A Continuum of Training: The Case for Effective Officer Training From The Ground Up
(Room 5D)
20 Feb 20
1:00 PM
-
5:00 PM
Tracks:
Instructor/Training Related Courses
The fire service has abdicated its responsibility to train and educate its officer corps. This leads directly to bad outcomes in the firehouse and on the fireground. Strategic leaders throughout the fire service wonder why. They shouldn’t be shocked when things go wrong, they should be shocked when things go right. This is in large measure because the organization did nothing to effect the outcome, leading to something called “leadership by accident”. We’ll review the real world implementation of a new officer development training section and discuss how that template can be scaled and implemented in fire departments of every size. Using a relatively simple model followed by other similarly tasked high-performing organizations we will explore training that comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Finally, we will discuss how, fundamentally, the fire service must change course and stop believing that officer development is a luxury that can occur as time and budgets allow.