In last months article we discussed the roles and responsibilities of the company officer. Another aspect of your new job is to impress your boss. You can be sure your boss will be watching you very closely. You want to impress the boss with your maturity, decision making ability, job knowledge, sound judgment. Most of all, you want to show that you can be trusted. You expect your boss to hold you accountable. You want your boss to have confidence in you. Your boss expects you to train your team members, and hold them accountable in both a positive and negative sense. When you accomplish all of the above, the end result will be to make your boss’s job easier.

So, where do you start? Respected and successful leaders believe that in today’s work world the foundation to success is to know your job, do your job, lead with character and integrity, and to be a role model. That will also be the foundation of this article and perhaps additional articles to come.

Let’s discuss knowing your job. First, look at the position job description.

Here is an example:

Company Officers are responsible for the following:

• In charge of an engine, or truck company and a fire station. This includes being responsible for the care, maintenance, and usage of all equipment and the station itself.
• Preparing reports and maintaining records as required.
• Conducting and supervising training in order for personnel to meet the minimum proficiency standards of the organization.
• Obeying, supporting, and enforcing the department’s rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and requiring the same from members under his/her command.
• Setting a good example for members under his/her command and requiring team members to meet all required standards of conduct and performance.
• Promptly reporting in writing any violations of the department’s rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and referring all official matters to the fire chief through the official chain of command.
• Supervising and assisting team members in the performance of maintenance, training, company inspections, public education programs, and emergency response activity.
• And of course the “old catch all”, performing other such duties as may be required.

Reading and knowing the officer’s job description is one thing; adhering to it and accomplishing it is the real challenge.

The following is another leadership scenario for you to consider.

You are a newly appointed Captain. Your engineer came out number one on the Captain’s list and you finished number two. The fire chief has appointed you to the only captain’s vacancy because he said you had more education. For the past six months the engineer’s performance has deteriorated. He has been absent and late more times in the last six months than has in the last six years. Your firefighter has come to you and expressed concern for his safety due to the engineer’s lack of work effort. He also told you that he knows the engineer is involved in drugs while off-duty.

How would you handle this situation?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under FD Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.