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| (Photo: Brass Tacks and Hard Facts) |
As my years on the job add up, my desire to not only
identify, but also solve many of our ongoing problems increases. Talking to people from across the country,
with various backgrounds, from different size departments has led me to know
two things for certain; 1) We all experience similar problems in different ways
and 2) We seem to be inept at solving these problems as they continue to plague
us generation after generation. These
realizations have caused to not ask what is going on to why is
it happening? This approach has led me to
the idea that perhaps many of the conflicts we face within the walls of our
firehouses, and even during incidents to a degree, are based on our current
mentality towards the fire service rather than an actual topic, opinion, or
event. What I mean is, could the way we
react to our disputes be more about our psyche than the actual impact of what
is causing our disputes to begin with?
I have a premise that our careers are divided into three
very distinct, repetitive segments: 1) We blindly follow the information
presented to us because we are naïve, ignorant, or content. 2) We challenge EVERYTHING we know, see, and
learn because our experience and education causes conflict between theory and
reality. 3) We make educated decisions
on our beliefs and focus on not only perfecting them, but also sharing them
with others in an effort to unify our members as well as establish standards
that will result in increased skill, performance, and efficiency.
At face value, your mind has likely classified these 3
distinct
segments into decades we are on the job, ranks or milestones, or some
other similar measure of time, however I don’t think it is that simple. For the most part we all assume that our
careers occur on a linear path. We start
as a probie and learn the basics of the job.
From there we add a little time, experience, and maybe even some specialties
to our resume as we take on a little responsibility, maybe even becoming a
driver/operator or other special designation.
Finally, we graduate to becoming a senior man, company officer, or chief. While this is undeniably the typical path of
professional progression, the problem is that while the promotional ladder is
straight, defined, and generally with very few deviations from what we know and
expect, the thought process that defines our growth and maturation during these
career benchmarks can be anything but.
Therefore, our strategic and tactical beliefs are not necessarily in
line with our pay grade or position, but instead it is how our minds interchange between the three segments which makes subtle changes in our views throughout our careers, resulting in swaying in our opinions or tactics quite regularly.
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| (Photo: Behind the Badge OC) |
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| (Photo: Fire Engineering) |
Our training and curriculum fail us by diminishing the importance
of constant growth and neglecting the reality that each step in our career
comes with a new set of “probationary” criterion associated with each position. It also implants the assumption that our
mental growth, skill level, and tactics are parallel to our position. In other words, as we move up in rank or
responsibility, our thoughts, opinions, and ideology will grow at the same rate
causing us to believe that our knowledge base is not only as rigid as the rank
structure, but that our thought processes are directly proportional to where we
fall in that structure. Learning to be a driver/operator, company officer, or Chief is really no different than
learning to become a firefighter except the amount of time and effort we put into
development and education at each step seems to decrease. Therefore, much of our disappointment and
conflict is caused by assumptions that lead us to believe that knowledge,
information, and competence is equal to rank when in reality this is often very
incorrect.
What if I proposed that our professional growth was actually
an inverse relationship to our rank structure?
Considering we have new responsibilities at each step, it is fair to say
the higher we go the more we need don’t know and need to learn. What if I suggested that our thoughts and
opinions resembled a serpentine more than a straight line? If experience and knowledge allow us to
analyze our approaches, obviously we will constantly refine and adjust our
theories and tactics as our knowledge bank increases. This results in learning new skills or trying
new approaches causing us to jump back and forth between student and teacher, even
though our position within the department generally is a one-way path. What if were to surmise that our careers were
in a constant state of movement from one segment to the next, but not following
any particular method or specific order.
Would you agree that we can be sure of ourselves one minute, questioning
everything we have ever known the next, and then eager to share our reaffirmed beliefs
only to fall back to questioning everything immediately after? What if I told you there is no guarantee that each person will experience the three segments I have discussed? Some people never learn to think for themselves or find it necessary to ask why. Some people never make it to teaching because they get stuck challenging things but never arrive at an answer.
New events and results can put us through a
roller coaster of confidence and doubt as we continually seek to improve our
understanding of the job and performance of the mission objectives. Probation isn’t the only time we will blindly
follow just as making officer isn’t the only time we are qualified to teach
others. If we really sit down and
analyze how our theories and convictions change over the years based on
practical knowledge, education, and experience rather than rank or position, we
will find that we are constantly changing even if we pretend otherwise.
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| (Firefighting In Canada) |
There is no magical formula that equates a certain title or
position to a specific level of competence just as there is no skill set or
tactic that is saved exclusively for those of a certain rank. As our roles change in our departments, so
does our perspective. It is that
perspective combined with what we have gone through that forms our opinions. Most of us come on the job with the
assumption and expectation that those entrusted with leading and developing us
will always have the answers and our best interests at hand. Some of us experience this while others are
paired with a senior man or officer who doesn’t deserve such a title. This may cause one firefighter to quickly
transition to questioning things while another goes on for many years before
encountering that phase. The number of
runs we go on, their severity, our successes, and our failures all have bearing
on how quickly or often we transition from following what we are told to
challenging our former beliefs. These
challenges sometimes find us new answers we believe in and want to share, while
other times they help us conclude the strategies we are currently using are accurate
and worth continuing.
Just when we think we have arrived at our convictions and
reached the point in our careers where it is time to share what we think is “the
way”, we may be confronted with a run, transfer, or promotion that once again
forces us to question our thought process.
This is the very reason those who know the job the best will tell you
the day you stop learning is the day to hang it up. However, what we have left out of the
equation is the fact that our views and principles are constantly evolving and can
result in some serious internal struggles and frustrations.
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| (Photo: Fire Engineering) |
If we consider the three segments of our careers as following,
questioning, and teaching and agree that we transition between the three based
on our situations and perspectives, rather than our time or position, we can
now see why we spend so much time arguing with each other over what but fail to
consider why. As we pool our ideas and
concepts together, we are faced with people who are at different ends of the spectrum
as well as experiencing different segments of their careers. Maybe a 30-year Chief who is focused on
teaching becomes frustrated with a 5-year man who is questioning rather than
following. He doesn’t account for the
fact that what he is so sold on as the right way just caused that 5-year man to
miss a victim or get burned on his last fire.
His experience tells him different, however maybe this Chief believes our
paths are linear and disregards the feedback because he thinks knowledge is
based only on position. Perhaps that same
5-year man becomes frustrated because he is in a segment of his career where he
feels that following those above him is the best course of action, yet he is
getting conflicting advice from two company officers, one of which is in a
questioning phase with a particular concept, while the other is in a teaching phase about same idea. You can see from these two examples that our
personal evolution as firefighters may be more cause for conflict than the
actual ideas we are debating.
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| (Photo: FDTN) |
The list of possible scenarios is infinite, but what remains
constant is the fact that if we fail not only to ask, but also UNDERSTAND, why
those we are debating with feel or support a certain way, then we will forever
be griping with each other. We must
accept that our views and beliefs will constantly change and evolve throughout
our careers, often at rates that are not in line with those who surround us. Our conclusions are shaped
by not only time, rank, and corresponding responsibilities, but also experience,
education, analysis, practice, data, and the influences of others who are
undergoing the same process. We need to
focus more on listening, conversing, and discussing issues rather than arguing
or fighting about them. There is no
perfect set path or unbending rise in knowledge or stature. The best at what we do reached that point
because they understood and allowed themselves to grow with the job and
realized that each step on that organizational ladder was not a guarantee of
expertise, but rather a fresh opportunity to challenge and confirm our way of
thinking from a fresh perspective or unique viewpoint.
Due to the diversity of departments, response areas,
equipment, manpower, strategies, and tactics used in our profession, it is highly
unlikely we will ever come to a concrete consensus that will work for every
department. The sooner we acknowledge this
fact and replace the erroneous concept of linear development with one which
accounts for the many twists and turns we encounter as we continually transform
of our stance on how to best accomplish the mission, the sooner we can quit
griping and start focusing on supporting each other rather than sabotaging each
other.