Heat Resistant (eBook)

How to Fireproof Your Leadership

Peter Ashley (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
132 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9431-8 (ISBN)

Infos

'Heat Resistant' is a long-term study of transformational leadership featuring a Fire Chief. His life lessons and leadership strategies have stood the test of time and provide the reader with effective leadership techniques that cross industries.

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"e;Heat Resistant"e; is a long-term study of transformational leadership featuring a Fire Chief. His life lessons and leadership strategies have stood the test of time and provide the reader with effective leadership techniques that cross industries.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 2

EXAMINING LEADERSHIP UP CLOSE

This chapter presents a description of the context and the methodology used in conducting the original study and is divided into two major sections. The first section has two purposes. First, it describes some of the unique leadership challenges posed by fire service organizations. Second, it elaborates on the status of the Chapel Hill Fire Department at the time this study was conducted, including information about the size and structure of the station. The second major section describes the procedures, data collection and analysis employed in this thesis and provides a rationale for those choices.

I chose to conduct the study at the Chapel Hill Fire Department for two reasons. First, to address the research questions discussed earlier, I needed to find an organization in which transformational leadership was being attempted; this seemed to be the case at the C.H.F.D. Second, I was interested in conducting the study in an organization unlike those that have been the setting for most previous leadership studies (such as corporations or government agencies). As an emergency service organization, the C.H.F.D. promised to add unique dimensions to the study of the implementation of transformational leadership.

Study Context and Participant Profiles

This section discusses some of the unique challenges posed by emergency service organizations, particularly fire departments, in terms of both leadership and scholarship. This section also describes the Chapel Hill Fire Department in detail so that the context for this study can be understood better.

Emergency Service Management

Emergency service organizations, due to their unique characteristics, provide an interesting backdrop for the study of leadership. Despite this, the emergency service setting has been an under-tapped source of data. The vast majority of leadership studies have been conducted in non-emergency organizations. Furthermore, there had been no studies of transformational leadership conducted in emergency organizations at the time of this original study. Although previous non-emergency service studies contributed significantly to our understanding of transformational leadership, it is possible that they had a limited the scope of the theory. It makes implicit sense that leadership in emergency organizations is very different from leadership in other contexts.

In fact, there is research positing that managing an emergency service, such as a fire department, creates unique leadership challenges (Bryan & Picard, 1979; Hickey, 1979; Thompson, 1979; Ulrich, 1979; Jones, 1987; Drabek, 1990; Carter, 1993). For example, Hickey (1979) suggests that the nature of fire service places certain limits on what type of organizational structure a fire station can use. Furthermore, Hickey (1979) discusses many of the management options available for fire services that take into account the logistical problems and time constraints that are prevalent in the fire-fighting profession. Ulrich (1979) discusses different management approaches in the fire service that meet the specific objectives set out by the fire service. Henry and Shurtleff (1987) compiled chapters contributed by Chief Dan Jones and other fire service experts that address specific management challenges faced by fire departments such as time management, role of the company officer, and stress in the fire service. Drabek (1990) uses twelve successful managers of emergency services as a basis for his book of fifteen strategies that emergency managers can use such as constituency support, media relations, and outside experts in order to increase the legitimacy of the emergency organization. Carter (1993) suggests that the paramilitary setting and culture affect the communication patterns within the organization.

The gist of all this research is that emergency service organizations are characterized by factors that can inhibit the implementation of effective leadership. For example, leaders in such organizations typically operate under tremendous time constraints that make leadership communication especially challenging. The rigid, often militaristic structure of emergency service organizations can inhibit encouragement of individual growth that is now considered essential to effective leadership, particularly transformational leadership. These characteristics had several implications for the study of transformational leadership; including the inherent difficulty in implementing transformational leadership in an emergency service setting.

Transformational leadership is leadership that, among other things, “involves an appeal to followers to transcend immediate self-interests for the sake of some greater cause” (Zorn, 1991, p. 80). Successfully making this type of appeal is an important component of effective leadership in many organizations; however, nowhere is that truer than in emergency service organizations. .

The Chapel Hill Fire Department

At the time, the Chapel Hill Fire Department comprised four stations spread throughout the city. Organizationally, the Chapel Hill Fire Department is structured, like other such organizations, in a para-militaristic, hierarchical fashion. Chief Jones was the head of the organization, followed by two Deputy Chiefs and an Administrative Officer. The Administrative Officer, or Staff Chief, has both the secretary and fire mechanic as direct reports. The Deputy Chief of Prevention, or the Fire Marshal, supervises the Fire Inspector. The other Deputy Chief is the Deputy Chief of Suppression, or the Operations Chief. The rest of the chain of command extends from the Deputy Chief of Suppression. Below that position, there were three Assistant Chiefs who each command their own shifts. Each shift comprised the use of four Captains, one for each station, as well as firefighters and fire equipment operators (FEO’s). At each of the four stations, there were usually two firefighters and one FEO on duty at all times. In total, there were 11 captains, 10 FEOs and 25 firefighters. Chief Jones (1994) indicated that the department was somewhat non- traditional in that it employed more minorities and women than many other more traditional departments.

In terms of overall staffing, there were 55 full-time positions and 20 part-time positions. The firefighters worked rotating work shifts at all four stations. There were three shifts, referred to as A, B, and C shifts. The term shift refers not to the 24-hour workday, but to the crew, A, B, or C, to which the firefighters are assigned. These shifts rotated on a 24-hour basis that ran from 7:00am to 7:00am. Each shift, comprising three or four people, would work one day, have one day off, work one day, have one day off, work one day, and have four days off, for an average of 56 hours per week. Based on responses from the interviews, this 24-hour shift was preferred by many over the old system of 10- hour day shifts and 14-hour night shifts.

For the year of July 1, 1993 through June 30, 1994, the Chapel Hill Fire Department responded to 1,688 calls. Of those, 1,503 were emergency calls. The further breakdown of the total number of calls is as follows: 80 structure fires; 205 rescue calls; 588 false alarms; 65 vehicle fires; and 750 miscellaneous responses such as dumpster fires, gas leaks or brush fires. The total fire loss accrued in Chapel Hill for that year was $754,708. In addition to responding to fire calls, the Chapel Hill Fire Department has many other regular functions. These functions included commercial inspections, home inspections and reviewing of fire plans. In that same year, the Chapel Hill Fire Department operated on a budget of $2,595,121. Of that budget, 89% was used to meet personnel costs, and the remainder went to equipment costs and other supplies.

Chapel Hill Fire Chief Dan Jones came to the Chapel Hill Fire Station in April of 1990 from St. Petersburg, Florida, where he had been an assistant chief. Chief Jones spent seventeen years in St. Petersburg moving up through the ranks. In addition, Chief Jones had written articles on leadership, consulted for other departments, and spoken on many occasions about the trials and vicissitude of fire department management. According to Chief Jones (1994), the Chapel Hill Fire Department was 20 years behind the times technologically and was in desperate need of transformation.

Soon after his arrival to the C.H.F.D., Chief Jones drafted a five- year plan of change for the department. In the introduction to this study, Jones referred to the station as “an organization in transition… [Which] experienced its first major organizational changes in more than ten years” (p. 1). Articulating such a plan of change, or vision, is crucial to the enactment of transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). Furthermore, interviews with the Chief indicated that a change- oriented vision continued to guide his leadership (Jones, 1994).

It is clear that emergency service organizations offer unique challenges for the study of the implementation of transformational leadership. The Chapel Hill Fire Department, under the leadership of Fire Chief Dan Jones, was an organization that provided an appropriate context in which to study transformational leadership. The next section presents the procedures followed in conducting this study.

Research Process and Procedures

The general procedure for the original study involved (a) initial interviews with the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.8.2021
• Vorwort: Ret. Chief Dan Jones
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-9431-3 / 1098394313
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-9431-8 / 9781098394318