BY STEVE PRZIBOROWSKI
Congratulations on getting promoted to chief officer! Before getting carried away with the glamour of the position, realize you are in a critical position that involves leading, motivating, evaluating, supervising, training, coaching, and mentoring your assigned personnel. Your top priorities should be to ensure that your personnel go home safely to their families at the end of their shift and that they are trained and prepared for the worst-case scenario.
Company officers are responsible for training their personnel. Who is responsible for training the company officers? That is the job of the chief officer. It does not matter whether these officers are battalion chiefs, division chiefs, shift commanders, district chiefs, super captains, or assistant chiefs. What matters is that you have a specific shift or platoon of personnel under your command. These members are looking to you for leadership, guidance, direction, training, and support, among other things. Since I am used to the term battalion chief in my department, I will use that term throughout this article for the sake of consistency.
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