Remember, the higher up you go in rank, the more people you answer to

It’s a simple question that might not have a simple answer: As a captain, who do you work for? I imagine a number of company officers believe they work for a battalion chief or someone of a higher rank — I disagree with that theory entirely. I believe the higher up you go in rank, the more people you actually work for, and these people don’t necessarily outrank you. Think of it as a reversal of the hierarchy that we’re taught in the fire service.

Ultimately, everyone in the fire service works for the citizens they serve, but I work directly for my crew, and my battalion chief works for my crew and me. I know a number of people who want to get promoted so they “don’t have to work for someone anymore.” Won’t they be surprised to find that when you get promoted, you actually work for more than one person?

Glorified Gophers
When was the last time you and your battalion chief picked up a hoseline or a chainsaw and worked to extinguish a fire? If you’re doing your job correctly, it’s probably been a while, although most captains I know would love nothing more than to pick up a hoseline and fight fire if given the chance. Notice I said most captains. The captains who wouldn’t love to pick up a hoseline are the same captains who have the crazy notion that their crews work for them. Captains are simply in place to provide the support crews need to carry out their mission. We’re nothing but little glorified logistical gophers that have to baby-sit every once in a while. Whether we are at the scene of an emergency call or hanging out at the station, we are constantly working to satisfy the needs of our firefighters.

Let me give you an example from outside the fire service. If you supervised a masonry crew and you wanted to build a block wall for a homeowner, you’d need some skilled masons to get it done. As the supervisor, you’d be responsible for acquiring the permits, digging the footing and ordering the steel, concrete, mortar, block, pizza and so on, so the masons could build the wall. If you forget one of these things in this supporting role of yours, the wall won’t go up and your masons will look at you like you’re an idiot for not doing your job. 

You spend days, maybe weeks, preparing to build this block wall. The masons show up the morning of the job, throw down 300 linear feet of block wall before lunch and look like superstars to the homeowner. I would venture to say that you, the mason supervisor, did a ton of work to help your crew build the wall, but you didn’t pick up a single block. So the question is, who really works for whom?   
 
The Rigors of Responsibility
Not only do you have more people to answer to as a company officer, but as you climb higher in the fire service or any other organization, you also take on more responsibility, without actually doing any of the hands-on work, to make sure it gets done properly. In other words, you must totally rely on other people to get things accomplished, and you must learn to effectively communicate your needs. That’s a difficult pill to swallow sometimes, because when bad things happen during emergencies, you don’t get to sidestep responsibility. As Chase Sargent says, “When bad things happen at the task level, bad things happen.” As a captain, you are responsible for making sure things don’t go bad at the task level.

While working on Truck 131 this summer, we had a fairly decent fire in a strip mall. Fire was rolling out of the front of the building, and my crew and I were assigned to ventilation. We quickly set up the aerial and went topside to vertically ventilate the building. We then made an inspection cut, which resulted in very little smoke coming out of the hole. We continued above the fire location and coordinated a heat hole with interior crews. As we began to cut the hole, I was contacted by the incident commander and advised to cut a second hole in a different location.

I left my engineer in charge, telling him to complete the first hole while I determined the location of our next hole. When I came back, the hole wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I could tell my engineer was less than happy with his efforts. We completed the second heat hole and exited the roof.

After completing a few more assignments, I met privately with my engineer and asked what happened with the first hole. He was upset, probably because he felt that he let me down. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t upset with anyone but myself. We hadn’t cut that many holes together as a crew during working fires, and we certainly hadn’t reached the point where we could read each other’s minds. In retrospect, I should have stuck around without dumping my responsibilities on my unsuspecting engineer. It wouldn’t have been fair to get upset at my crew because I failed in my duties to properly communicate what I wanted.

Fortunately for us, everything worked out on the fire, and the interior crews made a hell of a stop. After completing the incident, we climbed back onto the roof to discuss what we could do in the future to improve our efforts. It turned out to be a good learning experience for all of us, but especially for me. I realized a couple of things on this fire.

One was that I am ultimately responsible for how my crew performs on a fire. If something went wrong on the roof and someone got hurt, it would have fallen on my shoulders. I couldn’t use the “my engineer was in charge of the operation, not me” excuse. I made a conscious effort to delegate my responsibility, and it didn’t turn out the way I expected. Note: That’s not to say I wouldn’t do it again. In fact, I delegate very important jobs to my engineer and firefighters all the time and get very good results. I also realized that my purpose as an officer is to support my crew in any way I can to make their tasks successful. 

A Supporting Role
As company officers, most everything we do should support our firefighters when they’re doing their job. Company officers support the actions of their crews, which in turn provide service to your community. Everything is based on providing emergency service; the essence of training, SOPs, rules and regulations, purchase orders, fire prevention and all the other stuff we deal with in some shape or form relates to emergency response. And the people ultimately performing the emergency response functions in our business aren’t fire chiefs or fire captains.

Firefighters are the ones at the working end of what we do, and it sickens me when I hear company officers praise themselves for putting out a fire. As far as I know, there has never been a reported incident in which a radio or a finger point with a grunt successfully extinguished a fire.

I have witnessed several critiques in my life (which I will rant about in a future article), and they all seem to be the same: All the captains gather around the battalion chief’s Suburban, slap asses and tell each other what they did to put out the fire. In reality, most of these captains didn’t do a single thing to put the fire out except make some decisions the crew already knew were coming.

If you really want to learn something during a critique, talk to the firefighters who did the actual work; ask them what they need to be more successful in the future.

Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians
The Ontario (Calif.) Fire Department has a very good, proactive paramedic program; we’ve been in the paramedic business for almost 30 years. In our department, you don’t lose your ability to work as a paramedic when you promote, so you may have a crew comprised of a captain/paramedic, engineer/paramedic and two firefighter/EMTs.

One day, I worked an overtime shift on a fairly busy medic engine on which every crewmember was a paramedic. On paper we looked like the most qualified engine in the city to provide the best medical care to the citizens of Ontario. You know what happened all day? We couldn’t run an EMS call smoothly or efficiently if we had to. We had four brain-trust paramedics barking out orders and no EMTs to get the actual work done. We were starting IVs, dropping ET tubes, pushing medications like crazy, but God forbid you asked one of us for a patient’s blood pressure. I’m pretty sure everyone’s blood pressure just happened to be 120/80 that day.

If anyone thinks it’s a great idea to have four paramedics on an engine company, they should rethink their theory. I would compare it to the old saying, “There were too many chiefs and not enough Indians.” In the old days, if you had too many chiefs and not enough Indians, everyone would starve to death.

As a training officer, I couldn’t have applied this concept as a support member and gotten clearer results. I was tasked, as many training officers are, with a huge workload on a compressed schedule. I soon realized my success as a training officer had little to do with me and everything to do with the people I chose to help me with jobs I was responsible for accomplishing. Even if I had the ability (which I don’t) to know everything about everything, I wouldn’t have had the time to do everything myself. So I relied on highly qualified and motivated people to accomplish some really great projects. All I did was ask them what they needed and what they wanted for lunch, then got out of the way before I got ran over.

I have seen this tactic work for many officers, and I have also witnessed what happens to officers who think their crews are there to serve them. If a crew is dealing with a captain who doesn’t support and respect them, then everyone involved is in for a long day. Obtaining your crew’s trust is everything, and you obtain it by proving to them that you’ll support them to get the job done. 

Conclusion
One of the greatest business minds of our time, author Peter Drucker, once said, “Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.” As firefighters, we don’t sell things; we provide a very specialized and sometimes dangerous service. To effectively provide that service, we must rely on a highly trained crew of people.

Remember who these people are as you climb higher in the organization, and don’t forget who you really work for.

Ray Gayk is a company officer with the Ontario (Calif.) Fire Department (OFD). Gayk is a 17-year veteran of the fire service who has been actively involved with the OFD’s development of engineer and captain mentor programs. Gayk has also been a training officer and currently works on Truck 131 in downtown Ontario.