer needs to develop a big-picture perspective). In the case of the new supervisory responsibilities, though, a fire officer encounters a fairly new dimension of the fire service, balancing crew integrity with knowledge of policies and procedures.
Being naturally fair minded, being consistent, and having personal integrity can help the officer along the way, but he needs to learn to apply these personal qualities to dealings with other firefighters. Additionally, the policy aspects of the fire service are generally the least glamorous and the least exciting. No one (well, almost no one) enjoys learning and applying personnel policy, especially when compared with structural firefighting!
Ensuring the crew’s efficiency on fire and emergency scenes often involves working toward their interpersonal harmony and job satisfaction during the time that the company is not on a call. If the company officer does not know the payroll system well enough to ensure that his people get their biweekly checks, the crew will be dissatisfied. The new officer needs to learn other administrative procedures to ensure the crew’s nontechnical needs are met to the best of that officer’s ability and within the scope of his authority.
On top of this, members often have different levels of motivation and experience. Here’s where the soft supervisory skills also come into play. An officer can learn these skills by watching experienced fire officers.
During my career, I have always been a student of what my supervisors did to motivate me and make me better able to respond to all types of emergencies. I also learned a lot from what they and the “system” did to demotivate me and make my public service focus harder. A new company officer should analyze what his supervisors have done in the past, good and bad, and apply this experience to the new role.
Promotion has opened a new field of study that is essential to the company officer but is generally irrelevant to a line firefighter, leadership, and management. The new officer must pursue additional formal education, including fire officer certification, leadership training, and advanced programs such as the National Fire Academy’s Managing Officer Program.
Finally, as dry as it may be, learning the policies of the department (and those of the city, the township, or the county) is essential to helping your crew understand and work within the fire administration’s expectations.
An Evolving Social Role
The third area where a firefighter’s conduct and approach to the job need to change is when becoming a fire officer means adapting to a new social role within the company. The two transition areas discussed above are within the scope of the company officer’s basic job requirements. The new officer might have an annual performance evaluation of his technical and supervisory skills. However, this third transition aspect is beyond anything in the job description, but it still impacts your ability to succeed in a supervisory role.
Unless the firefighter is promoted to a headquarters job, the fire officer is still a member of the (hopefully) close company unit. Even headquarters has its own firehouse culture (we are all, after all, firefighters of some variety, even if our jobs are different). The officer walks a fine line between being a crew member and maintaining the authority to make supervisory calls on policy and interpersonal issues without becoming personally involved. For example, you cannot solve the problem of an argument among your crew members if you are involved in the argument.
This transition is especially difficult when the firefighter is promoted from within the ranks, when the people you are expected to discipline and mediate among have very fresh memories of the stupid things you did as a line firefighter. Too drastic and heavy handed an approach (e.g., severing all ties, making examples of firefighters) can harm unit integrity by allowing the new officer to be viewed as a hypocrite or a jerk. It can create an unhappy work environment for the firefighters and the officer (if the officer truly cares about the unit and not just his rank/authority).
Conversely, too loose an approach can damage unit efficiency and lead to low morale because of a perception of favoritism, inconsistency, and possibly administrative incompetence. The loose approach may for a time lead to short-term popularity. Who doesn’t like to hang out at the firehouse unsupervised? But eventually this will damage the unit’s professionalism and the perception of it by the community and by department management and expose the unit to the risk of not functioning efficiently and safely on the emergency scene.
Unlike learning and applying tactics and administrative supervision (new fire officer’s first two transitions above), the social aspects of the role of fire officer cannot be addressed through learning policies and operational guidelines. The new fire officer needs to understand the personalities, the strengths, and the weaknesses of his crew.
The horns on the collar alone are not sufficient to establish a fire officer’s position. In Fire Officer I certification classes, this is called legitimate power, or authority that comes from your position in an organization chart. There is more to being an officer than collar brass or seniority. Promotion does not mean that the officer has less responsibility because his knowledge (or seniority) has provided him with minions to do his day-to-day duties. Nothing will kill morale faster than the “I’ve got mine, who cares about them?” attitude. The new officer will do well to remember that crew members are not servants. The significance of promotion is quite the opposite. Promotion requires the new officer to answer for the crew’s safety and professionalism (including its social cohesion insofar as it impacts performance).
Similarly, the new fire officer needs to remember that he is also not just “one of the guys.” Expectations have increased with promotion, as has the scrutiny (the officer will now be scrutinized by superiors, peers of equal rank, and subordinates). With the new role comes the requirement to ensure that you behave in a way that is above reproach and that favoritism or participation in inappropriate firehouse games limits the ability of the fire officer to set a professional tone for the crew. In some cases, an inability to behave appropriately as an officer could result in diminished personal leadership authority and, in the worst cases, claims of bias, mismanagement, and harassment. A brief search of the Internet will show how many fire officers (and chiefs) have lost their careers over issues of alcohol (both on and off duty) and inappropriate behavior (again, both on and off duty) that gets connected back to the fire department. Often, such complaints come from subordinates when it appears that the fire officer was being “just one of the guys.” As such, it is important that the new fire officer try to be above reproach as a representative of the fire service; of the department; and, most importantly, of the crew he is supposed to lead.
Finally, the new fire officer should be prepared to mentor his staff. Too many officers see sharing information, training, or professional insight as giving their subordinates the tools to take their jobs. However, personal maturity includes recognizing that we serve a bigger cause than our personal ambition and advancement. Good leaders should always be looking to identify and train someone to take their place. This will ensure the health of the department and benefit the career field to which we give so much of our lives.
When the new officer is younger or has fewer years in the fire service than the people he may have to mentor, this can be an especially difficult change to his social role. A careful, give-and-take approach to mentoring with more senior subordinates (and continuing to study and learn about firefighting and the other skill sets required of a manager) can establish a positive relationship in which the new fire officer can share personal strengths while still taking into account those strengths the senior subordinates may have as well. Ultimately, mentoring others is one of the most important ways you can “give back” to the fire service and ensure that your legacy as a fire officer outlasts you and has a positive impact on your profession.
The promotion to fire officer can be a very challenging career path that will, in many ways, cause you to change how you have approached your career up to that point. Some of the characteristics necessary to be a successful officer are natural, but many of them are developed through mentorship and a professional approach to the new role. By deliberately setting about to expand technical expertise and supervisory knowledge and embracing the mantle of leadership within the crew, you can set the stage for developing a solid, professional, and safe crew that is able to perform the critical role in our communities that society has come to expect.
ENDNOTE
Fire and Emergency Services Company Officer (2007) Inter-national Fire Service Training Association (IFSTA). Stillwater: Board of Regents, Oklahoma State University, 49.
MATT MARIETTA is the fire marshal and emergency manager for Milton, Georgia, and has more than 18 years of career experience, which includes time in the fire service as an emergency management program director and a police officer. He is a certified emergency manager and is a chief fire officer designee. Marietta has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wheaton College; a graduate certificate in disaster management; a master’s degree; and a Ph.D. in political science, all from Georgia State University.
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