The Case for Effective Small Unit Leadership in the Fire Service
(Room 2B)
22 Feb 19
8:00 AM
-
12:00 PM
The longer title for my class is “Marine, Airborne, Ranger, Firefighter: The Case for Effective Small Unit Leadership in the Fire Service”. The title represents my career path. I started my public service, and path to learning about leadership, as a United States Marine. Through my career I was fortunate enough to become a staff non-commissioned officer and had opportunities to lead in austere environments throughout the world, with groups of Marines and other allied forces ranging from 2 to 30. I was able to see every aspect of small-unit leadership in action and to gain a solid understanding of what effective leadership looks like. With almost 23 years in the fire service I have had the chance to see leadership in our industry and want to transfer those experiences. The unfortunate reality, which I feel strongly about, is that the fire service has not fulfilled its obligation to its company officers in preparing or supporting them as leaders. While the fire service in general greatly appreciates and holds in high esteem the U.S. Military, they take what they see in movies and TV at its surface value without understanding what underpins that model. That being said, it is not a perfect product. But the ability of such a large entity, composed of multiple organizations, with widely varying mission sets, to produce hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of leaders, quite literally to operate from one side of the globe to the other, bears studying and understanding. The focus of my period of instruction is to do just that. The learning objectives: - Understand the history of military leadership, the evolution of small unit leadership, and its parallels to the fire service - Define leadership traits, styles, skills and principle - Identify clearly what effective firehouse leadership looks like.