By Nathan House
Firefighters are the world’s best problem solvers. We get assigned a problem at random with missing or incorrect information and we show up with tools, fire trucks, and brains. If we can’t solve the problem with what we brought, we call for more tools, fire trucks, and brains and we keep calling for more and more until we solve the problem. We then take what we just learned back to the firehouse and talk about it and practice it so the next time that same problem comes knocking, we’ll be better prepared.
Sometimes, however, we have a history of letting ourselves get in the way of doing what we do best. Why? Because we hate change. Firefighters can solve any problem thrown at us, but we also seem to make many for ourselves, as well. Consider the leadership problem and the idea of mentorship. I can see some readers’ eyes glazing over right now. Mentoring is not a new topic, but I’m hoping to frame it in a new light.
The Real Value of Fire Service Mentoring
Are You Relevant?
Every person on your shift, on your crew, in your company, and in your fire department has a different style of leadership, regardless the color of the helmet. However, I will argue that the cornerstone of that leadership style is a simple evaluation tool called the relevancy test.
Ak yourself honestly: Am I relevant to the job I’m being paid to do? If you are- great, keep doing that thing. If you’re not, then be relevant. If we are honest with ourselves, there are many times we’re not relevant; we simply need to recognize this and change course.
Two Sets of Expectations
When I was chief of public safety, I was in the middle of onboarding a new police officer who would be responsible for law enforcement, fire, and medical duties. The new officer had a binder full of tasks and evaluation material, a standardized training program, a standard operating procedure, policy, and, more than anything, standards and expectations. The individual had been paired with a dedicated mentor called a field training officer (FTO). At the same time that I hired this officer, I was in the middle of onboarding three paid on-call firefighters. Between the three of them, there may have been 25 sheets of paper. I had a eureka moment where I recognized the disparity between the two divisions- law enforcement and fire division, related to onboarding new employees.
I sat with this weirdness for a few days until the next area police chiefs meeting. I asked bluntly why my peers believed there was a disparity between the full-time public safety officer and paid on-call firefighters I was hiring. The answer I got was shocking. I was told with sincerity it was because community expectations were higher for law enforcement. Having worn both badges for a long time, I can unequivocally tell you that is not true. I’ve never started my shift with 25 holding calls as a firefighter, whereas I have as a cop. We treat each call from the three-day old leg pain to the crash to the fire with the same immediacy: we show up with those tools, trucks, and brains when we’re called.
This epiphany was great, but it didn’t solve my problem. I could rip off the NFPA job skill requirements, but that didn’t help me deliver the best quality employee to the community. Instead, I began to research what field training models existed that the law enforcement world was using.
Mentors and Measuring Success
Most of the country uses the San Jose Model, a reliable and proven model in use since the ‘70s that is based on having standard evaluations and standard evaluation guidelines so that everyone is being measured with the same yardstick. As I dug deeper, I found that most every law enforcement agency across the country had been using this model. I also learned that some EMS agencies had tried to jump on the bandwagon. The fire service was woefully behind.
“Well, isn’t that just great, another program the fire service needs to learn and use—the same one the cops have been using nonetheless.” Well, sort of, yes. But the fire service needs to get over the cop thing and realize that the system works. This is largely because the law enforcement community has put tremendous stock into the FTOs, making them mentors. Those folks are the boots on the ground who are training the boots on the ground.
In the fire service, on the other hand, we have a training officer or even training division to make sure necessary training is being done. That is not the same thing as a FTO. Usually we do the “volun-told” trick of saying “you haven’t been in trouble in a while, why don’t you train the probie?” This may not be the most effective way to solve this particular problem. At its most basic breakdown, the community is paying us to do a job we love to our core. That unto itself is something unheard of to most other professions. We have a responsibility to make sure we’re leaving the department and the community better than when we found it. It is what the community expects, and it is the right thing to do. It’s what they’re paying for.
Next, we get our probie and we basically throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. Likely there is some paperwork, pass or fail, and maybe a training guide that lists competencies and skills the new recruits must have. That’s about it. There generally isn’t a standardized evaluation mechanism with people who have been trained to both evaluate and mentor.
For many fire departments, recruitment and retention is a serious problem. The applicant pool isn’t as deep as it used to be for many parts of the country. Does that mean we lower our standards? Never, although it may feel like it some days. Do get to pick the best of the best? Sure, from among those who have applied. What does this mean for us?
Spoiler alert, but the cop world has found what works and what doesn’t. I checked with the folks in blue, and they’re okay with us borrowing their tricks.
The Field Training Officer Model
Imagine if the person who was responsible for overseeing the probies’ training–call them a field trainer or mentor—had some formal training and was able to look at things from a 30,000-foot view.
Here’s a real-world example. In the three-day field training and mentorship course I teach there were some young, energetic firefighters from a busy department north of Detroit. They were eating up this mentorship stuff. They were genuinely excited to go and make the best probies ever. But they hit a brick wall.
Like every firehouse, every company, every shift, every agency, we have our traditions and cultures. In this department, the probie and the mentor are assigned a 24-hour shift on an ambulance, averaging about 14 calls or more in that shift. One of the traditions in their agency is that the probie must be the last to bed. The origins of this likely trace back to the house watch; prior to fire-based EMS, the probie was always on house watch so they could ring the bell in the station. The position was obsolete now thanks to modern alerting systems, but the tradition persisted, despite its obvious negative impacts on sleep.
The probie was frequently exhausted, being new to the fire service. The mentor would rack out, and yet the probie would have to stay awake because the salty old engineer was now practicing tying a new fly at 1:30 a.m. The mentor recognized that the probie needed sleep, not only to drive the ambulance and administer competent patient care but also in the event of a fire.
I posed this question to these young new mentors: What if you challenged the norm and said that everyone’s safety, including theirs, was on the line because of this tradition? All four got very quiet and said they’d be chewed out if they let their probie go to bed, despite the fact that they knew it was the right thing to do.
One of them noted that there was a big group of retirements coming up. I challenged them that this was the perfect opportunity to make a major positive change. I left them with that question, because there’s nothing I could personally do to change their culture, but perhaps making those four new mentors aware of it helped plant a seed.
Surely some readers are now rolling their eyes, because letting the probie sleep sounds “woke.” For those readers who say, “I had it way worse,” I ask: What if you didn’t? What if you had rigid and tough standards forced on you while still giving a nod to your humanity?. Did someone being hard on you just for the sake of it make you a better firefighter? If so, prove it. Who hurt you?
Perception vs. Perspective
I’ve preached so far about mentorship, but what does that look like? How do we “do” mentoring? Let’s take a step back for perspective—it helps to relieve tunnel vision.
When I went to hostage negotiator school as a cop, we had the concept of perception vs. perspective drilled into our heads. We have all heard the idea that perception is our reality. Everyone reading this article is perceiving it in a certain unique way. Thus, that is your reality. Everyone is living in their own reality based on how they are perceiving the world around them. This is why it’s so ill advised to talk about politics and religion at family gatherings—we argue because we want the other person to come over to our reality and see things how we see them.
However, when you’re able to switch out of perception and into perspective, everything changes. Perspective means understanding of where another person or group of people is “coming from.” This is different than empathy. This is trying to understand not just “how they feel,” but why they feel, what lead them to that, what keeps them up at night, and what makes them feel comforted.
Here’s two examples. The city manager won’t give us more staffing even though our feasibility study says we should have doubled our staff 15 years ago. Our perception may be that the city manager is doing almost everything wrong related to the fire department. But if I view things from his perspective—to see where he’s coming from, why he’s coming from that spot, and what background compels him make what I consider bad decisions—I may get a different understanding. I may not agree with his decisions, but at least I get it. Being able to “get it” is the first step when it comes to the question of relevancy we considered earlier. Am I being relevant, or am I just going to pound my chest?
Consider the four new mentors in the prior example. I understand where those salty, seasoned folks are coming from. They’re wrong and I absolutely disagree with them, but I can disagree at least having formed an understanding for why they think and feel the way they do.
When you practice habitually switching from perception into perspective, everything changes. Your attitude changes around the kitchen table, in your office, with your peers, with your subordinates, and even at home…all for the better.
Mentorship Is Basic Leadership
When we’re able to question the “why” we’re doing things from a genuine place, coupled with the relevancy gut check and switching from perception to perspective, we can make huge strides. We can do this every day we come to work, just as we a critical problem-solvers on the fireground. We’ve been practicing changing things for the better in our job since we were tossing buckets of water through windows. How many firehouses across this country go out of their way to help the community, such as with delivering groceries, taking time to shoot hoops out back with local kids, helping change bike tires, or getting together off shift to fix wheelchair ramps. Firefighters do this every single day across the U.S. and Canada. Regardless of what else you want to call it, that is being a mentor, and now is the time to start bringing some of that back into our firehouse.
Here’s how:
- Designate mentors. This is tough. Do you want the musclebound fellow with the lousy attitude to train the probie? Or would you prefer the helpless firefighter who only brings a good attitude to the table? You must find that balanced person.
- In my classes, I ask students to write down who their mentor is. Everyone is always able to write down someone who has been a mentor to them. We all have them. Think about how your mentor was impactful to you. Are you doing the same for the new people in your house?
- Understand right now that being a mentor is not being a “hug-a-buddy.” This is not softer, kinder, gentler, or more “woke.” This is us being calculated and deliberate in all that we do related to the probie. That means doing things for a reason, not “just because that’s how we do them.” This is us looking to turn out the best quality employee for the community that pays for us to do a job that we love so much.
- Does your agency have a standardized way of evaluating the new hires’ performance? Do you have a way to figure out what their deficits are? Do you have a way to help them get over the humps without just being “hard” for the sake of being hard? Remember, it’s been repeatedly proven that adding stress to a nonstress environment has no relation to the ultimate outcome and success of that probie.
- If you don’t have a standardized evaluation model for your new hire, make one. Make one, borrow on, steal one, find one on the Web, call somebody you know to obtain one, but ultimately get one and use it, and use it the same way for everyone. There should be no difference between any of the new probies related to how they’re evaluated. There should be no subjectivity, which beings the slippery slope that ends in lawsuits. Standardization is the key!
- Give your mentors a nod as the gatekeepers of your organization. Let them fill that role as FTO, field training mentor, or whatever name your agency designates, and let them embrace the role. Two things will destroy a good mentorship program. The “mentor” that shouldn’t be in that role and administration that doesn’t understand the mission and undercuts the mentor.
- Be humble. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Be honest. You can’t trust your probie again if they lie to you anymore than they can trust you if you lie to them.
- Do the mentor job the way it’s intended. When I was a new police officer, I had a very salty, crusty FTO. Everyone disliked him. This fellow retired and died some years later. A bunch of us gathered at the funeral home in the back, having coffee. Nobody was saying much, which was odd. Someone finally just said: “He was a horrible FTO.” We all chuckled. Instead of learning the job, the only thing he taught us was how to placate to his personality and make it through that two-month phase of training with him so that he’d pass us. That became his legacy.
- Very seldom is your probie going to see the world the way you do. You have a lot of habits you’ve picked up—some good, some bad. Don’t superimpose your bad habits on others. They have a career to develop their own and they will. Don’t let them inherit yours. For example: If you know you should be putting on your waist straps on your self-contained breathing apparatus, then do it. They’re watching. Cut out the opportunities for normalization of deviance.
- Don’t be afraid to say “good work.” Hand out praise as quick as you hand out criticism.
- Don’t add stress just because someone gave you stress. The job is stressful enough. Teach them how to handle the right stress. There’s no indication that typical firehouse stress on probies has any effect on their ability to get themselves out of a Mayday when things go sideways.
- Ask them every single day: “Are you ready to learn? What do you want to learn today?” I asked a 21-year-old probie on his first day what he wanted to learn first. The answer knocked me for a loop. He said, “Where do I plug in my phone?” I was immediately annoyed. Switching into perspective mode, however, I came to recognize that this generation uses their phones for everything. Once we got his phone plugged in, I was assured of his readiness to learn, and we had a great day. What would have happened if I told him that was “stupid” or otherwise denigrated his point of view? The day may have played out differently.
- You expect the new employee to come with their A-game and learn something every day. Be sure you’re coming with your A-game and learning something every day, too.
- As a mentor, you’re not their friend. In fact, it’s a very bad idea to become their friend. That’ll come in due time. As a mentor to a probie, however, it is critical that you serve as a confidant. That means they can tell you what’s going on in their life. Why is this important? Imagine you have a probie who comes to work and tells you he has a sick kid, the family dog died, and he’s been fighting with his spouse and slept on the couch for the past two days. Is that going to affect his performance at work? Probably. Although we never lower our standards, we may consider altering course for what we’re going to do that day. Instead of making the member demonstrate what he knows about technical rescue, maybe it’s a good day to refresh where all equipment is on the apparatus. Is that also critical? Yep. Did we lower our standards? No, we just adjusted course. What would have happened if we weren’t a confidant and didn’t know what was going on at home? What if you were regarded in the same light as the aforementioned FTO with the “jerk” legacy? You may have run the member through stuff that perhaps he wasn’t going to succeed at that day. It’s a recipe for mutual frustration, and the next thing you know you’re telling the captain, “I don’t know what’s up with the kid today; he’s getting lazy on me.” Be relevant.
- Be aware of probies’ perception of you. The mission forward concept is to turn out the best probie possible to become the best firefighter possible. Hopefully later on they will become an officer and retire safely, all while delivering the quality of service that the community is paying for.
Imagine if we were able to embrace these concepts 25 years ago. What would we look like today? What would those crusty salty, folks who chirp about having it way worse than this generation look like today? Begin the mentorship trend today and we’ll revisit the question 25 years from now.
Nathan House is a 24-year veteran of the fire service. He serves as a firefighter/paramedic in Michigan. He retired as a public safety chief prior to his current post. He started a field training officer and mentorship group called FirefighterFTO.com with the goal of bringing mentorship and meaningful change to the fire service.
