Company Officers Must Set Expectations & Avoid the “Buddy” Trap

Your expectations & relationships must serve the department’s mission, not your popularity

If you need a little convincing that the company officer is the most critical position within your fire department, here are a few arguments: They have the most public contacts; they’re directly responsible for company safety, efficiency and effectiveness; they deliver customer service; they provide the leadership, mentoring, accountability, training and work ethic for the crew; and they’re entrusted to oversee millions of dollars in apparatus and equipment.

What I want to focus on in this month’s PAR check are two factors that hold true whether you’re a newly promoted captain a lieutenant with 15 years’ experience or a chief officer who supervises other company officers.

Set Expectations

One of the most important elements for success in supervising your fire station: well-defined personal and organizational expectations. On Day 1, you took an oath to uphold the department’s mission, vision and values and to support and enforce the department’s policies and regulations. Now comes the hard part: the action behind the words. You must incorporate the department’s expectations into your expectations for your crew. Your personnel like to know what’s expected of them. They also want the ground rules up front and well-defined organizational boundaries.

Communicating your expectations is similar to explaining the rules of a game. Be clear and concise. State expectations for the performance and the behavior you want to achieve. In addition, be clear about the consequences of performance and behaviors that are beyond or not quite up to departmental standards. Once expectations are set, revisit them often in very simple terms.

Unfortunately, some company officers morph the expectations process and provide their own interpretation of department mission and values by delivering inconsistent or vague expectations or no expectations at all. If you’re one of these officers, remember that it’s the responsibility of the chain-of-command to ensure that individuals who take an independent path from the organization are brought back on track.

Be a Boss, Not a Buddy

One of the biggest mistakes when supervising your fire station is thinking you have to be everyone’s friend.

The classic example of this type of boss: the character of Michael Scott on “The Office.” He tries so hard to make sure the employees like him that he alternately winds up being the butt of the joke or, more dangerous, infuriates the staff through his inconsistent policies.

Trying to be an employee’s friend instead of their supervisor introduces a confusing picture about what behavior is appropriate. As a company officer, you have the responsibility of demonstrating leadership, mission, vision and values first.

Now I bet some of you reading this article are thinking, “I don’t see anything wrong with being a friend; my personnel need someone to look up to.” I agree that your relationships with your subordinates can be friendly, but I disagree with the idea of an officer joking around at the fire station to make things more “fun.” Firefighting is serious business. Supervisors who are always joking around have difficulty being taken seriously when it matters. You don’t have to (nor should you) be the life of the party. How can you be taken seriously if you are? Put simply, be a professional fire officer that people look up to.

Another warning sign as a supervisor: your subordinates say “He’s a great boss. He leaves us alone and lets us do our jobs.” This is the classic description of a non-confrontational officer. Although they may excel in charisma, they fall short in delivering operational expertise. To be sure, these supervisors are great to work for, but in the end they only take up space and collect paychecks.

A Means to an End

Your relationship with your employees should support and enforce mutual organizational objectives to acquire the end state of exemplary service delivery to our customers. This defines “service before self.”

Experience shows that leaders must advocate for their people and avoid favoritism by grounding evaluations within the organization’s performance and behavioral standards. In future PAR checks, I’ll provide some thoughts to help officers reflect on their approaches to coaching verbal admonishments and instruction.