The Leverage of Leadership

09/02/2015

BY WALT W. WHITE
Courtesy of Fire Engineering 

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.

-Colin Powell

Leadership is the most important issue facing the fire service today. If organizations can focus on developing value-driven, principle-based leaders who take responsibility and make themselves accountable up, down, and across the chain of command, every other issue will take care of itself.1 Leadership has always been a vaguely indefinable quality with elusive characteristics. Developing leaders to their full potential remains one of the great challenges for organizations today.2

Firefighters can be extremely loyal and supportive of the mission. However, their leaders must possess leadership ability or they will lose their support. Strong leadership can be the backbone of an organization and produce a force-multiplying effect on employee performance. Although leadership itself may be complex and difficult to define, effective leaders exhibit certain simple, definable traits and key abilities. They lead by example, communicate and convey their message effectively, build trust and are trustworthy, maintain their accountability, and mentor and develop others.

Lead by Example

Modeling the desired behavior is perhaps the best way to lead by example. Nobody likes a hypocrite or wants to follow someone who does not practice what he preaches. Under trans-formational leadership, this is called "idealized influence." Leaders exhibiting idealized influence are loyal, humble, positive, honest, and competent (1, 21).

I feel very fortunate to have had positive role models throughout my career and my life. One of my early role models was legendary fitness guru Jack LaLanne, a true leader who, by his personal example, inspired millions of Americans to be health conscious and physically fit. I met Jack in person and was inspired by him. One thing that he said to me still resonates today, "There are plenty of days when I don't feel like working out, but I do it anyway, because I know when I stop working out, things are going to stop working."

That statement has motivated me through many workouts. I am proud to have competed in the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge for 21 consecutive seasons, and I look forward to competing this year. You cannot just advocate something as significant as firefighter fitness and performance without demonstrating your personal commitment to it.

Communicate Effectively

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.

-Ralph Nichols

Communicating effectively is essential in leadership and impacts nearly every aspect of your life, from your employment to your personal relationships. Ineffective communication was cited as the number one mistake leaders make. Too often, leaders don't communicate; over communicate; communicate inappropriately through outbursts, anger, or blaming; or don't communicate clearly. Leaders also may fail to communicate their vision in a meaningful way, assuming that those reporting directly to them intuitively understand (2, 2). Leaders must be aware of the messages they are sending-consciously or not-whether written, verbal, nonverbal, or para-verbal. This requires self-awareness and social awareness and an ability to perceive even subtle changes in personal interaction.

Furthermore, don't leave the "leader's intent" to chance-tell your people what you want and why you want it, and provide an example of what success looks like. Effective leaders are effective communicators who can communicate well up and down the chain of command and across typical organizational boundaries.

Additionally, I recommend exercising a concept known as the democratization of power. By providing an adequate flow of accurate and official information, you reduce firefighter dependency on the rumor mill or on information sources that may have their own editorial agenda. The democratization of power allows firefighters to form their own opinions with more complete information. Leaders who communicate well can create a vision for those who report directly to them and have the ability to tactfully communicate honestly to help support good decision making. Additionally, they can create cross-departmental connectivity through communication, fostering effective collaboration. Effective communicators are active listeners who understand and can relate to the people with whom they are communicating. Perhaps the biggest communication mistake is failure to listen. Not listening to feedback, ignoring alternative viewpoints, or failing to seek clarity through active listening can undermine leadership effectiveness and trust.

Build Trust

You cannot buy trust at any price. But slowly, over time, you can build it for free. 

-Jeffrey Gitomer

Building trust cannot happen overnight. Trust is built over time and requires integrity and consistency. We build trust by doing what we say we are going to do. Nothing erodes trust faster than over promising and under delivering. Leaders may promise their commitment to an effort but should avoid guaranteeing results that may be beyond their control. Trust involves big character traits like honesty, fairness, and competence and seemingly small behaviors such as routinely showing up on time, sharing credit, giving credit where credit is due, staying technically and tactically competent, and taking ownership of your mistakes. Leaders must be more focused on results than on personal credit for a team accomplishment. Failing to do these things may at times seem minor, but they are minor betrayals of trust. Trust can be difficult to build and easy to lose.

If you have violated a personal trust, meet with the injured party one-on-one and talk about what happened, why it happened, how you feel about it, and what you're going to do about it.3 Don't get caught up in or contribute to gossip. If someone comes to you and begins to talk about someone else in a negative way, stop the conversation and recommend that you bring the person being discussed into the conversation (3, 151). Failure to demonstrate this common level of respect to those not present will likely make those who are present question how you talk about them in their absence.

Trustworthiness requires a utilitarian perspective and that you demonstrate genuine respect and care for others. Colin Powell said, "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."4 I firmly believe that the same holds true for firefighters.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
-Unknown

As a supervisor, you must communicate your basic expectations to those reporting directly to you and learn their expectations of you. In addition, you must take time to learn their personal and professional goals and find ways to assist or support their achievement. If you haven't done this yet, do it now, because it is difficult to build trust without demonstrating this interest in your members or maintain accountability to standards or expectations if you haven't communicated what those standards or expectations are.

Maintain Accountability

Lack of accountability, not holding yourself or others accountable for performance or behavior, can have a profound impact on morale. Yet for many, accountability and discipline are synonymous and have negative connotations. Humans are emotional creatures and may take discipline personally. However, "discipline" comes from the root word disciple, which means to train, to teach, to mold. If a football coach does not maintain discipline and hold his players accountable to a standard of performance, then he would not be preparing the team for success come game time. Fire service leaders, much like football coaches, must maintain accountability if they want to lead a highly reliable service organization. Leaders must remember that the goal of discipline is behavior modification and not merely to punish a non-performer or problem employee. Whether the issue is a matter of insubordination or a lack of education or training, it is best to take an educational and systematic approach and follow a five-step method of coaching or counseling.

• Let the employee know that the behavior is unacceptable and attempt to gain consensus with that person.
• Let the employee know what is specifically expected.
• Discuss how that person's current behavior affects the team and the organization.
• Lay out potential future consequences for failure to modify his behavior.
• Offer the employee encouragement, support, and resources to make the necessary change.

I consider this a fair, friendly, yet firm approach for maintaining accountability. Deal with corrective actions and discipline promptly and privately. Praise in public but discipline in private. Although your urge may be to address issues quickly before they can compound, fact finding is necessary. Avoid jumping to conclusions with three-fifths of the facts and without taking the time to gather as much information as necessary to be accurate. After fact finding, define the issue much like you create a problem statement.

Furthermore, you must define the goal or desired outcome; next, determine what actions you plan to take and understand your reason for recommending those actions or strategies, focusing on the behavior rather than the individuals involved. Discipline managed well can build trust and maintain accountability. However, handled poorly or administered unfairly, it can undermine any trust that had been painstakingly built over time.

The most difficulty I had dealing with discipline was when I received a counseling memo from my supervisor for my failure to hold someone else accountable and ensure that all company inspections were completed prior to a newly imposed deadline. Initially, I did not agree with the discipline and resented the process. I felt that this was not an intentional error; it was merely an honest oversight and didn't warrant disciplinary action. I wanted to blame others or the system for my failure, but I eventually took ownership of the fact that my lack of verifying the completion of all inspections resulted in one being missed. Had I done what was required of me and verified the completion of these inspections in the fire district's database, I would have noticed the missing inspection before the deadline, corrected it, and spared my supervisor and my subordinate from this process. I recognized that I am human, I made a mistake, I learned from it, and I am better in my role because of it. I have gained an appreciation for everyone who took the time to discipline me during my formative years of development. I now recognize that discipline as part of my personal development.

Develop Others

Before you become a leader, your focus is on developing yourself; once you become a leader, that focus shifts toward developing others and aligning their values and priorities with the organization's. Developing others requires emotional intelligence and self-confidence. It is incumbent on you as a leader to provide opportunities and promote the success and accomplishments of others. Recognizing employees for their contributions improves performance and takes advantage of human capital. Bosses who recognize and reward their employees for their hard work inspire more of the same and generate loyalty.

Great leaders don't create more followers, they create more leaders.
-Tom Peters

In Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring to Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead, authors James A. Belasco and Ralph C. Stayer make a correlation between buffalo and geese and highlight the need for leadership at all levels for an organization. In a herd of buffalo, there is only one head buffalo, and that buffalo is the only one permitted to lead. The rest of the herd will follow that head buffalo in good direction or bad. Buffalo hunters realized that if they took out the head buffalo they could decimate the herd, because none of the remaining buffalo know what to do in his absence. I imagine that we have all worked for a buffalo manager during our careers or have seen senior managers with a great deal of institutional knowledge leave without first sharing that knowledge and contributing to organizational succession.

Conversely, a flock of geese fly in that distinctive chevron pattern for a good reason. First, they have mastered the concept of teamwork and have realized that by using the lift of the one in front, the others can fly much farther together than they can alone. When they honk, they are encouraging the ones in front to keep going because they know that when they tire it will be their turn to take the lead, so not only are they allowed to take the lead from time to time, they are expected to. And the pattern in which they fly allows the whole flock to have a vision of where they are going.5

Successful organizations operate similarly to a relay team with a smooth transition of the proverbial baton from one leader to the next, which requires that leaders codify much of what they do and share what they have learned with others. Smart leaders with a genuine interest in organizational success will invest time and provide opportunity to develop leaders at all levels of an organization and recognize and reward performance. The challenge can be persuading those in leadership not to develop an inappropriate proprietary ownership of their role and thus be reluctant to relinquish control or share information. The success of an overarching leader in a lower rank whose influence exceeds his authority may be threatening to some managers.

"Do not let your ego get so wrapped around your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it."
-Colin Powell

True leaders recognize that no one has all the answers. Soliciting input and involvement in decision making and allowing others an opportunity to lead are necessary to stay successful and productive. Involving new members can bring energy and new perspective. Without energy you may be able to accomplish tactical goals, but it's not likely you will achieve strategic ones. Often, frontline personnel have a better handle on what is going on day to day-what's working and what's not-than those of us in the office.6 Only leaders who listen to others, recognize the value of their input, and commit to developing others are likely to be viewed as successful.

Effective Organizational Culture

Leaders are responsible for creating direction, establishing priorities, and shaping organizational culture. Regarding strategic planning and organizational renewal, many consider the three main levers to be structure, policies, and leadership. Structure is essentially your organizational chart, policies are your management practices, and leadership is a matter of personal conduct. The problem with policy-driven organizations is that often members don't connect with the policy or only comply with it out of fear of discipline; many policy statements are too lengthy and cumbersome to be practical or remembered. If a policy has a staple in it, it is too long for me. Organizations driven by values that leaders exhibit and members internalize are more likely to create purposeful commitment to those values. Organizational structure and management process changes can be rather heavy, blunt tools for attempting to change behavior. Conversely, changes in leadership can range from drastic to subtle-even subtle changes may produce dramatic results.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. 

-Leo Tolstoy

4 ways fire chiefs can be better communicators

By Jo-Ann Lorber

Courtesy of Fire Chief Magazine

Effective communication helps us better understand a person or situation, resolve differences, build trust and respect, and create environments where creative ideas, problem solving, affection, and caring can flourish.

As simple as communication seems, many of us experience difficulties connecting successfully with others. Much of what we try to communicate - and others try to communicate to us - gets overlooked or misunderstood, which can cause conflict and frustration in both personal and professional relationships.

In the information age, we have to send, receive and process huge numbers of messages every day. But effective communication is about more than just exchanging information.

Effective communication requires us to also understand the emotion behind the information. It can improve relationships at home, work and in social situations by deepening your connections to others and improving teamwork, decision-making, caring and problem solving. It enables us to communicate even negative or difficult messages without creating conflict or destroying trust.

Effective communication combines a set of skills including nonverbal communication, attentive listening, the ability to manage stress in the moment, and the capacity to recognize and understand your own emotions and those of the person you're communicating with.

While effective communication is a learned skill, it is more effective when it's spontaneous rather than formulaic. An example would be, a speech that is read from notes rarely has the same impact as a speech that's delivered spontaneously.

Of course, it takes time and effort to develop these skills and become an effective communicator. Here are four simple skills that may assist you in becoming better communicators.

1. Listening

If your goal is to fully understand and connect with the other person, listening effectively will often come naturally. If it doesn't you can follow these four tips.

First, focus fully on the speaker. If you are daydreaming, checking text messages (something that we all seem to do these days) or doodling, you're almost certain to miss nonverbal cues in the conversation. If you find it hard to concentrate on some speakers, try to repeat their words in your head; it will reinforce their message and help keep you focused.

Second, avoid interrupting or trying to redirect the conversation to your concerns. Listening is not the same as waiting for your turn to talk. You can't concentrate on what they are saying if you're forming what you're going to say next. Most often, the speaker can read your facial expressions and knows that your mind is elsewhere.

Third, avoid seeming judgmental. In order to communicate effectively with someone, you don't have to like them or agree with their ideas, values or opinions. However, you do need to set aside your judgment and withhold blame and criticism in order to fully understand a person.

Fourth, show your interest in what's being said. Nod occasionally (not a head bob when you fall asleep), smile at the person and make sure your posture is open and inviting.

2. Nonverbal communication

When we communicate things that we care about, we do so mainly using nonverbal signals. Wordless communication includes facial expressions, body movement and gestures, eye contact, posture, the tone of your voice, and even your muscle tension and breathing.

The way you look, listen, move, and react to another person tells them more about how you're feeling than words alone ever can. Here are some tips for improving nonverbal communication.

• People watch and notice how people react to one another.
• Be aware of individual differences (countries and cultures) they may use nonverbal skills differently.
• Nonverbal communication should reinforce what is being said. If you say one thing and your body language says something else, your listener will likely feel you are dishonest.
• Adjust your nonverbal signals according to context - the tone of your voice should be different when addressing a child then when addressing adults. Also take account the emotional state and cultural background of your audience.
• Use body language to convey positive feelings - an example is a job interview where you are nervous; stand tall with shoulders back, smile, maintain eye contact and deliver a firm handshake. It helps you feel more self-confident and helps put others at ease.

3. Managing stress

In small doses, stress helps us perform under pressure, which is the norm in the fire service. However, when stress becomes constant and overwhelming it can impede effective communication by disrupting your capacity to think clearly and creatively, and act appropriately.

When you're stressed, you're more likely to misread other people, send confusing or off-putting nonverbal signals, and say something that you will most likely regret. This has happened to me once or twice, and it was a challenge to reverse the outcome.

When stress strikes, you can't always temper it by taking time out to meditate or go for a run, especially if you're in a meeting. By learning to quickly reduce stress in the moment, you can safely face any strong emotions you're experiencing, regulate your feelings and behave appropriately.

Try these six tips to deal with stress during communication.

• Recognize when you are becoming stressed; listen to your body.
• Take a moment to calm down before deciding to continue a conversation, or postpone it.
• Bring your senses to the rescue and take a few deep breaths, clench and relax muscles, or recall a soothing sensory-rich image (waterfalls, ocean waves or whatever calms you).
• Look for humor in the situation. When used appropriately, humor is a great way to diffuse stress when communicating.
• Be willing to compromise. Bending a little to find a happy middle ground reduces stress levels for everyone concerned.
• Agree to disagree - take a quick break and move away from the situation. Physical movement or finding a quiet place to regain your balance can quickly reduce stress.

4. Emotional awareness

Emotions play an important role in the way we communicate at home and work. It's the way you feel, more than the way you think, that motivates you to communicate or to make decisions. The way you react to emotionally driven nonverbal cues affects both how you understand other people and how they understand you.

We all need to understand that emotions play a big role in communication. Think how many times you may have had an argument with your spouse before work and you snapped at everyone all day at work and then said or did something that gets you in trouble or vice-versa?

Emotional awareness helps understand and empathize with what is really troubling other people. It also helps you understand yourself, including what's really troubling you and what you really want.

Remember, effective communication skills can be learned. And like firefighting skills, communication skills must be practiced until they are done without forethought.