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Volunteer Vision: The many sides of leadership

If you are in the fire service and reading this column at this moment, whether you realize it or not, that says a lot about you. It means that you are interested in your fire department enough to continue your education, seek knowledge, and build a better understanding of what makes you and your fire department tick.

By simply reading trade journals, like this Volunteer Vision column in Fire Fighting in Canada, it is my hope to help you along your journey in building your leadership skills and ability. 

I am a believer that there is leadership in everyone, and some develop it well, but some not so well. I would like to briefly explore my opinion on what makes good leaders in us all.

Every member of the volunteer fire service is a leader. Just by the act of stepping up to volunteer puts you in front of the community in the efforts to keep your town safe. As you learn the skills of being a firefighter and interact while working with others, leadership skills emerge from you and your team. That happens during calls, in training, and in social interactions every day and we hardly think about it.

Good firefighters make a conscious effort to ask themselves difficult questions and examine themselves quietly. If you don’t, I would offer that you give yourself a little attitude check from time to time. It is refreshing most times and hopefully your answers show that you display positive leadership energy, you contribute positively, and build your fire department in your actions and words. You don’t have to have a rank or title to be a good leader.

We are also plagued with people that have bad leadership skills. As your fire department moves through time, everyone’s skills, or lack of, emerge in formal and informal leadership, and an atmosphere is created. You don’t have to have a rank or title to be a bad leader.

There are many definitions of leadership in the fire service. Many firefighters have different prospectives on what makes a good leader and cannot completely define it, but they know a good leader when they see or experience one. They also know when they see bad leadership, and that’s where problems can lie in your fire hall. 

In your fire service career, you have no doubt seen both sides of leadership. You have experienced those people who you know are genuinely good, those people you consider mentors and hopefully want to learn from and be on their team. You have also experienced those leaders that are negative and somewhat toxic. I don’t think you consider them mentors, but these individuals can bring down an organization and make it difficult to be around. That is where good leadership needs to triumph over bad leadership, but it is not always obvious when the department faces a challenge. 

Leadership positions can be formal and obvious, but for most who are exceptional leaders, their skills emerge over time and may not be that clearly seen.

One of the first things to keep in mind is that all situations you experience are a lesson in leadership. Don’t underestimate your experiences and lessons learned over time. There are many firefighters who want to stack up certificates on their wall and present themselves as good leaders. Many are because they have taken the time and energy to do formal education.  But it does not stop there because there will always be emerging and sometimes different challenges that will test everyone’s leading skills. 

I have contributed to many fire service associations over my career and those discussions are always around how to build better fire departments and fire officers who are both experienced and upcoming leaders. We speak of offering learning opportunities at conferences and courses that can be taken as formal learning is always important for professional development.  

But I believe our core leadership abilities come much more informally than that. It has been the experience of our daily fire service lives that really makes those courses and seminars more valuable only because we have lived through some challenging stuff. It also takes a good attitude to make it through those times in the first place. Experience helps you to embrace formal learning on a different level. 

The fire service concentrates on a lot of formal skills and learning. We must; it’s a technical job that we do under challenging situations to say the least. While formal leadership training is very important, and I will never argue that it is not, we can never underestimate the skills that lie within us to be the informal leader as well. 

Good leaders examine themselves first, consistently asking am I doing these people right? Are you someone you want to be around all the time? Good leadership always lies with a positive attitude first. How is yours?  

Vince MacKenzie is the fire chief in Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L. He is an executive member of the CAFC and current president of the Maritime Fire Chiefs Association. Email Vince at firechief@townofgfw.com.