Every fire department in the world has standards. Some are written by agencies like the NFPA, some are local ordinances or state law, and some are in the organizational policy (SOGs, SOPs). Some aren’t captured in official documentation but still taught in recruit school. Others are even less formal, passed down from crew to crew at the kitchen table, on the training ground, in the battalion chief’s car, and after difficult calls when people are honest enough to say what went right and what did not.
The question we should all be asking ourselves is not whether our organization has standards. It is whether our leaders have the discipline to enforce them when doing so is uncomfortable or hard.
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Why leaders tolerate bad behavior
One of the most damaging failures in leadership is the decision to tolerate incompetence, purposeful bad behavior and lying. It rarely begins as a dramatic act of neglect or by accident. More often, it starts with a reasonable-sounding explanation:
- The officer has been around a long time, liked by some and tenured.
- The member knows the system better than anyone else.
- The captain has technical skill, even if they leave damage in their wake.
- The chief officer does not want to create conflict.
- Human Resources will be difficult and force our hands.
- Labor will push back and will ruin your last couple of years.
- The member is so close to retirement.
- The department is already short-staffed.
The excuses may all sound different, but the outcome is usually the same: The organization suffers when the hard work is avoided.
The line that cannot be crossed
There is one line that must be drawn early and often: Lying, deception and intentional dishonesty cannot be tolerated. Period. End of story. That standard should be stated in expectation documents, officer development programs, recruit academies, command staff expectations and the daily culture of the organization. Firefighters can recover from mistakes. Officers can grow from poor decisions.
Leaders can learn from failure. But when someone chooses to lie, conceal, manipulate or misrepresent the truth, the issue moves beyond performance. It becomes a character and trust problem.
Fire departments are public trust organizations, and we can’t afford casual standards. Trust is our biggest commodity. Our work is too public, too dangerous and dependent on the public. A company officer who can’t make decisions, a chief officer who avoids accountability, a firefighter who mistreats people or a technically competent employee who poisons every room they enter are not minor inconveniences. Their behavior becomes the norm. People adjust around them, and everyone recognizes it. Coworkers lower their expectations. Strong performers are forced to carry more weight. And the most damaging dynamic is that new members learn what is tolerated — the norms are formed right there. Eventually, the department’s stated values become wall art while the real culture is taught through what leaders permit.
When accountability becomes negotiable
This is where your chief officers matter, not because they have a shiny badge or formal rank but because they have deep reach. A firefighter may damage a crew and a captain may damage a station. But a chief officer who looks the other way at poor performance, bad conduct or dishonesty teaches the entire organization that accountability is negotiable. Once that lesson takes hold, it is very difficult to unwind.
Leadership research has documented this point in just about every industry. Credibility is built through trustworthiness, competence and consistency, and is found between words and behavior (Kouzes & Posner, 2011; Posner, 1988). People don’t judge leaders by speeches, policies, wall art, stickers or strategic plans. They judge leaders by the decisions they make when those decisions have real meaning. People on the job will watch and pay close attention to who gets punished, who gets protected, who gets promoted, who gets ignored, and who is allowed to keep creating problems. A leader may talk the talk of ideals, like “Excellence Every Day,” but if the organization sees incompetence or deception tolerated in a leadership role, the message is loud and clear: Adherence to standards depends on who you are or who you know.
The loyalty trap
Our industry has always had a complicated relationship with loyalty. Loyalty could be one of our greatest strengths when it is tied to mission and community. It becomes dangerous when it becomes a defense of bad behavior. We should be loyal to people by being honest with them. We should be loyal to the organization by protecting its mission. We should be loyal to the public by making sure the people who respond to their worst day are competent, prepared and trustworthy.
Loyalty is not looking the other way or protecting bad behavior. Loyalty is not letting someone continue to fail because we do not want to hurt their feelings. Loyalty is certainly not covering for someone who is lying. Loyalty is engaging with the person by being honest early enough so that they have a chance to improve.
Candor is not cruelty
Using candor as a leader is not cruel. Compare that idea with the fact that being candid is just being a jerk with the intent to hurt someone — and the distinction matters. In healthy organizations, candor is an act of respect. It says, “This work matters enough that I cannot let this continue. The people around you matter enough that I will not make them carry the cost of your behavior.” That kind of leadership candor is closely tied to psychological safety within the organization.
The concept of psychological safety is often misunderstood in public safety settings. It doesn’t mean comfort, lacking standards or avoiding hard conversations. It means people can speak up, identify risk, admit (and report) mistakes, and challenge assumptions without a fear of humiliation or retaliation. In high-consequence work like ours, that kind of candor is not optional. It is how teams learn and develop before the mistake becomes catastrophic (Edmondson, 1999).
Truthfulness is a foundational part of that same system. An organization can’t learn from what it refuses to be honest about. Looking in the mirror and reading after-action reviews, investigations, injury reports, near-miss reporting, promotional assessments, and meeting feedback all depend on the information being honest. When someone lies, shades the facts, withholds material information or allows a false narrative to stand, they are not only protecting themselves but also corrupting the organization’s ability to learn. They weaken every future decision because the facts have been damaged, eroding the entire system.
An organization without candor becomes just performative. People say the right things in meetings and then hold the real conversation in the bay or at the tailboard. They stop raising concerns because they think nothing will ever change. They stop trusting the process because they have seen it bent to fit personalities.
Researchers describe how employees develop “implicit voice theories,” which are taken-for-granted beliefs about when speaking up is unsafe or pointless (Detert & Edmondson, 2011). Firefighters do not need an academic term for that; they know exactly what it feels like. It sounds like, “Don’t bring that up.” “That’s not worth it.” “Nothing will change.” “The chief already knows.” When those phrases become normal, the organization is already losing.
Chief officers must understand that silence is not concurrence — that’s an easy way out. Silence may really be fear in disguise, even fatigue. Silence may be the final stage before good people mentally check out. Remember, hearing nothing negative from a company might not signal smooth sailing.
The real situation may be that the crew has learned the department doesn’t want to hear from them, so it doesn’t bother to speak up. That can be a leadership failure — one that become more dangerous when the issues involve competence, safety, harassment, bullying, discipline, training, operational readiness, or just plain and simple dishonesty.
When high performers stop caring
The damage from accepting poor performance rarely stays contained to the situation itself. High-performers see it first even if they aren’t in the same station or battalion — it gets around. Your high-performers can sniff out who is legitimate and who isn’t. They know which officers make decisions and which officers hide behind process, delayed responses, regular equipment failures or fake radio traffic. They know who builds people up to make them look good and who tears them down to make themselves look good. They also know who tells the truth.
When you tolerate incompetence or lying, the best people don’t just become frustrated; they check out. That action plants a seed of doubt and will grow a forest. Everyone begins to question the organization’s fairness and purpose. They wonder why they are working hard, training hard, mentoring and holding the line when others are allowed to drift or deceive. It eventually becomes exhausting and builds resentment.
That overall feeling of resentment has dire consequences. Resentment from your people can affect morale, retention, initiative and trust. High performers may not leave immediately, but they begin to protect themselves. They give less discretionary effort. They stop volunteering for extra work. They avoid committees. They stop believing the leadership’s language about “excellence.” Some will leave. Others stay but become cynical and toxic. In some ways, that is even worse because cynicism spreads quietly like a cancer and becomes part of the firehouse culture.
The cost of organizational betrayal
Accepting poor performance will create moral injury inside the organization. Firefighters and officers want to be part of something competent, something good and something to be proud of. They want to believe the person next to them can do the job and that there is a fairness throughout the department. They want to know their leaders will address problems before they escalate into a crisis or hit the newspaper. They want to know the official version of events is honest.
So when the organization repeatedly asks good people to absorb the cost of weak leadership, bad behavior or deception, it creates a form of internal betrayal and distrust. The department says it values professionalism, but actions tell members to endure dysfunction and look the other way. This is especially dangerous in the ranks of the chief officers. They can influence promotions, discipline, staffing, deployment, policy, training priorities, labor relationships and the tone of problem-solving.
If a chief officer is incompetent, avoidant, dishonest, vindictive, lazy or self-protective, the damage does not end with a single decision. It shapes the decisions of others. It teaches subordinate officers how power works and either builds courage or rewards survival behavior — aka “shut up and keep your head down.”
Not all destructive leaders are loud
Destructive leadership research across several highly reliable industries shows that harmful leadership is not limited to those loud, abusive personalities. Destructive leadership behavior also includes avoidant leadership, self-serving decisions, lack of accountability, and conduct that damages morale, trust and performance (Mackey et al., 2019; Padilla et al., 2007). These patterns certainly affect immediate subordinates. They also shape the broader organizational climate.
We must pay close attention to that point. A chief officer does not have to be openly toxic to be harmful. Sometimes the most damaging leader is the quiet one that avoids decisions, confrontations and coaching — the one who will not act.
In part 2, we’ll explore practical leadership approaches for setting standards, addressing problems early and creating a culture rooted in honesty and accountability.
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REFERENCES
- Bass, B.M. (1999). Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8(1), 9–32.
- Detert, J.R., & Edmondson, A.C. (2011). Implicit voice theories: Taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship at work. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461–488.
- Edmondson, A.C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
- Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (2011). “Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it” (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
- Mackey, J.D., McAllister, C.P., Maher, L.P., & Wang, G. (2019). Leaders and followers behaving badly: A meta-analytic examination of curvilinear relationships between destructive leadership and followers’ workplace behaviors. Personnel Psychology, 72(1), 3–47.
- Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176–194.
- Posner, B.Z. (1988). Relating leadership and credibility. Psychological Reports, 63(2), 527–530.
