via O2X
I am a second-generation firefighter and third generation resident of Berkeley, California. I was hired as a firefighter/paramedic in 2001 and have served in a variety of roles, including six years assigned to the division of training, which was formative. I was an active member of US&R Task Force 4 and deployed to Hurricane Katrina. I served as director, secretary, and president of IAFF Local 1227 cumulatively for 15 years and was president of FireNuggets, Inc., a national nonprofit dedicated to fire service training, for six years. I unexpectedly became an acting fire chief in 2022 and was promoted in 2023.
I am a person who gains a great deal of satisfaction from working hard and getting things done; I get frustrated if I am not provided the authority, materials and equipment to carry out my work; I’ve found opportunities to get engaged in meaningful work that leverages my strengths; and I prefer to stay out of the spotlight, and if I get praise or recognition, it is most meaningful (and comfortable for me) to receive it 1:1. I continue to learn an incredible amount about how to lead, and am honored to share some of it with you.
A decade ago, I didn’t understand that leading was a skill that could be learned and developed. I was under the impression that people were born “natural” leaders. What I am going to share is all rooted in the research conducted by Gallup, which has surveyed over 2.7 million workers across 100,000 teams on what they need to be engaged and productive. These comprise 12 items (the Q12), and the four items I am going to share cover the most foundational items of the Q12. I’ve validated these time and time again through my own personal experimentation and through analysis of events—emergency, station life, personnel behavior, etc.—that went “right” or “wrong.” Inevitably, when things don’t go according to plan, leaders are out of alignment with at least one of these principles. When things go wrong, it is easy to blame others, the organization, or chock it up to Murphy. It is more challenging (and more rewarding) to perform a self-evaluation against a scientifically validated baseline to determine what you can do to improve and prevent the situation from occurring again. After all, you are only in control of the way one person behaves and performs.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
—Lewis Carroll
Develop and provide clear and objective expectations. Supervisors must invest an adequate amount of time crafting specific, clear, and objective expectations. My expectations develop as I gain more experience and as my role changes. Make your expectations detailed, yet concise and easy to remember. The classic example of this was delivered to us from Chief Alan Brunacini, Phoenix (AZ) Fire Department: “Prevent harm. Survive. Be nice.” So much said in just five words.
My current expectations are:
- Serve the customer, support each other.
- Be factual and complete.
- Deliver your own news at your first opportunity.
- Align your actions with the agency as your priority.
- Learn, get better, fix.
- Be candid, tactful, and nice.
Each one of these is a prompt for a conversation with an employee. For instance, when discussing #3, we talk about how fast information moves today and that our relationship will be the strongest if I hear information from the employee, especially if it’s that person’s (good/bad) news. I wrap it up by discussing that I can do the best work for the employee and the organization when I get information at the earliest opportunity.
Provide training/coaching so subordinates can achieve your expectations. Assuming that your subordinates understand your expectations if you have not had an in-depth discussion about them—or don’t weave them into your discussions often—can lead to behavior that is out of alignment with what you expect. It is also essential that you provide adequate initial and ongoing training for employees to learn the way you want the work to get done.
Some examples to illustrate my point.
- In a fire academy, we often provide clear and objective examples/expectations of how we want a ground ladder deployed to a window to perform a rescue, or how an attack line should be pulled and deployed from a first-due engine to a structure fire for interior attack. We also provide dozens if not hundreds of reps for new firefighters to practice and refine these evolutions.
- How often do we provide clear examples of how to deliver expectations, praise employees for good work, coach or counsel employees out of alignment, or stop bad behavior on the spot? The answer in most organizations is never. It’s no wonder then, that this is one of the areas most leaders struggle with and where many can improve.
This is a real story from my organization. When you apply the expectations and training principle (above) to this story in retrospect, it’s a clear example of an opportunity to have a more in-depth conversation with an employee. The leader did what most leaders do—made an assumption about the employee’s knowledge based on the leader’s experience, not the employee’s experience.
A new firefighter graduated from the fire academy and arrived at their first day of work at the firehouse. The officer provided expectations, and the crew went about acclimating the new firefighter to firehouse life. One of the instructions that the new firefighter was given was that they were responsible for raising the flags in the morning and lowering them in the evening. When the company officer woke up the next morning and walked through the firehouse, they noticed the flags were attached to the flagpole rope but had been lowered to the bottom of the pole. Having never seen this before, the officer asked the new firefighter why the flags were still attached to the flagpole rope and at the bottom of the pole. The firefighter replied that they had followed the instructions provided and “lowered the flags in the evening”.
This is a very simple example of misalignment, but you can imagine how this principle can become much more critical when members are operating in an emergency scenario with little to no discretionary time, or in more challenging personnel scenarios. The easiest way to align the leader’s and firefighters’ expectations is for the leader to provide a demonstration of what right looks like, accompanied by a written version. Then provide the employee an opportunity to perform the work with a coach until the work is performed error free. Below is an example of written expectations for the flag operation—again, keeping this simple for illustrative purposes.
| Subjective | Objective |
| Raise the flags in the morning and lower the flags in the evening. | At sunrise, retrieve the American and California flags from the living room closet, attach them to the flagpole rope using the clips provided. The American flag is affixed above the California flag. Raise the flags to the top of the flagpole and secure the flags by tying a round turn with two half hitches. At sundown, lower the flags, remove them and fold them with a partner using the folding procedure outlined in Policy #1776. Secure the flagpole rope with a round turn and two half-hitches. Store the flags in the living room closet. |
It may seem like everyone should understand how to behave and perform, that it is common sense. I challenge you to evaluate a couple recent operational or behavior-based successes and failures. Determine if there were truly clear and objective expectations developed by the supervisor(s) and if employee(s) involved had been provided these expectations and received training and coaching until they could perform error free.
Provide employees the materials, equipment, and authority to do their work (and meet expectations). This starts with a conversation to understand what your employees need. Without the necessary authority, tools and equipment, employees will easily become more stressed and less productive. You must have ongoing conversations about what is necessary for them to work effectively and give context as to why you are providing or not providing certain resources (that is, say yes if you can, but say no if you can’t). In our department, we have a number of people responsible for programs and projects that range from firehouse budgets, personal protective equipment purchase and maintenance, EMS, training, cancer prevention, hazmat, or the small engine program. Historically, none of these programs had a transparent annual budget and purchases had to be made through a paper form submission that worked its way through the chain of command TO THE FIRE CHIEF! Talk about a frustrating and inefficient process that burned people out. All to make predictable purchases that were required to meet the expectations of managing a program successfully.
If this sounds familiar to you, this is low-hanging fruit. We’ve provided program managers budgets and the authority to make purchases within that budget that do not require approval of anyone else. We’ve streamlined and digitized a purchase approval process when costs exceed allocated budgets or when there is no budget established.
Provide praise/recognition, in the way your subordinates want, when they demonstrate alignment with your expectations. Giving employees’ frequent (every seven days), sincere recognition in a manner they prefer is an important part creating engaged, productive, and happy employees. Praise acts as a reinforcement for quality work, physiologically by stimulating a dopamine hit in the brain. Understanding how to deliver praise starts with having a conversation with employees about how they like to receive recognition so you can customize your approach to each person. Some like it one on one, many like it publicly—you just need to know. Find out by asking simple questions like “How do you like to be recognized?” or “What is the best way you’ve been recognized by a leader in the past?”.
I mentioned in the introduction that I prefer to be in the background and if I am given praise, I prefer it 1:1. I can recall very specific situations at work when leaders publicly recognized my good work. While their intent was good, the impact it had on me was the opposite. I remember those experiences as negative instead of positive.
Hold your subordinates accountable when they drift out of alignment with expectations. If you want a culture where the highest percentage of people on the team are committed to performing quality work, the only way to get there is to set expectations, train employees to meet expectations, praise them when they do, and hold them accountable when they fall short, especially if its habitual. This doesn’t mean that you start slinging formal discipline left and right. In fact, accountability is often most effective in the form of coaching and counseling when misalignment begins to occur. Begin from a perspective of wanting to improve performance and make your employees successful. Let the employee demonstrate they are not capable, or willing, to do the required work to be successful.
In those less-frequent situations where you encounter employees who are self-selecting themselves out of your organization, make sure all your work is objectively documented and do not hesitate to help them to the door. You are saving your organization from all the things that disengaged employees bring to an organization: stress, unhappiness, low morale, internal/external complaints, lawsuits, and performance that impacts people’s lives, property, and the environment.
O2X Human Performance provides comprehensive, science-backed programs to hundreds of public safety departments, federal agencies, and the military. O2X works with clients to elevate culture, improve mental and physical wellbeing, support healthy lifestyles, and reduce healthcare costs associated with injuries and illnesses. Driven by results and cutting-edge research, O2X programs are designed and delivered by a team of Special Operations veterans, high-level athletes, and hundreds of leading experts in their respective fields of human performance.
