April/May 2000 Issue Number 10

Is a monthly electronic newsletter which links current events and issues to the daily challenges faced by fire and emergency services managers. Current topics in the area of sexual harassment, diversity management and conflict resolution will be discussed.

We hope that you find the information here useful and provocative.
Let us know what you think!

Leading Diverse Communities Beyond Conflict, August 24-25, 2000, Dallas, TX. The new National Fire Academy diversity course, will be offered as a pre-conference seminar at Fire Rescue International in Dallas.

"Managing Change and the Conflict that Comes With It", August 30, 2000,The Dallas-Ft. Worth Hyatt Regency Hotel. This workshop will be presented at the Department of Defense Fire and Rescue Conference.

Leadership Training Seminar, April 28-30, 2000, Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, contact Women in the Fire Service www.wfsi.org.

Babies on the Doorstep

In over twenty states, legislation has passed or is pending which allows mothers to abandon newborn babies if the babies are left healthy and at a designated safe location. The places most often named as acceptable to take in these foundlings are hospital emergency rooms and fire stations.

The push for this legislation has come about due to the increase in abandoned newborns, particularly in urban areas. When thirteen babies were abandoned in a single year in Houston (of which several died), a law was passed to provide safe haven for the infants. In Colorado, where several babies have been abandoned within the past year, legislation is pending that will allow someone to leave an infant at a fire station with no questions asked.

Are firefighters ready for this? Although so far most fire departments have officially taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the potential new role, there is no question that this type of legislation reinforces the fact that the job of firefighter has changed quite a bit since the days when all you had to do was answer the alarm when it rang. Concerns have been raised that encouraging walk-in services at fire stations could decrease response times to other emergencies, but there is little question that there is also unease about how to fill this new role.

Think of the skills that could be involved in receiving a newborn baby. There are the obvious medical concerns÷ most firefighters are trained in emergency medicine, including neonatal procedures, but actually working with newborns is relatively rare. Then there is the interpersonal side of things: the potential to be dealing with a young mother who is torn about leaving her child, the chance for domestic conflicts surrounding the incident, the interface with social services agencies. It will be a big change, and very possibly a positive one, but one that will require preparation and training.

"This is the only bill that will save the life of a newborn child," said one legislator, and in fact, a similar law has been credited with saving the lives of four children in Arkansas since it was passed. There is no question that firefighters are in the business of saving lives. Just exactly how they do it, though, is changing every day.

Source: The Denver Post 2-18-00

The transfer of Army Major General Larry Smith into the position of inspector general has been put on hold pending investigation of a complaint by a female lieutenant general that the other officer made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 1996. The lieutenant general, Claudia Kennedy, who is the first woman in the Army to earn three stars, documented the complaint at the time the incident allegedly occurred. The inspector general is responsible for investigating accusations of wrong doing in the Army, including complaints of sexual misconduct.

Source: New York Times April 6, 2000

Inners and Outers

Shortly after I became a firefighter, I met one of the guys who had been with the department for a long time. "Hi, I'm R.," he said, extending a hand. "I'm kind of considered dead wood around here."

He wasn't kidding, and he wasn't wrong. People did more or less consider him to be dead wood, a "load", a nice enough guy, but an otherwise worthless employee. And he himself had internalized this characterization to such a degree that not only wasn't he bitter about it, he used it as a way of introducing himself.

I worked with R. for most of a year. Although he would not have been a candidate for employee of the year, he had much to offer. Within our crew (which included an excellent officer), R. worked hard, contributed what he could, and was overall a very acceptable teammate.

Others were surprised when I spoke up for R. Officers talked about how they tried to avoid having him assigned to their crews. Others just repeated the common wisdom: that R. was useless, probably never should have been hired in the first place, and was just marking time until he could retire.

Every fire department has an in-crowd and an out-crowd, otherwise known as "inners" and "outers" in some organizations. Those who ascend to the in-crowd are popular, desirable, respected, and in demand. Some are slow and steady and others are rising stars, but the expectation is that all of them would make a fine addition to any crew.

Then there are the others. Maybe they look different or represent something that goes against prevailing organizational culture. Maybe they had the bad luck to do something really stupid early in their careers. Maybe they just don't blend in well, for whatever reason. The frequent result is that they are set aside into the land of being other÷ among the "outers."

Many firefighters feel entirely comfortable with these designations. They barely tolerate the "outers" and try to avoid them. They feel justified in this behavior because everyone agrees that the person in question shouldn't have been hired in the first place. By marginalizing and excluding them in everyday life, it allows the dominant group to believe that the others aren't really firefighters, like them.

But whether they should have been hired or not, they were hired, and now they are firefighters, wearing the same uniform and doing the same job as those who would choose not to acknowledge them. The old joke about medical school is pertinent here. (Q: What do you call someone who graduates last in the class at medical school? A: Doctor.) Q: What do you call someone who everyone thinks is a loser on the fire department? A: A firefighter, and the one that may be with you on the worst fire of your life, and may be the only difference between life and death for you if you go down inside a burning building.

How many fire departments have so many extraneous firefighters that they can afford to throw people away? What sense is there in creating self-fulfilling prophesies that some people are going to be terrible employees? Don't most fire departments need to get the best out of each and every person? Isn't that what you should want, as an officer or a crewmate of one of the "outers"?

It's easy to lead excellent people under good conditions. High performing teams don't need leaders; in fact, the greatest pitfall of leadership at this level of team development is the leader getting in the way. Great leaders are ones that can take marginal or troubled employees and make them into high performing members of the team. This can only be accomplished if an organization makes the commitment to including all its members as valuable assets, and committing time and energy to developing every individual to his or her highest potential.

© Linda F. Willing, 2000