This may seem almost cliché, but the trust within an organization is the bond that holds it together. Trust is the emotional response that you and those you work with share. It's co-dependency toward common objectives.

I've been a fire chief for more than a decade, a chief officer for 13 years and in the business for more than 25 years, and I can't tell you how many times I have seen this aspect of organizational life go awry, even when you think you're doing the right things. In that time, I have attended several team-building management retreats and senior staff workshops that focused on common objectives and re-energizing the group.

As I reflect back on why some of those sessions had long-term positive affects while others did not, it always comes back to the trust factor. It's easy to get people to agree on a set of common organizational objectives and work together toward their accomplishment. It's also pretty easy to become re-energized as a group while discussing common missions, common values and common frustrations.

The difficulty is sustaining that trust in everyday routine. This is where the trust factor is often overlooked, but it's when we hit that first bump in the road that we begin to measure our trust quotient.

When colleagues, work collide

As fire chief, we hit those bumps every day, whether it's with the labor union president, lead shop steward, volunteer association president, mayor, council person or board chair. When misunderstandings develop, the level of trust will determine whether you move immediately into collaboration, mutual fact finding and explorations of solutions — or confrontation, because someone must be wrong, hiding something, lying or just plain ignorant.

We have all received that phone call where the person on the other end is presuming guilt. “What are you guys doing over there?” “When are you guys going to fix the problem?” “You have an issue that you need to fix.” “Hey, it wasn't my idea for you guys to do that.” When we get those calls, we tend to become defensive and go on the offensive as a means of protection.

With a higher degree of trust, that interaction is different; so is the outcome. But this trust must be earned. It can't be negotiated, hired or tacked onto a paycheck. There are actions we can do to build on the trust that exists, and there are actions we can take that can work to tear it down.

Actions and behaviors that build trust include:

• Communicating openly and honestly without distorting the information.
• Showing confidence in the abilities of your personnel and treating them as skilled, competent associates.
• Being inclusive, listening and valuing what others have to say, even when you don't agree.
• Keeping your promises and commitments.
• Cooperating, collaborating and looking for ways to help one another.

Actions and behaviors that reduce trust include:

• Acting more concerned about your own welfare than anything else.
• Sending mixed messages so your people never know where you are.
• Shirking responsibility for your own actions.
• Jumping to conclusions and reacting without first checking the facts.
• Making excuses or blaming others when things don't work out.

Think about how the level of trust affected a project you collaborated on. Was there little trust and high negativity, or was there high mutual trust and high positivity? Think there's a pattern? The correlation is not a fluke.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, “Leadership has a harder job to do than to just choose sides.” It must bring sides together. As we move up through the ranks, we tend to become less relationship-oriented and more outcome-oriented. It's an easy jump to make because so much of the job is focused on evaluating organizational performance. If we truly wish to take organizational performance to new heights, then we must not forget the emotional glue that will hold us together.

Better business building

Although trust doesn't guarantee that the road traveled will be easy, it will provide for a smoother ride when conflict erupts and barriers are presented. A trusting organizational relationship will motivate understanding and constructive solutions instead of defensive and overprotective reactions.

In his book Trusted Partners, Jordan Lewis identifies eight conditions for trust that exists in most business relationships.

1. Mutual needs create opportunity

   When a mutual need exists, there's a motivation to be more open and commit the necessary energy to be successful.

2. Interpersonal relationships make the connection

   The creation of successful alliances begins with people. When you can bring the project or objectives alive through the people who are involved, then trust is built, which creates value and allows those involved to tackle even the most difficult of issues.

3. Empowered leadership occurs when your management staff is running on the same track

   It sends a clear and decisive message as to the direction of the organization and the culture that you are trying to develop. On the other hand, polarization at the top virtually assures you will experience conflict below.

4. Shared objectives guide performance

   Are organizational objectives mutually agreed to? This speaks to the balance between simply measuring outcomes to creating emotional buy-in. For example, are your strategic plans, action plans and documents created through some type of emotional ownership by those who share the objectives and actually have to carry them out? This is a crucial link to creating trust within the organization.

5. Safeguards encourage sharing

   Are your people allowed to fail and, if so, how does the organization react? Creating trust is also about creating a safety net so people have a willingness to engage. I'm not talking about those who break the rules governed by organizational policy. What we are speaking to is the encouragement of new ideas, concepts and procedures that will carry the organization well into the future.

6. Shared commitment creates enthusiasm

   As people begin to trust more, you will see an increase in their commitment level. As your alliances begin to trust, you'll also see an investment of the best efforts of those involved. Even if the project or task is a failure, the commitment and shared experience will carry over to the next project or next issue and will have a positive affect throughout the organization.

7. Adaptable organizations get rid of the silos

   Look around your own organization. Are there existing silos, territories and sacred cows that cause tension and mistrust? We all have them, no matter how progressive our organizations are, and they can provide fuel for the fire. As a chief, you will find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time on issues not of organizational performance, but of personal mistrust.

8. Continuity develops trust

   To develop a level of organizational trust, there must be a shared alliance among people. The reason is simple: As people move on to different jobs or retire, who will carry the attitudes and the understandings that have been developed over time? It's pretty difficult to document the intangibles like shared understanding or change management, both of which are needed to create successful partnerships. Therefore, continuity in key organizational positions can be an invaluable tool toward developing mutual trust.

Customer “satis-future”

Organizations that collaborate well internally often have better relationships with the public, other departments, their vendors and other governmental agencies as well. Where does your organization stand? Let's face it, if departments and divisions are so busy bickering among themselves, they don't have the time and energy to have good external relationships on behalf of the organization.

The public perception of the fire service is often molded by what is seen on television as a depiction of what our industry does, rather than what occurs on a daily basis. This perception is in large part a result of programs such as Rescue 911, where after dialing 911, everything goes like clockwork. People respond quickly and arrive just in time to effect a positive outcome in every situation. Those perceptions met reality on Sept. 11.

It's safe to say that since that day, the fire service — as it is viewed by the American public and by the public worldwide — has changed quite dramatically. The fire service will never be the same since that day for many reasons: the loss of the brothers and sisters from the fire service family, the change in the perspective of a nation, the shift in our own perspective of our roles as leaders in the fire service.

Each day that passes is a day further away from a tragedy that will redefine the fire service forever. That day showed not only the new challenges we face as an industry, but the responsibility fire service leaders have to articulate our needs at the local, state, federal and international levels. As leaders, we cannot be complacent. It's easy to trudge along in our day-to-day operations, yet as fire chiefs we have to anticipate what the future will bring for the organizations. As leaders, we must not mistake how we do business today as the vision of what the future will be.

The fire service can't continue to approach issues and problems with the same reasoning; the public and our members will expect more. It's time to look at the industry mindset and begin to ask if we're limiting our own ability to address the problems that we complain about the most, those problems we have today that we didn't have just a few years ago. The reality of our industry may be limiting our own vision as to what needs to occur, and the issues and solutions to those issues.

Frame of reference often dictates how we process information and what is possible. It can also dictate how we plan and vision for the future. When significant events occur, this framework changes. From that point forward, the environment also changes and forces us to rethink many basic assumptions. We all have been forced to start with a new set of rules. Now is the time to demonstrate our ability as leaders.

Over the next several years, the fire service must create new frameworks and look at things with a new perspective. Let's face it, we have to. If we can remove the blinders we so often use and have the courage to provide the type of leadership that is willing to move into uncharted territory, we can experience the possibilities.

Time for leadership

What the fire service will become during the next 10 to 15 years depends on today's chief executives and fire service leaders to be not only the architects, but also the bridge-builders. We are bridging the gap between what the fire service is and what it could be.

The future will demand a higher degree of accountability and responsiveness, and will require us to rethink how we approach our customers and the services that we deliver. This will not be an easy task. It's much easier to define the architecture than to actually construct it.

As leaders, it's time for our industry to address many significant issues, yet we are often overcome by the complexity of actually having to do it. So instead of taking incremental steps to achieve success, the industry goes through another painful period of not addressing the real issues at hand.

What is our vision for the future and how do we get there? Many don't want to upset the status quo even though they are locked into a dysfunctional system. Whether within the organizational culture or the bureaucracy, it's really very hard to change because often the systems that exist perpetuate past behavior. Therefore, until we rethink our own attitudes, meaningful change will not occur.

The fire service has changed dramatically over the course of the last 25 years. As we have taken on new roles and responsibilities, in many cases we haven't been able to increase the resources to match the service demands placed on our agencies. Sept. 11 clearly demonstrated the commitment that firefighters have to put service over self. As the world's first responders, the fire service is the frontline of defense to all catastrophic events. Like never before, it's time to provide the leadership to prepare our organizations to meet the challenges of the future.

There's really nothing magical about identifying the challenges for the future. It's not about management and process. It's about how we go about doing our business. As leaders we often already know the direction our industry needs to go. It's a monumental job to orchestrate a major change effectively and as we all know, it's impossible to do alone.

The first step is to get our head out of the sand and to feel the sense of urgency in a number of issues we face. Our most difficult challenge, as leaders in the fire service today, is to stop adjusting ourselves to the situation at hand and begin to create our own destiny.

We face an interesting dichotomy in the fire service. Our job is to place the trust of our very well-being into the hands of others on a daily basis as we face crisis situations. We often find when we return to the firehouse that we become less than trusting toward one another in our day-to-day activities.

That's the challenge that we face today. It's taking advantage of the opportunities to build trusting relationships. It's taking the opportunity to realize our own weaknesses and shortcomings as human beings and dealing with different personalities on a day-to-day basis. It's about keeping focused on the mission of our organization and the service to our constituents without getting bogged down in the minutiae of rhetoric and politics. Most of all, it's about commitment to work on those relationships within your organization that are often trying, negative and unproductive. True leadership is about the ability to recognize that weakness exists, whether in yourself or the organization, and to tackle it.

The paradox of leadership today is about tapping into the leadership potential throughout our organizations and bringing it into reality. It takes courage, self-control, fairness, commitment, understanding, and willingness to walk the walk and cooperate effectively with others. Throughout all of those characteristics, organizational trust in your relationships with the individuals you are charged to lead will dictate how successful you'll be in the future.

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Chief Randy R. Bruegman of the Clackamas County (Ore.) Fire District No. 1 will step into the role of president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs at Fire-Rescue International 2002. From 1997-2000, he served as chairman of the Commission on Fire Accreditation International and prior to that served on the commission's predecessor, the IAFC's Accreditation Task Force, for eight years, six as vice chairman. Bruegman holds an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's in business and a master's in management. He is also a member of Fire Chief's Editorial Advisory Board and an associate of the Institution of Fire Engineers.