2016 Southwestern Association of Fire Chief Presents the SWFCA Chief Officer Academy Accountability – Leadership – Results     Do You Want High Performance Officers in Your Fire Department? Don’t You Want Your Officers to be as Effective off the Fireground As On?             Topics that will be covered in […]

8 Attitudes of Servant Leadership on DVD is now available thanks to Fire Engneering Books and Videos! True leadership begins with serving. No role, position, job, task or calling of leadership in emergency services can be effective unless there is first a willingness to serve by the individual. Many want successful positions, ranks and roles […]

Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one’s own destiny. As a leader do you have an empowerment Attitude? The sum of every leader’s actions is the “environment” […]

Join Chiefs Douglas Cline and Christopher Naum at the South Carolina Firefighter Association’s Fire Rescue Conference for a Preconference workshop “Rebooting Old School Principles for Today’s Demanding Fireground” on Wednesday June 8 at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center starting at 9am. We look forward to seeing you there!  

As a servant leader you should constantly be focused on making the organization better. There is no better way than to tap into the organization’s most valued resource, the people within. By investing in these people, they will give the organization a substantial return. The most important component in the investment is the leadership you […]

Credibility refers to the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source. In the modern fire service credibility has two critical components that cannot be really faked; trustworthiness and expertise. Both of these are easily faked for a short period of time but they become transparent if you are faking them. Leadership credibility […]

  We want you to think for just a moment and reflect on where you really are. Is your professional development like a game of monopoly? Compare what you are doing for professional development to the game of monopoly…are you just going around the board at the luck of the dice or do you have […]

What you give others as a mentor, a public servant and as a friend costs you NOTHING. So why are we so reluctant to give freely? This is a major problem that we are facing in today’s fire service. We are not paying it forward. Our mentoring of the next generation is at best in […]

As I reflect back over the years in my career there is one lesson I remember that resinates from my mentors, “If you put the organization first, then your wants and ambitions will soon follow. But it is always about the orgainization first, your suborindates second and you are last.” Well I have to often […]

Professional development is the planned, progressive, and lifelong process of education, training, self-development and experience that one gains during their development. In the fire service, professional development is a critical element of being a leader and being a professional. When we step up to accep the responsibility of leadership, we also accept an obligation to […]