Leading First Responders
You have only one shot at this life and career.
If you have what it takes to lead, who do you want to be?
Leading first responders requires focusing on two intertwined goals:
accomplishing the mission and keeping members well.
When members see authentic effort to support them, when they know the organization will try to help them on their darkest day, it changes everything. We can't make our organizations perfect, and the job is going to remain tough. But our people deserve leaders who show up on hard days and do what they can to help.
The work of leading first responders is unique, challenging, and critically important. The communities we serve depend on it. The members we lead deserve it.
If you have the calling to lead, your community needs you to step up and take your best shot at it.
WhAt Makes Leading First Responders unique?
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A flu virus may have just decimated your staffing levels, but you always have to have members available to take the next call.
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First responders experience events they find traumatic at rates up to 100 times what members of the public face. First responder training has focused on member safety, designed to keep a member physically safe. However, many members are being hurt by the work with injuries that go unseen. Most often the source of the injury is cumulative, the sum of numerous events.
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Further, the risks to the public are not static. We have seen a dramatic increase in violent behaviours on our streets. The kinds and toxicity of illicit drugs can shift in a matter of days. More and more people are unhoused. Managing a community crisis is a fundamental skill for a first responder leader.
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That trust and bond with the community is fundamental in a democracy.
The Two Primary Goals
This website has two Primers to tackle each one:
Obviously, neither goal is completely within the control of any leader. Completing the mission will almost always run into resource issues. Police often decry the limitations of the criminal justice system. All first responders struggle with the lack of mental health resources to respond to the troubled people they deal with on the street. Those factors often make progress towards making the community safe more difficult. However, they must be seen as challenges to be overcome rather than explanations for why the mission cannot be achieved.
Keeping members well can also seem overwhelming. Members will continue to go to hard calls. When awful things happen, members will continue to rush in to help and find themselves exposed to devastating events.
Nevertheless, a leader who remains focused on these two goals can make a community safer, and can create a workplace where more members can stay well and even thrive.
Members know what a good leader is. They can tell you what qualities made a boss someone they wanted to follow. There are essential qualities you must have in order for members to see that you are a leader, as opposed to someone who is just sitting in the boss's chair.
A Leader’s Core
Before getting down to specific strategies, there is one more critical piece. It is about you.
Do you have integrity, and do you actually care about the community and your members?
Bluntly, if you don't have those two qualities, no book, no primer, and no amount of time will make you a real leader.
So, let's start with quality one.
Who you are at your core.
Contact
Presentations
Available to provide presentations on Staying Well, Leadership, or Developing a Healthy First Responder Organization.
Organizational Reviews
Available to provide organizational reviews or an analysis of critical events that have occurred. Can be retained as counsel to provide privileged reviews in some circumstances.