“Guess what they are doing now?”
“They made another change to the schedule!”
“ I am sorry, but they told me to make sure that you did this!”

“They” is one of the most frequently abused words in fire/rescue officers’ vocabulary today.

The easiest way for an officer to lose the respect of peers and to erode the chief’s authority is to give an unpopular directive or mission to the troops and point the finger somewhere else. You then are, in essence, just a flag carrier for “they.”

An officer must relay many messages to the troops, some of which aren’t popular and won’t be well taken. These can include anything from “You need to clean your station” to “We are going to suffer reductions in staffing.” Many times, subordinates will ask the officer the reason for the directive or from whom it came. Your response to such inquiries is the moment of truth.

Fire/rescue officers generally come up through the ranks. The transition from fellow employee, former subordinate, fishing buddy or friend to that of a senior officer can be very stressful. No amount of officer training or night school can prepare you for this transition.

So how can chiefs help prepare their staff? You could ignore it and think that your staff should know better; you could tell them you’d better not hear of it. Or you could sit down with your staff and have an open discussion. Do your officers feel that they can carry the department’s mission flag as their own? If not, your staff should be comfortable enough with your leadership to know that they can come in your office, close the door and tell you.

I received a much-needed education on “theying” several years ago when I was a deputy chief. The department was undergoing a major transition and turmoil abounded. On several occasions in the past, I had gone to a fire incident or visited a station and would later call the battalion chief and relay a problem that I had identified and thought needed correcting. This bad tactic is what I call “reverse-theying.”

Inevitably the battalion chief would go to the stations and have the correction made with the disclaimer that the deputy chief had directed it. I call this “double-reverse theying.”

One day at a staff meeting, I gave a new directive that I received from several “theys” above me. This new directive was supposed to be better than the last, but not as good as the next. The officers were then set free to spread this turmoil to all of the troops.

After that meeting, one of our systems most loyal and respected district chiefs came into my office, shut the door and told me that he could not pass on this recent directive to the troops “as his own.” He said when he gives news to his stations -- good or bad -- it comes from him, not his boss and not his boss’s boss, and that he took responsibility for the action, no matter what it would involve. We talked for an hour on the issue at hand and after much soul searching on leadership, we both came to a consensus of how we could fairly pass on this turmoil with the best possible delivery of the facts on why WE had directed it to occur.

Rules to avoid “theying”:

• The chief must have a leadership style that allows for his or her staff to give their true opinions on issues in an open forum or “one on one.”
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• If at all possible, decisions that impact the whole organization should be made using a “team-based” approach. The team should include a diverse group of personnel from the organization. This gives the decision increased credibility with less theying.
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• All procedural changes should be openly discussed with the staff before releasing the news to the stations.
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• No matter what your rank, if you see something that needs to be corrected, correct it.
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• No matter what your rank, if you see something good, praise it.
• Freelancing is not a form of correction.
  

No matter how much team involvement occurs, some issues and directives will still be unpopular. However, having the history of using the “they” rules will make it much more conducive for the staff to say, “We have made this decision because…”

Thomas M. Billington has been involved in the fire-rescue services for 25 years. He is fire-rescue chief in Martin County (Fla.) and is a regional coordinator with the State of Florida Emergency Response Plan. Billington holds an associate degree in fire science technology from Indian River Community College and a bachelor’s degree in professional administration for Barry University. E-mail him at tbilling@martin.fl.us.