As a veteran firefighter looked back on his life and recalled his first day on the job as a volunteer firefighter, he thought about how much his attitudes had changed as he gained experience and maturity. He realized that with the passage of time, many of the things that had once been very important to him were now less so, while others had become much more important.

Psychologists have a term for outlooks that change as individuals pass through the different stages of life. They call it the life cycle, and it has five stages:

1. Child: development of intelligence, learning, personality.

2. Youth: maturation, tends to be passionate.

3. Young adult: ambition, mastery and direction over actions, increase of strength.

4. Adult: full vigor, striving for significance, improvement of insight and reason.

5. Elder: perfecting reason, judgment, foresight, moderation, honor, dignity, forbearance, gentleness, passions tamed.

When someone in the fire service takes a look at these life-cycle stages, it's not too difficult to see the similarities to the stages of a career. An understanding of these five stages can help individuals manage their jobs, careers or businesses. Knowing what to expect can help a firefighter or officer identify opportunities and avoid pitfalls.

Child (exploring)

In this first stage, one is busy exploring many ideas about life and work. One usually starts this stage in childhood, and it accelerates during adolescence. Often this stage is marked by experimenting with lifestyles, values and methods of self-expression. One is trying to define who one is and who one is not. Key activities include discovering what one is naturally good at, finding (and discarding) role models, and learning what one loves and hates. All these explorations help identify interesting work and, ideally, the ingredients of the work one can love.

Youth (focusing)

The second stage is entered when one starts seriously focusing on the best ideas one encountered as a child while exploring. Focusing continues throughout one's life. The major career activity is the gaining of knowledge and skills.

Young adult (working)

This stage begins when one completes full-time studies and starts working. One is ready to take on adult responsibilities. Basic job skills come from what was learned as a youth and what is learned on the job. To gain additional skills, knowledge and experience, one may move around within a company or industry.

In the beginning of this stage, the major focus is on learning the ropes and earning rewards. Over time, however, the emphasis shifts to increasing the magnitude of those rewards, benefits and responsibilities. Many people decide — some consciously, some unconsciously — to remain in this stage for the rest of their life.

Adult (excelling)

Attention now shifts from earning rewards and promotions to excelling at what one does. Achieving great results takes center stage, driven by an emphasis on developing and using one's skills and knowledge. The benefits of excelling at work include great performance reviews, larger rewards and more career opportunities. It also opens up the possibility of moving into the next stage.

Elder (mastering)

At this stage, focus shifts from achieving excellent results to understanding and mastering the work process itself. Work and worker blend together, and extraordinary results flow with a minimum of effort. At this level, personal skills, materials, tools, methods and the environment are all mastered.

As a member of the fire service, you can probably look around the fire station and identify individuals who are in the various stages of their career life cycles. But what advantages does the knowledge of the psychology of life cycles provide a fire officer?

Awareness of the psychology of life cycles can help relate the place where an individual is in the course of his or her life or career with the kind of issues he or she may be facing, and provide context for the kinds of resources that may be available to face those issues. This concept not only involves the idea that there are different phases in one's life or career, but it emphasizes the belief that any phase builds on the previous ones. When viewed in this manner, the concept of the stages of one's life or career can be a very powerful one. For instance, with the knowledge of where a firefighter is in his or her career compared with a life-cycle stage, a fire officer will have a better concept on how to approach that firefighter, assisting in the development of management strategies geared to an individual approach. It also can help in analyzing the group dynamics of a departmental committee.

Fire officers looking at the various life-cycle stages of the careers of firefighters under their command is akin to that of a parent. A parent might think in terms of, “How does one motivate one's children to do their best and to want to keep heading in the right direction so that eventually they can fly on their own and face the world prepared?” Would one respond to a young child the same way they would respond to a teenager or an adult? Would one have the same expectations of a young adult as that of a senior citizen? This way of looking at things allows a fire officer to delve deeper into personnel management and develop a more in-depth understanding of the dynamics of personnel management. It enables an officer to use life-cycle information to promote a productive and satisfying work environment.

In future columns, I will use the concept of comparing life cycles to that of the stages of a firefighter's career, from the first day on the job through the years of a firefighter's experience. These discussions will emphasize the advantages of understanding the relationship of experience level to performance and show how best to address the different needs of firefighters who are in the various stages in their careers. Each column will provide an overview and a review of the strengths and weaknesses a particular stage represents, then discuss of the expectations of an individual in a particular career stage or life cycle and what effective motivation techniques may be employed by an officer, as well as what the officer might expect of personnel in a particular career stage or life cycle.

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Chief Mike Chiaramonte, CFO, is a 40-year member of the Lynbrook (N.Y.) Fire Department and its former chief. Chiaramonte is a past chairman and board member of the IAFC Volunteer and Combination Officers Section Board and past president of the IAFC Eastern Division. He's also a National Fire Academy Instructor and on the advisory board to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Chiaramonte is a state EMT-B. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of Houston and a master's degree from Hofstra University, both in communications education.