Ask a fire officer to risk his life in a burning building, and you know he'll do it. Ask him to give up one of his days off to get some extra training, and you're not sure what to expect.

In Baltimore County, Md., officers were asked to give up not one but three days off to participate in leadership training. They wouldn't receive compensatory pay or days off, but they would get something more valuable in return: a new, more significant and more meaningful role in the organization.

That was four years ago. Today, more than 120 personnel have completed the four-day advanced leadership training, three days of which occur on their days off. Needless to say, it's satisfying to see officers step up to the plate and grab onto an opportunity to make themselves better managers as well as good emergency responders.

But getting officers to buy in to a program like this doesn't happen by accident. You have to sell it: make the program relevant, market it by word of mouth, and show everyone that it's important to the chief.

Making it relevant

The Advanced Leadership Development program grew out of changes in the county government's overall economic structure. Like other municipalities, Baltimore County felt the pressures of the economic downturns of the late 1990s. Departments were asked to take a close look at their budgets, and some were faced with difficult fiscal decisions.

In 2001, the fire department dealt with these economic challenges as painlessly as possible by soliciting early retirements and reorganizing and reducing the number of top-tier managers. This reduction meant that decision-making would move down the line to the station captain level, changing the organizational culture and leadership style — and making the station captain more important than ever. The station captains essentially run this department, and decisions must be made at their level. Leaders make decisions; they don't send issues up the chain and then report back on decisions that someone else made.

Before ALD training but after the department restructuring, some captains and lieutenants were unsure of the new expectations and the boundaries of their authority, often resulting in reluctance to make some decisions. While officers are not at all timid about making command decisions during emergency operations, there seems to be a fire service tradition of avoiding difficult and uncomfortable personnel decisions. Lieutenants and captains tended to send decisions up the line to battalion chiefs, who also were inclined to defer making decisions.

This probably stemmed from the fact that for decades this was a top-heavy organization where officers were expected to send decisions up the chain of command. But we were ready for a change. “Too much was going to the chief, and his plate was full,” says Michael Liebman, the consultant hired to provide the ALD training. The department had talent; it just needed to be refined and liberated from past ways of thinking.

Liebman says he has found that paramilitary structures like the fire service tend to breed this reluctance to make decisions: “In paramilitary organizations there's a misunderstanding that every action and every instruction has to be a direct order. It's very difficult for some people in the fire department to get out of that mindset.”

After 2001, we made sure our captains understood that we wanted, needed and trusted them to be leaders. As Liebman puts it, we are “empowering” them to make decisions. We made the ALD program relevant to them by showing how it would help us build a department of leaders. We acknowledged that this training lacks the glamour quotient of structural burns and simulated disasters, but stressed that it provides essential “people” skills that produce better decision-making, fewer labor contract grievances and more constructive relationships at the station and at the fire scene.

“More than 95% of an officer's time is focused on human resource issues,” says Bttn. Chief Michael Robinson. “It doesn't take long for our personnel to see that the ALD program enhances the ability to deal with these issues.”

Managing change

After refining the ALD concept, we asked a team of civilian and uniformed fire department leaders to develop the ALD program and make it good enough that employees would attend voluntarily. The county hired Liebman's Professional Management Consulting to focus and lead the team. Basically, Liebman says, “I help organizations manage change. Resistance to change comes at all levels, particularly the mid-managers. And resistance often stems from their lack of involvement in the change process.” The goal was to make mid-managers involved and vested in the department's change.

Professional Management Consulting proved to be a wonderful tool for us. Liebman offers an engaging and lively presentation, and he has extensive experience working with governments and an excellent reputation working with other Baltimore County agencies. He is familiar with certain universal truths about the public sector and public safety employees in particular: the frustration employees feel with bureaucracies, the reluctance of station officers to discipline employees who live with them like family, and their sense — right or wrong — that they are not valued.

“Everyone else in government views public safety as the favorite child, but the firefighters themselves sometimes feel displaced by other priorities,” Liebman says.

The team of uniformed and civilian leaders conducted focus groups at various fire stations and interviewed individuals to find out what knowledge, skills and abilities they felt they needed to become real leaders. We created a survey based on these interviews that we gave to a representative group of employees. Again, we were focused on creating a program that truly would be useful and relevant to the people who would be taking it.

We learned a lot from this advance work. Almost universally, officers said they wanted training in interpersonal and management skills such as leadership, generational issues and motivation. They also believed that the department should provide leadership training to candidates for promotion before transferring any new responsibilities to them. The survey showed that our officers felt that fire department managers do a good job listening and working as a team, but are somewhat weak when it comes to involving others in decisions, instilling confidence in the leadership and boosting employee morale.

Marketing by word of mouth

The Baltimore County Fire Department used a top-down approach in offering the ALD training programs to the entire management team. Pilot ALD classes for to the top 25 leaders and managers in the department, including myself. This group critiqued each topic and case study. At the conclusion of the program, the instructor and I asked participants to spread the word of ALD's availability among the captains — but only if the participants found ALD to be of genuine value.

We scheduled the four days of ALD classes so that each day fell during a different shift. This allowed participants to attend on county time for one day out of the four. To capture an audience of people who would attend voluntarily and without pay, simply as an investment in themselves, the message about ALD from the pilot group had to be strong, positive and believable. It was — within two weeks of the pilot, 25 captains registered for the next class, and an additional 22 were placed on the wait list.

We recently changed ALD from a voluntary to a mandatory program; we wanted to ensure that all personnel who need the training receive it. We now offer compensatory time to attendees, and in the interest of fairness we granted that compensation retroactively to everyone who voluntarily took the course.

ALD focuses on ethics, organizational behavior and legal issues, using actual case studies to make the content realistic and relevant. Participants get a dose of psychology, using the Myers-Briggs model to understand their own personality types and those of others and then seeing how to adjust their management skills accordingly. “I learned how to resolve conflicts by understanding behavior,” Hart says, “and how to adjust your leadership style based on the personnel you are managing.”

Liebman uses team-building exercises and teaches managers not only how to “coach” employees but to understand that coaching is necessary. “Because people in the fire department live and work in close quarters and talk about anything and everything, supervisors don't think that they need to coach their employees.… They may not formally guide individuals in their career growth because they think they're doing it already.” During the ALD program, supervisors practice exercises and scripts to teach how to provide such guidance.

The structure of the program is important, too. We prefer off-site, academic locations to get away from ordinary departmental distractions and to convey the sense that this is higher education, meant to be taken seriously. Occasionally we bring in special lunch speakers.

We make sure that each class consists of a cross-section of students from various geographic locations and experiences; the location-based nature of their jobs means that too many of our personnel end up sharing ideas and experiences with the same people, day after day. “It was great to bounce ideas off of different officers from throughout the county,” says Capt. Francis “Skip” DiPaula Jr., a 16-year veteran.

And we bounce ideas off of them. The ALD program has evolved based on the reactions of the students. We do an evaluation after each class, and we pay attention to the comments.

Important to the chief

I play a role in each series of ALD classes, opening and concluding the course. In my opening address, I try to generate enthusiasm and establish the program's credibility by relating my own experiences as an ALD student.

Throughout each session, the instructor keeps a flip chart where participants can post anonymous questions for the chief. On the concluding day, I respond to these questions, distribute graduation certificates, express appreciation for the sacrifices these officers made to attend and let participants know that I am aware of every individual who is there.

DiPaula says that the “opportunity to have a one-on-one exchange with the chief” was one of the best things about the ALD course. I believe that we cannot expect our officers to act like leaders by effectively communicating, coaching and understanding individual personalities if we do not provide that example ourselves.

So far, all chief officers and most captains and lieutenants have voluntarily attended ALD. Some 120 personnel have graduated. Today, at each new class, half of the participants are front-line employees who have their sights on a formal leadership role in the department, usually through promotion to the officer ranks.

“These are true management skills we're learning,” said Lt. Tim Wilson, a student in the most recent ALD class. “It's really legitimate. They're trying to motivate us to identify and understand why and how people work the way they do and how to meet their needs. It's all to make a better department.”

With 1,000 uniformed personnel in Baltimore County, there are bound to be some who are skeptical about the program. “We're now picking up some people who are there because they believe they have to be there,” Liebman says. “But for the most part all of that tends to go away about mid-way through the first day, when people see that the skills they're learning are really usable.”

John J. Hohman is the chief of the Baltimore County (Md.) Fire Department. He can be reached at jhohman@co.ba.md.us.

Michael Liebman of Professional Management Consulting can be reached at 410-653-5215, or visit www.promanco.tv.

A Department of Leaders?

Does your department have an atmosphere that cultivates quality leaders? The Baltimore County Fire Department used this survey, provided by Professional Management Consulting of Pikesville, Md., to help answer this question. Confirm your beliefs by having others anonymously respond to these questions.

Rate your department on each of the following statements, using a 10-point scale where 10 is high.

____ 1] Managers lead by example.

____ 2] Conflicts are resolved quickly.

____ 3] Our leaders are motivating.

____ 4] When decisions will affect employees, they are generally asked for input.

____ 5] Supervisors give honest feedback and performance appraisals.

____ 6] Employee morale is generally high

____ 7] Supervisors make their expectations clear.

____ 8] Supervisors support upper management decisions even if they don't agree with them.

____ 9] Off the fireground or medic calls, supervisors seldom make autocratic decisions.

____ 10] Our structure keeps everyone informed of changes to policies and procedures.

____ 11] Good performance is recognized, praised and rewarded.

____ 12] Employees have confidence in the leadership of the fire department.

____ 13] Supervisors hold everyone to the same standards.

____ 14] Policies and procedures support the services delivered.

____ 15] Jobs make good use of employees' skills and abilities.

____ TOTAL

Above 134: Outstanding

120-134: Very positive, expect more from others

105-133: Fair with room for improvement

Below 105: Significant opportunities for improvement