Hand in Glove
Recently, I was invited by the Pacific Northwest Coordinating Group Prevention Working Team to speak about leadership at its annual workshop. This assignment began like most for me, sitting there scratching my head thinking about what I wanted to say about leadership to a bunch of fire prevention folks. But then it hit me like a little bolt of lightning. Of all the people I talk to about leadership, the topic may be more appropriate for fire prevention people than almost anybody I work with. In fact, I've come to believe that leadership and fire prevention are hand and glove. Why? Well, the answer to that question lies in my understanding of leadership.
If you've read my column before, you know that I think about leadership differently than we have thought about it traditionally in the fire world. I define leadership, not as a person, position or responsibility, but as a process in which people influence one another to bring about changes in their mutual interest. This process of influence is based in relationships, and it's interactive, multi-directional, and dispersed throughout organizations. In other words, you don't have to be in-charge to lead; we all can influence other people, regardless of our assigned seat in the organization — and we do. I think of leadership as a constellation of interpersonal relationships in which influence is moving back and forth between people all the time.
So what does that have to do with fire prevention? Well, leadership is a process of influence between people who intend to make changes reflecting their mutual purposes. It just so happens that most fire prevention work involves influencing people to change their behavior in ways that are in the interest of the individual, their neighbors, the community, the firefighters who will one day come to help them and the taxpayers. Leadership and fire prevention are hand and glove.
If we think of the fire prevention job as one of leadership, we might think differently about how we do that job on the ground. I still think of fire prevention in the traditional three-E sense: education, engineering and enforcement. But if you think about it, whether one teaches residents to reduce ignitions, modify fuels, or obey the law, we are trying to influence people to change their behaviors in their own interest and in the interest of their community. In short, fire prevention people often are engaged in the process of leadership.
If we want fire prevention leadership, if we need leadership in our fire prevention programs, people have to stop waiting for that leadership to come from the managers of their agencies. The average chief officer in a fire agency has too much on his or her plate to be the champion of fire prevention. Besides leadership is not the responsibility of a person, and it is not a position. That kind of leadership comes from the fire prevention specialists, the fire prevention advocates, the true believers.
But that's the beauty of leadership. It's not the responsibility of a fixed position in an organization. One is free to lead from wherever he finds himself in the organization.
From my perspective, I see three places where we need the leadership of fire prevention specialists. The first place is not the obvious one, not out there with the residents and in the communities they serve, but in their own agencies. It is the influence that fire prevention people exert that changes an organization's behavior; that convinces their agency's managers of what they already know; that fire prevention works, that it is an excellent use of the taxpayers' treasure, and to make it work takes a little commitment and some resources.
Fire prevention specialists need to lead where we would expect, in the communities and with the people they serve. However, more and more, the fire prevention job entails more than directly influencing other people to change their behavior. Increasingly, the fire prevention person's job is about facilitating the leadership of other people, enabling them to influence their own neighbors and communities, in other words, to engage in fire prevention leadership themselves.
The final place where the fire prevention specialists need to lead is not inside their agency, or in the communities they serve, but amongst themselves. Most fire prevention programs survive and succeed on a wing and a prayer. So when times are tough, when we're not exactly sure just how we'll get the job done, we've got to take on a partner.
That means that fire prevention specialists across agencies must recognize where their interests intersect and step-up to work together, to influence one another, in ways that bring about changes reflecting their mutual interests. Fortunately, no one does interagency cooperation as well as the fire prevention community.
Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service. He also serves as an adjunct instructor in leadership studies at Fort Hays State University. His interests include leadership, strategy, and bringing the concepts of learning organizations and high-reliability organizing alive in fire organizations. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. focused on organizational leadership. He can be reached at info@guidancegroup.org.
