Being a fire chief is an exhilarating experience because it involves and consumes your entire being. Some people refer to this as power, and I will as well. Although power is sometimes abused, it really is power that keeps bringing people into leadership roles such as fire chief. Power allows one to make a difference in another's life, to have an effect, to leave something better behind. What I like most is the ability to influence.

I know that I have had a positive influence on quite a few others. I can say that at least three members of my department have gone on to be chiefs in other communities. At least 10 of my former members went on to become career firefighters. Those kinds of successes bring me a smile. I've sat at the table and debated the future of the fire service and have found that my brother and sister chiefs were very willing to listen to what I had to say and in most cases agreed with my position.

Being a fire chief can be frustrating, especially when there are uncontrollable forces in play. The fire chief always thinks, “I'm in charge here. I run the department. Why can't I just tell people what I want and they'll just do it?” There will always be outside influences. There are major factors that will affect your ability to be successful, and many of them can't be controlled. The effective chief realizes that these forces are uncontrollable, and instead of brooding, crying or whining, builds a defensive strategy around each one so that the uncontrolled forces have less of an effect.

An organization's history has an inevitable effect on the choices available to its current chief, and history can't be changed. It may show up in only trivial ways, but small things make the difference in initiating progress. The history creates a culture that in some cases is impossible to change. The chief needs to be very aware of the potential roadblocks that culture creates and prepare for them.

The chief can change the organization from this point forward, but it takes energy, commitment, perseverance and a strong back — you can only do so many things at once. While you are battling valiantly against the tide, 20 other historical streams are relentlessly trying to stop you. It's critical for the chief to learn all he or she can about what has come before: what has succeeded, what has failed, who wants change, who doesn't and where the opposition exists. History is always there in whatever you are trying to accomplish, change or manage and may even be the major source of stability in your department.

Leadership never occurs in a vacuum. There are many constituencies that a chief works with and reports to, but I've never forgotten that my most important constituents are the firefighters with whom I work . If you wish to stay in the chief's office, give some thought as to how those constituencies view you and your organization. The best strategy is to stay organized, do excellent work and make certain that it's visible to each of your constituencies.

One of the most common, recurring frustrations that volunteer chiefs face is incompetent subordinates: troublemakers, burnouts, deadbeats and those who aren't motivated and drag the rest of us down. Many leaders of volunteer organizations say, “The quality of membership is dropping”; “We have members who are only here so they can become a career firefighter”; “The firefighters today don't have the dedication of those who have been here before.”

I have a philosophy that has helped me to work with all kinds of people from a variety of life experiences. If they have a sincere desire to try and a good work ethic, I will work with those who in many cases are judged incompetent by others and give them an opportunity to meet a challenge and be successful. But have a mechanism to remove those members who don't want to work or be successful. Our job has too many built-in risks to jeopardize lives because you just want to be a nice guy. Effective leadership is not always about being a nice guy. Effective leadership requires the use of all available resources within your grasp to deal with people issues.

Chiefs should be careful in placing labels on people. They may not do everything exactly the way you want it done, but perhaps they have talents that you are not aware of, talents that could be used in other ways. Most people have something to contribute; part of your task is to help them do that. Leadership is about focusing resources. This is crucial in volunteer fire departments because the worst thing a leader can do is scare off members, no matter what their level of competence. The leadership style used by the chief will affect the department's membership.

Chiefs have control, therefore, they have choices. The control comes from having the ability to influence. Exert that control, enjoy the opportunities and don't forget to smile. To be a successful leader — to walk into turmoil and make something good out of it — is one of life's most satisfying, even exhilarating, activities. The emotional rewards of leadership are wonderful.

How can an individual develop leadership skills? The leadership experience begins for many of us in day care. The first time that you're placed into a group, you can begin to develop the skills necessary to be an effective leader when you reach adulthood. Usually the leadership development phase occurs something like this. First, you get some experiences. You are wandering along through life, doing your job, remaining alert as events flow past you. You learn new skills, make new friends, gain more education, collect experiences. Then one day without realizing it, you take on some new responsibility and a new direction begins to appear, faint at first, so fragile that it may disappear into other interests.

You can let this process just happen, or you can organize your experiences, take some initiative and impose your will on the shape of your life. You can speed up the process of collecting experiences by trying a wider range of activities, learning a wider range of skills, meeting more and different types of people, taking some risks, and learning that a few failures are not catastrophic because they give you even more experience. A few early failures in this leadership development process take the pressure off of trying to maintain a spotless record.

Second in leadership development is learning to be creative, to do things slightly different from the people around you. You see where improvements can be made, where changes can be useful. Perhaps you find a better way to organize the training program. You develop the idea, take input from others, sell it to the current top leadership within your department and then you evaluate your success. This is the creative process: dream, develop the dream into something that is useful, interest others in the dream, obtain approval to move the dream forward, implement the dream and evaluate the dream's success.

Not everyone has the ability to see where small changes need to be made, yet it's not difficult. To see where small changes in procedures might help, to imagine minor improvements to the materials you are working with, to try out slight modifications of process or procedures isn't really hard, but most people don't bother. I don't know why not, but I do know that with even a modest amount of training, the kind available in creative problem-solving classes or innovation training sessions, most people can be helped to expand the way in which they look at their world, their department and themselves. Once you have some experience in problem-solving don't forget to keep using this skill.

The third phase in the leadership development is taking charge. After you have some experience and see how to use it creatively, you will probably want an opportunity to be in charge to make different things happen, to be a leader. Interestingly, when you go through these three phases in some project, you will find that you now have more experience, which you can follow with greater creativity, which requires more leadership, all of which lead you into the ever-expanding upward spiral of leadership.

Each conquered challenge leads to more experience, grander ideas and more rewarding leadership opportunities. Leadership is a repeating cycle, starting small, growing a little. This upward spiral of leadership can be seen in leader after leader. People who have dominated the fire service did not become successful overnight or all at once. They worked hard, developed ideas, sold those ideas to others and then nurtured those ideas.

John M. Buckman III has served German Township (Ind.) Volunteer Fire Department for 33 years, 25 of those as chief. He's a course developer and resident instructor in the leadership and administration course at the National Fire Academy. Buckman is co-author of Recruiting, Training, and Maintaining Volunteer Firefighters, Third Edition. Buckman is a past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the first volunteer chief to serve in that position in more than a dozen years.