Why does it seem that we teach current and future officers to think and act like private sector managers when, excluding a few private companies that provide contract services, the fire and emergency service agency is not a business?
The work isn’t about meeting a sales goal or profit. It isn’t about a six-sigma black belt, lean processes, nor improving shareholder value. And it’s certainly not about customer service. If a patient on-scene brandishes a knife and holds it up to your medic’s throat, are they a customer? What about a structure fire in a commercial occupancy where the disgruntled owner decided to walk around with a gas can and torch the place? Is he your customer? How about a young woman with no health insurance trapped beneath a car in a crosswalk? Is she a customer?
No, they’re citizens. Citizens being served. Citizens with rights and subject to the laws of the land. They are not customers, they can’t ask to hold the pickles, demand to speak to a manager or get a refund. The fire and emergency services are not about quotas nor third-quarter sales projections. The people who wear the uniform are certainly not a means to an end, and they aren't easy to lay off when the economy takes a downturn or a new technology appears.
The fire and emergency services aren’t about the free market. They can’t be. They’re about the protection of life safety and property, accountable to the citizenry, and their responsibility is to prevent, educate, prepare for and respond to emergencies. Those that serve in these agencies are not employees even though they’re employed; they are uniformed and sworn public servants.
We never seem to refer to an Army Staff Sargent as an employee of the Department of Defense. Why? Because that individual took an oath, making them much more than a mere employee. So is the firefighter, the paramedic or the arson investigator. And if one believes this to be true, then one needs to approach leadership in a way that doesn’t mimic business administration.
The role of the fire and emergency services officer exists within a duality of leadership responsibility. The first is the responsibility for commanding emergency scenes in order to ensure safe, effective operations. This is the command and control aspect where the rubber meets the road. Decisions must be made and orders given under the pressures of time and consequence. The profession is phenomenal at this role.
The second—and, let’s face it, for most agencies this makes up 95% of it—is the non-emergency scene leadership of one’s people. The guardian of guardians. We’re talking training, education, who’s cooking supper, hazing, physical fitness, station upkeep, equipment maintenance, firehouse lawyering, inspections, what movies will be showing in the day room, hydrant testing, i.e. the daily mundane.
This second element is where nearly everything else takes place, and thus requires a different leadership approach. This is the place where responders live, grow and belong. This is where the armor needs shedding, a space where it’s okay to come off point; a place where the post-traumatic growth occurs; a transformation within the responder where they become stronger and resilient by putting experiences into perspective. We know that responders don’t necessarily burn out from the work, but rather the bureaucratic milieu they must navigate.
What if there was a leadership approach that fosters this community of responders? A philosophical approach towards leading that shares the same characteristics, constructs and attributes that brought each responder to the profession? A leadership approach grounded in one’s desire to serve others? One that is not anecdotal but tested?
Today there is one, and because of empirical works on the subject we now know there’s one approach that strengthens this community and exists organically throughout it. Known as "servant leadership," it's a style that appears to naturally occur in the hearts of responders. It's inside all of you. Yes, you read that correctly: If you wear a badge and uniform, and you swore an oath to serve and protect others, then servant leadership lives in you.
Before we can dig into the concept, it bears noting that in the last decade, servant leadership has been researched and written about for the fire and emergency services more than any other leadership theory or philosophy. Nationwide research studies have been conducted and peer-reviewed prior to publishing in academic journals. Books such as "The Desire to Serve: Servant Leadership for the Fire and Emergency Services" and "In Command of Guardians: Executive Servant Leadership for the Community of Responders" have been written. The problem is they exist in academic settings and never have, until now, been widely exposed to the fire and emergency services, leaving a void as to how it works.
The servant leadership concept is as old as time, and it can be found in ancient documents and religious texts. However, the modern philosophy of servant leadership appeared in 1970 when Robert K. Greenleaf penned an essay titled "The Servant as Leader." Greenleaf was a student of Eastern philosophy and was raised a Quaker. He had a successful career in the corporate world and became well known and highly respected; an uncomfortable position for a humble man.
What sparked Greenleaf's interest in discovering a better way was a combination of a book by Herman Hess entitled "A Journey to the East." along with being a witness to the toxicity that exists within organizations. Greenleaf believed there was a better way of approaching leadership, one in which the leader serves the needs of followers so they can grow as individuals.
For example, you serve as a fire chief of a three-station department. In the past few weeks you notice there’s an uptick in disciplinary actions involving firefighter-paramedics. The servant leader’s approach would be coming out of your office and spending time on the floor actively listening to the rank-and-file and observing operations. As a servant leader, you would understand how to hear the things that aren’t being said. You would seek out the truth.
So, let’s say for instance that you as chief become aware that the discipline problems saw an uptick around the same time that mandatory overtime for firefighter-paramedics went into effect. As the chief, you spend time with different medics, asking them about things such as home life or their hobbies. You notice that they pull back or seem agitated so you dig deeper. You’re aware of body language, such as their inability to look you in the eye. In addition, you talk to company officers. You review run and staffing reports. As a servant leader, you don’t run from but rather pursue learning the truth. More on this scenario a little later.
In today’s fast-paced and seemingly selfish world, servant leadership is a concept that’s easier said than done. Skeptics continuously argue that it’s a pipe dream in corporate cultures driven by massive egos and expectations of exceeding last quarter's profits. This culture exists in some ways in the fire and emergency services because the work is not for the meek. The work attracts alpha-type individuals. Being a servant leader is the hardest type of leader to be because you are dedicated to the growth of individuals, and thus you willingly push followers to achieve at a level they didn’t know they could reach. The difference is that the servant leader walks beside them on the journey while meeting their needs along the way.
The skepticism and misunderstanding of servant leadership is also a great irony. You see, when leaders meet the needs of followers, followers grow and transcend who they were yesterday. And when followers grow and transcend, they are free to be more creative and innovative; moreover, they become individuals that can be empowered. Therefore, ironically, the leader that serves the needs of followers is in fact self-serving because they themselves continuously (tangibly and/or intangibly) benefit from the self-efficacy of innovative and creative followers.
Again, the fire and emergency services are different; they’re not the corporate world, and neither is servant leadership. Responders create meaning out of the profession. It's their identity. When responders grow they become more resilient, stronger and mentally healthier. Servant leadership supports this. We know this to be the case because a recently published firefighter study discovered a significant correlation between experiencing servant leadership and job satisfaction among responders. And we know, again through research, the more satisfied one is in their career, the healthier and stronger they are as a person.
When one reads Greenleaf’s original essay through the lens of a professional responder it’s as if he was writing to this profession. The essay starts out by asking three pragmatic questions: (1) Do followers grow? (2) If so, are they more likely to become servants? (3) What is the effect of one’s actions on the least privileged in society?
Do you see the fire and emergency services in these questions? What about your own journey? Thinking back, can you see yourself in these questions? Look at your young firefighters—the rookies and the newbies. Are they growing and being served by leadership in a way that allows them to become leaders? Would you say they are growing both as a professional and a potential future officer? Are they, along with the rest of the department, mentally and physically healthy?
Outside the walls of the station house, what about the most vulnerable among us? Are those people whom the professionals serve more than any other demographics—the poor, the young and the very old—being further deprived? Those who find themselves on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder are the most impacted by the decisions of community leaders. When the decision is made to close a fire station in a poor neighborhood or not staff an ambulance that can access a rural part of town, its absence is realized by the citizens that need the services. What does their lot in life say about how they are doing? What can be done as stewards of the organizations in which you lead to improve their plight?
Let’s go back for a moment to being the fire chief having to deal with disciplinary issues involving department medics. One of the characteristics of the servant leader is humility. As chief, you decided that emergency medical services were spending too much time in a rural part of town that has seen a dramatic rise in overdoses. You decided that the department needed to staff an additional two-person medic unit to serve this area. However, you did so without hiring additional personnel, instead relying heavily on mandatory overtime.
Six months later, your decision has ramifications for those on the lowest rungs of the department; those who in no way would speak up due to self-preservation regardless of your open-door policy. You become aware that problems are arising in their personal lives and thus impacting their work and driving disciplinary issues. Understanding the servant leadership approach means you’re humble enough to admit such a mistake and work to fix the underlying issues. Moreover, as a servant leader, you are willing to empower others to come up with new ideas, delegating certain decision-making to those effected the most.
This article is just scratching the surface and is nothing more than a call-to-know. There is so much more to be revealed, including the characteristics of servant leadership identified by Dr. Larry Spears: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. Can you see yourself in each of these?
What about Dr. Kathleen Patterson’s virtuous constructs of servant leadership: agapao love, humility, altruism, vision, trust, empowerment, and service. Now take a moment to reflect on them, because they're within every responder; they're who you are. And this is the point, that servant leadership exists naturally in the soul of just about every responder. It exists in you!
The concept isn’t new, but it’s a new paradigm for the profession. It’s time for the fire and emergency services to recognize this and work collectively to hone these characteristics, constructs and attributes through training and education, meditation and reflection, so as to benefit the community of responders. It's an approach to fire and emergency services leadership that’s as noble as the profession itself.
