Leadership in My Field

The fire service is an industry based in service to the community in times of emergencies,

disasters, and catastrophes. There are many jobs in the fire service that make up all the functions

and they can range from a probationary (new) firefighter, senior firefighter, engineer (driver),

captain (commanding officer), battalion chief, and continuing up the chain of command.

Leadership is important and can be found in every position of the fire service, and in different

ways depending on the position held. The main styles of leadership used in the fire service, at the

operations level which typically includes firefighter though battalion chief depending on the

agency, is transformational leadership and situational leadership. I have had personal

opportunities to watch as James and Harry, both senior firefighters, have used their leadership to

help shape and grow probationary firefighters into what is required of them to fulfill their duties.

Transformational leadership is a leadership style that can be found mainly during training

situations where mistakes are acceptable to be made as long as they are learned from.

Transformational leadership focuses on growing individuals by inspiring them through role

models, tolerance for mistakes, getting group buy-in, and being coaching Vs. demanding (Scott,

2021). Transformational leadership is very important in the fire service due to the fact that every

year firefighters are required to have almost 40 hours of training to maintain their certifications.

Firefighters, especially new firefighters, are not perfect at everything which is why there is the

training requirement, and during these times of training the people running it must be

understanding and willing to work on peoples flaws rather than becoming upset and belittling to

their efforts. Transformational leadership can be found in other places than just training

situations, such as being a role model around the station and demonstrating what is expected of

all members, but the most important aspect for transformation leadership to be impactful is
having group buy-in. If not everyone in the group is willing to accept mistakes when they can be

afforded during training or be a role model around the station, it may not be as impactful because

there will be two opposing leadership styles conflicting with each other.

Situational leadership can be found during emergency operations depending on the

captain’s confidence in their crew’s abilities. Situational leadership was a very popular theory

throughout the 1950’s into the 1960’s and focuses on the leaders amount of supportive behavior

and directive behavior (Scott, 2021). Situational leadership is broken up into four main

categories of delegating (low support and low directive), supporting (high support and low

directive), coaching (high support and high directive), and directing (low support and high

directive) (Scott, 2021). Different situations and comfort levels of the crews working on an

emergency scene will call for the leadership on scene to use different styles of their leadership.

For example, if there is a structure fire and the captain of a truck tells one of his firefighters to

get water supply, he will most likely just have to tell the firefighter just that direction and be able

to trust in the firefighter that they know what needs to be done and how, compared to another

task such as a car cut the captain might specifically tell the firefighter where, how, and when

they want the car well closely watching to make sure it is done properly. These different types of

leadership are might be used for a multitude of different reasons such as how much that crew

gets to train on cutting cars compared to fighting fires.

James has been a firefighter for over 10 years now and has worked in almost every

operations role up to captain. James main style of leadership is transformational which is driven

by his desire to always better himself and those around him. Sarah White explains, in her article

What is Transformational Leadership? A Model for Motivating Innovation, how transformational

leaders foster a positive work environment by exemplifying the ethics, values, and standards held
in the workplace (2018). James does this every day he shows up to work by coming in early and

doing all the daily tasks that have to be done, but he could easily pass off to the “new guy”. By

doing things of that nature James represents what work ethic is expected not only to just newer

members, but to everyone in the department he works with. It is that standard that James sets for

himself and others that helps to lead people in the direction he wants the department to go

because he transforms the work ethic of those around him by setting the example.

Harry uses more situational leadership compared to James due to the many different roles

he has in his career. Harry is a senior firefighter, but along with that he is also an instructor and

part of administration in his departments. Leigh Anthony talks about how situational leaders

have to change their leadership style to be more impactful with the follower’s style, rather than

the follower changing their style to fit the leader (2019). Harry exemplifies this understanding of

leadership when changing between his different roles. He knows that in his administrative role

he does not have to be as hands on and can delegate different tasks to people, compared to his

role of instructor he might have to be more supportive and directive to the individual he is

working with to properly convey the skill being taught. The most important, and arguably the

hardest, part of being a situational leader is knowing when the leadership style must change, and

what it must change to in order to be successful. The wrong leadership and things can go

extremely wrong very quickly, but with the right leadership style the group can function at peak

performance.

Understanding how leadership will play into the future role of firefighter is very

important and impactful because I know how and why others might be the type of leaders they

are, and I can adapt to work better with them. This would be more of an example of using

servant leadership to help make the function of the organization better. This will help to make
me more successful in the fire service because it will give me the humbling experience of

making my work and leadership styles fit into those of the people around me. Having the servant

leadership style when first starting in the fire service will keep other leadership styles open for

improvement, such as transformational and situational, by showing how adaptive the leader and

dependable the leader can be.

The importance of leadership can be found every day, in every role, of the fire service,

and sometimes even more than one leadership theory can be in play at a time. Knowing these

theories and how they play into the different positions can drastically improve a crew’s

understanding of one and other, and increase their abilities to work better as a team.
 References

Anthony, L. (2019, February 12). Define Situational Leadership. Chron.com. Retrieved from

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/define-situational-leadership-2976.html

Scott, H. (2021). LEAD 444 Leadership Overview [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from

https://wcu.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?

cmd=view&content_id=_5756194_1&course_id=_140116_1&framesetWrapped=true

White, S. K. (2018, February 21). What is Transformational Leadership? A Model for

Motivating Innovation. CIO.com. Retrieved from

https://www.cio.com/article/3257184/what-is-transformational-leadership-a-model-for-

motivating-innovation.html#:~:text=A%20transformational%20leader%20is

%20someone,clear%20values%2C%20priorities%20and%20standards.