7 simple words offer a foundation for navigating the ups & downs of leadership in the volunteer fire department

JANELLE FOSKETT
Managing Editor, FireRescue Magazine

Let’s face it. It’s hard to be in charge. You’re the one tasked with handling everything from personnel problems to the aftermath of a traumatic call. And although this holds true for every leader in the fire service, it’s perhaps even more challenging for the volunteer fire officer who faces increased recruitment and retention issues, not to mention annual budgets that sometimes seem as small as the average families’ weekly grocery allowance.

In his Thursday afternoon session “The 7 Cs of Volunteer Leadership,” Tim Holman explains the seven simple words every volunteer fire officer should always have in mind—words that will help you maintain your leadership presence through the ups and downs of running a volunteer fire company.

Why This Class?
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to catch up with Holman—fire chief of the German Township Fire and EMS Department in Clark County, Ohio—about why he wanted to teach this class. Holman says volunteer officers have a unique challenge. “Most volunteers are still not being paid, and if they are, it’s very minimal,” he says. “So it’s important for volunteer officers to understand how to motivate these people and keep them engaged in the organization. I think the 7 Cs offer some real good baselines for how to help leaders do this.”

The 7 Cs
Character (aka integrity): Holman explains that if leaders have a strong character, people will trust them. “We know from studies that if the trust within the organization goes up, performance goes up proportionally,” he says.

But how can leaders demonstrate their character? According to Holman, it’s living what you teach, doing what you say you’ll do, asking yourself what you’re willing to do when nobody’s watching, standing up and speaking up for what you believe in, and erring on the side of fairness.

Commitment: With this “C,” Holman says, we’re usually talking about a commitment to excellence—a commitment to the people within the organization. He believes that the quality of the leadership is in direct proportion to the leader’s commitment to excellence. “The question is, Are you satisfied with just getting by or are you willing to take the organization to another level?” he says. “And we’re not talking about taking it to a really high level; we’re talking about making the organization a little bit better yesterday than it was today. And if we can do that on a regular basis, then we can see progress within the organization.”

Compassion (aka caring): Holman believes that compassion is about building relationships, grooming your future leaders, and trying to develop your people and make them successful. “I believe that the No. 1 goal of an officer is to help their people succeed,” he says. “Questions I ask officers all the time are, ‘Do you hurt when your people fail? Are you going to ridicule them or are you going to help them improve? Are you going help pick them back up so they can move on? That’s what compassion is all about.”

When I asked Holman how this “C” also applies to being understanding about the life of a volunteer, he indicated that we must be sympathetic to the lives of the people who are willing to help their communities with little to no pay. “They’ve got a home life, a full-time job, and being a volunteer is like having a second full-time job,” he says. “We’ve got to make it easier for them to volunteer and still carry on with the rest of their life.” He adds, “I do a lot of teaching throughout the country, and I’ve been in a lot of volunteer organizations that say, ‘We just can’t keep people.’ But when you look at the rules and regulations, they make it very difficult for the individual to volunteer.”

And addressing perhaps the bottom line of the compassion issue, Holman says he doesn’t understand how people can be in the business of fire and EMS and not care. “I usually tell officers that if you don’t care about the organization, then you need to get out of the organization,” he says.

Competence (aka skill): Holman says officers must constantly improve both their technical and leadership skills, striving to learn something new each day. “I’m a firm believer that leaders are not born,” he says. “There are some people who are naturally good leaders, but anyone can learn leadership skills; they just have to work at it.”

And they must. After all, Holman explains, incompetent officers are dangerous officers. “They can get people hurt or killed,” he says. “The officer must take the responsibility to educate themselves, and that can be by reading magazines, going to seminars, going to conferences, going back to college.”

When asked how this ties into training, Holman has some strong opinions. Put simply, officers have to find ways to make training easy for volunteers. For example, he explains, instead of training from 7 to 12 p.m., he thinks it’s better to conduct training in 2-hour blocks, focusing on the basics. He also doesn’t believe in holding many training sessions on the weekends, which should be left for family time. Of course, there will be times when weekend training is a must, he says, but try to avoid it if at all possible. Finally, it’s very important that the officer to set the example, so they need to be at training as well.

Courage: According to Holman, it’s important to have a healthy confidence—a confidence that allows you to make tough decisions, take responsibility when you mess up, tell the truth and take risks. “We need people with a healthy confidence—not a super-inflated ego,” he says. “People with super-inflated egos are dangerous leaders because they make decisions based on what’s best for them, not the organization.”

Cohesion (aka teamwork): Holman explains that working in teams is not a natural process. From birth, we’re taught to be independent, so it can be hard to learn how to work together effectively. But this is a crucial task for officers. Why? “Studies show that a team of five can outperform a group of seven individuals (not working as a team),” he says. And this is a huge issue for volunteer department with limited staffing. “We have to develop a real cohesive team that functions very effectively to meet the needs of the community,” he says.

Current: “Skills, knowledge, equipment, technology—all these things are changing constantly, and we need to stay up on that,” Holman explains. “And that’s why FRI and conferences like it are so important, because we can see the latest and the greatest, and we can stay up to date and know exactly what’s out there.”

Holman adds that training is something that officers must stay current on. He explains that the first thing that fire chiefs cut during money crunches is training, but that’s not his philosophy. “That’s the last thing I’ll cut, because if I’m going to have fewer people, I want highly trained people,” he says.

Start with Character
Holman says that of all the “Cs,” character is the most important. “This is even more important now because trust levels in our society are low,” he says. “We’ve seen leaders in government and corporate America compromise their integrity and character, and the trust level has decreased greatly.” So the bottom line becomes, “Never, ever, ever, ever compromise your integrity because if you do, you lose credibility, and if you lose credibility, you’ve lost your effectiveness as a leader.”

What Should You Do with This List?
So now that you know the seven “Cs”, what should you do with them? The answer: Work on each one, always striving to improve. “I teach this stuff all the time and write about it all the time, and I’m still working on all these myself,” Holman explains. “I think once you feel that you’ve ‘arrived’, that’s when you become ineffective.” In fact, he says, “About the time you think you know everything, that’s when you really mess up, so you must always strive to do better.”

Holman advises taking one per month and working on it, and then moving to another “C” to see if you can constantly improve yourself a bit at a time. “And if nothing else, it’s a reminder of how you should be doing things,” he says. “It may not be how you are doing them, but it a reminder of where you want to be.”

Janelle Foskett is the managing editor of FireRescue magazine.