BY CHASE N. SARGENT
"You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case."-Ken Kesey
"The firefighter of today is the potential chief of tomorrow." How many times have you heard that? If chiefs are tasked with creating and communicating vision and providing leadership in the fire service, then the American fire service is doing a very poor job of creating tomorrow's leaders, and this failure is creating a snowball effect throughout departments. Today's fire service is creating a leadership gap from which many departments may not recover for decades. As we lose our ability to create leaders and continue to create and reward "manager/politicians," we risk the ability to develop future leaders and create a deadly spiral that will ultimately affect our personnel, our service delivery, our organizational core values, and the entire organizational culture.
If you are a current subscriber,login hereto access this content.
If you would like to become a subscriber, please visit ushere.
