Seven Guiding Principles for Setting Upfront Expectations

Richmond Virginia firefighters and flames

By Travis M. Ford

Being a company officer or chief officer would not be so tough if only everyone did what they were supposed to do. Imagine if people did what they said they would do, and, most importantly, did what you asked them to do. Unfortunately, most officers cannot imagine what that would be like. A common reason is that we have not taken the time to set clear expectations and we do not hold people accountable for the expectations that we have shared.

The question is: Who’s responsible for making this happen? The chief? The battalion chiefs? Company officers? You? Maybe the answer is really “everyone,” and maybe it starts with the department. It may actually start with you, the company officer. One approach in setting upfront expectations can be done by using seven principles to help guide you.

In the Richmond (VA) Fire and Emergency Services, the department decided it was worth the time, energy, and effort to articulate the department’s overall expectations moving forward. Every battalion chief, every captain, and every lieutenant heard from the executive staff about what the department’s expectations were for officers moving forward. The executive staff was made up of four assistant chiefs, two deputy chiefs, and the chief. Each member of the executive staff chose one of the guiding principles to discuss with each individual battalion chief. Next, we met with the captain and two lieutenants from each piece of equipment to discuss the seven principles on expectations. We followed up with all the company officers assigned to a 40-hour position, which included the training academy, fire inspectors, and fire investigators. These meetings were foundational to providing the department’s overall expectations.

During the meetings, we established and reinforced clear, upfront expectations for our department’s standard. The department’s standard is “Serving with a Spirit of Excellence.” This motto requires people to be engaged at every level, to remain professionally competent and capable, and to remain relevant. These meetings prevented everybody from being able to say, “Nobody told me,” “I was off and missed the meeting,” or “We already operate consistently, so why bother telling us anything.”

Since the executive team was made up of seven chief officers, we chose seven guiding principles to discuss, expressed below.

The Big Picture

To get the “Big Picture,” you should look at your fire department’s mission statement, vision statement, and core values for guidance. The mission statement is considered the department’s heart, the vision statement like the department’s head, and the core values are the department’s soul. The department’s mission statement also describes where you are going. The vision statement focuses on being able to see where you are going, and the department’s core values describe the behavior which gets you there. You bring the department’s mission, vision, and core values to life by constantly talking about them, getting feedback on them, and, most importantly, visibly modeling them every day. You communicate the department’s mission, vision, and department’s core values to everybody around you by what you say and do. Some will argue that a department’s mission statement, vision statement, and core values are overrated. I would sometimes agree, because it is only important if you and everybody around you know how to execute them.

It is not about you. It is not about us. It is always about the big picture. Mainly, it should be what is best for the whole department and the community you serve. The overall goal is arguably more important than your role. The overall goal of doing what is best for the department and what is best while serving the community is more important than the smaller issues that occur daily around the fire station.

To succeed as a respected officer, you must be willing to risk what you have developed relationally for the sake of the bigger picture. Doing the same thing, with the same people, the same way, around the same time, and getting the same results will not get you where you need to go in meeting the department’s expectations. If you want to do big things, you need to set the right expectations and take people out of their comfort zones, showing them the importance of the big picture. You must also be willing to operate out of your comfort zone. A good company officer leads people where they do not necessarily want to go, but where they should be going.

As the company officer, you are ultimately responsible for the success of everyone around you. Simply put, if an employee is not clear on the expectations, they will struggle to be successful both on the job and professionally. Unfortunately, the majority of problems that company officers face is a lack of clear expectations, and the rest of the problems are due to a lack of accountability upholding those expectations. Setting expectations without accountability will not work, because expectations and accountability are cousins.

Understand that Growth is Expected

Every member of the team must grow regardless of their current career position. Personal and professional growth directly impacts departmental growth. Your goal must be one of constant, incremental growth—both for the people who are struggling in various areas as well as those rock stars who seem to have it all together. Everybody must continue to grow and develop so that there is no skill gap, growth gap, understanding gap, or experience gap. Everybody must be on the same journey together. This allows those around you to achieve more and become what they can be, should be, and want to be.

Most people think that growth is automatic. It is not and does not happen on its own. You must be intentional about it. If you want to grow personally and professionally, you must have a daily plan to grow. To do more, you need to be and become more. Growth is a personal responsibility and a departmental responsibility. Therefore, growth should be intentional, daily, and continual.

What is growth? Looking at it from an agricultural standpoint you need the following for growth to occur: good soil, fertilizer, water, sun, and the right environment. You must also manage any weed problems by eliminating the weeds.

The only way the department has a chance at being better tomorrow is if everybody continues to grow and develop. You cannot afford to have people around you that have a philosophy of “RIP”—”Resting in Place,” “Rusting in Place,” or “Retired in Place.” If this is allowed, individuals on your team will choose the path of least resistance and they will land on cruise control. This lack of growth will lead to stagnation and will affect the overall performance of the team and department.

Value People in the Department and Community

When you value someone, you will do what is best for them, even when it is not best for you. This means that you may need to catch up on your reports and other assignments while everybody else is sleeping. You should be leading and setting up company training drills and preplans to better prepare your team for success.

Consider keeping this priority order in terms of valuing people: residents, city, shift, battalion, company, and your individual team members. The only thing that keeps an officer from misusing and manipulating those whom they lead is to value them by setting upfront expectations. When you value them, they quite simply make the department more valuable, which translates into better community service and reliability.

Values are important and lasting beliefs or ideals, shared by people, about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Without strong personal values and strong departmental values, people will not commit themselves to doing what is right just because it’s right. Team values do not always match up. However, it is the company officer who should set the example for valuing individual team members and the community.

Chances are there are things you can do for others right now. Just look around you. What opportunities do you currently see that could add value to others and the community? You should be asking yourself every day you show up, “How can I make my team better?” Think about responding on a million-dollar piece of apparatus and delivering poor quality service to the community. Poor quality service is a reflection on you, those around you, and the department. Remember, this job, the fire service, is all about others—those others on your team, but especially finding a better way to provide the best quality community service you can.

Be Responsible Every Time

You are responsible for your actions and decisions both on and off duty, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Although the department cannot tell you what to do off duty, you still own those decisions at the end of the day. Those decisions you make off duty can directly affect your employment as well as those around you.

You are responsible for knowing and being able to do your job every day. Do not accept excuses from yourself or others moving forward. You cannot ask those team members around you to be accountable and responsible for their behavior until you yourself have accepted responsibility and are accountable for managing yourself. The department should aggressively challenge excuses to retain loyal, talented, and motivated people.

Never lose sight of the fact that you have a responsibility to the residents of the community, the department, and the families of those around you. Most people are quick to turn over responsibility to somebody else, but it’s your responsibility to do the right thing in every situation. You hear people say all the time, “Why do they not do something?” Guess who “they” is? The “they” is you.

A common reason company officers do not hold people accountable is because they have not yet set clear expectations. When employees are not held accountable for missed deadlines, bad behavior, or poor performance, an officer’s credibility is damaged. When accountability is lacking, performance, department culture, and team morale all suffer.

Officers are expected to make decisions based on policy, not personal preferences. If somebody disagrees with a policy or procedure, they should bring it forward in a professional, respectful manner for discussion and review. However, once a decision has been made after discussion and review has occurred, everybody should support and follow the policy or procedure. The company officer is responsible for making this happen.

Have the Courage to Have Difficult Conversations

There is no doubt that setting upfront expectations requires courage. You need courage to make unpopular decisions. We owe it to our people to have honest and difficult conversations about performance, personnel conflict, grooming issues, or any other issue that needs to be properly addressed to help people move in the right direction, grow, develop, and succeed. Think about where you would be today without those people who were kind and courageous enough to candidly share their perspectives on your performance and other related departmental issues.

Have the courage to never act as though you did not see anything wrong. Do not tell yourself that you will address an issue “if it occurs again.” Don’t go home and dwell on the issue and get mad while somebody else is enjoying their time off work.

No, instead you must be willing to address issues at the optimal point of impact, because remaining silent can be interpreted as approval. When something happens, you should talk with the individual(s) about what needs to be fixed, how to correct it, and what needs to take place. Then you must be willing to reinforce any necessary steps to change the behavior. Have the courage to call people out when they do not keep their word. Also know that you will need the courage to have difficult conversations with people as the company officer—because they will inevitably happen.

Sometimes the difficult conversation needs to occur with those who have the same rank. Other times it might need to occur with those above you. The courage to speak up when it is needed will largely depend on your willingness to openly have a difficult conversation to address the issue.

The bottom line is that you can choose to have courage that will help you have a difficult conversation that will move you toward what you expect. If you choose to avoid having a conversation altogether, it will move you further away from what you expect and want to achieve. The choice is yours.

Believe in Creating a Shared Culture

Culture consists of both what people think and what they do. The question is, “Are you serious about changing the culture to achieve results that are needed?” If so, ask yourself what you should stop doing, start doing, and continue doing to create the culture needed for your team so the department can keep moving forward. If you are not fully and truly committed to creating a shared culture, you will likely not put forth the effort needed to create a shared culture.

“Doing nothing” is one of the popular ways people fight against changes they do not like. Protecting “what is” often sabotages “what could be.” Necessary changes often leave people feeling exposed and insecure. The “iffy” behavior occurs when people make a habit of shaving standards and taking shortcuts in their efforts to cope and stay with the status quo. People make sacrifices in the quality of their performance and departmental standards by cutting themselves some slack. Most people excuse themselves for giving less than their best to maintain a culture of mediocrity based on the status quo. This is where the company officer must step up and creates the right culture for all of those people around them.

In terms of creating culture change, simply explaining the need for change will not cut it. Creating a sense of urgency is helpful but can be short lived at best. Cultural change cannot be achieved through a top-down mandate from the department either. Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they cannot dictate a person’s desire and willingness to change. To harness people’s full, long-lasting commitment, the individuals in question must feel a deep desire, and even responsibility, to help create the cultural change since it is developed from expected and accepted behavior deriving from upfront expectations. Therefore, the foundation of your team’s shared culture moving forward should be based on the department’s shared cultural values.

When it comes to creating a shared high-performance departmental culture, consistency is everything. Officers should be willing to create and champion a culture of expectations, accountability, and high performance that benefits everybody involved. The department’s shared culture can never be any better than what the officer thinks, believes, or exemplifies.

Be Willing to Be on the Same Page

To be on the same page, officers should be focusing on competency and consistency. Therefore, you cannot accept mediocre performance or the status quo moving forward. Your expectation should not be based on what you are today, but on what your team needs to become. Therefore, you should know as an officer that committed leadership requires personal and professional sacrifice. You should also know that you are now obliged to take full responsibility for yourself, your choices, and those around you. This will allow the department to continue to grow and get better for the future, and also allows for effective and efficient service to the community.

Never assume that your team is on the same page as you if you have not taken the time to set upfront expectations. Without properly setting upfront expectations, you are setting yourself up for failure. Anytime there is a mismatch between what you are willing to do and what you are expected to do, you are setting yourself up for failure. Also, do not think that a single conversation is adequate when setting upfront expectations to keep everybody on the same page.

Setting upfront expectations is how you can help the fire department grow and improve for the future. In return, this will allow for the best and most effective service to the community, better efficiency for the department, and improvement for your team.

Travis Ford is assistant chief of the Richmond (VA) Fire Department and previously was in the Nashville (TN) Fire Department for 35 years. He has an associate degree in fire science, a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, and a master’s degree in human resource development and has completed the Executive Fire Officer Program at the National Fire Academy.