Performance Feedback

 

Leaders provide feedback by creating open lines of communication and providing an opportunity to exchange ideas, perspectives, and concerns. Failing to provide feedback represents failure in a basic responsibility of leadership: to guide team members in learning accountability, accepting responsibility, and being effective communicators. Fire leaders use performance feedback to develop team members and help them meet their full potential. 

Team Results

Leaders create teams that focus on the team result. This requires us to articulate a clear end state, specifying success criteria so that team members can turn intent into focused and decisive action. 

The important human element of morale is related to this focus on team results. High morale is a visible expression of team cohesion, and channeling the team’s energy to a common focal point builds strong cohesion. 

[Click here to download a copy of Leading in the Wildland Fire Service.]

ALERT: Increase in Heat-Related Illnesses in Wildland Firefighting

NMAC Correspondence 2017-12

June 19, 2017

To: Geographic Area Coordination Group Chairs
From: National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group
Subject: Wildland Firefighter Heat Related Injury Prevention, Awareness, and Rhabdomyolysis

The wildland firefighter community has experienced an alarming increase in heat related and other physiological injuries in the last few days. Heat related injuries and Rhabdomyolysis are not the same, but can occur at the same time. Extreme weather conditions are predicted to continue across western states for the next week. The National Weather Service is issuing Heat Warnings for the SWCC, GBCC, RMCC, OSCC, and ONCC (http://www.weather.gov/).

Responding to Your Own Mental Health

The trauma that we see as firefighters on a daily basis will take a toll on people. Understanding how to deal with your body’s reactions to trauma may put you ahead of the game. Taking advantage of simple ways to recognize that we’re starting to struggle mentally with what we see on the job may be as important as life or death.

Adam Hernandez on Competitiveness and Camaraderie

Competitiveness and Camaraderie from The Smokey Generation on Vimeo.

Competitiveness can be a motivator for some people. A leader's job is to find the best way to blend competitiveness into the workplace—to make work fun yet productive and safe. Overly competitive members of a team can actual cause dissension. Know what drives your people and how to guide their motivation.  "How to Use Competition in the Workplace - For Dummies" by Marlee B. Sprenger gives a quick look at competition in the workplace.

Motivation and Expectations 
(Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 46-47)

Leaders understand that people derive motivation from individual values and needs; others cannot force a person to be motivated any more than one person can force another to change. However, we recognize that leaders are responsible for putting in place the conditions in which people are motivated to act. To create these conditions, fire leaders start by taking the time to learn about our people—understanding their internal motivations and accepting them as unique individuals.

In addition, leaders keep in mind that each team member has expectations regarding the benefits—overt as well as intrinsic—they will receive from their work.

Many barriers can prevent people’s expectations from being met: poor relationships with their peers, intrusive supervision, inadequate resources, or work without meaning. 

Fire leaders work to reduce barriers and increase benefits such as giving people a sense of achievement, recognizing accomplishments, resolving unhealthy conflict, providing meaningful work, increasing the responsibilities, and offering opportunities for advancement.

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What is your story? We challenge you to become a part of this amazing  project and share your leadership stories. Bethany Hannah began The Smokey Generation: A Wildland Fire Oral History and Digital Storytelling Project for her master's thesis. All members of the wildland fire service, not just hotshots, can share their stories by following her example. Click here for potential leadership questions. Visit The Smokey Generation website for complete information.

Grit and the Growth Mindset

(Photo credit: MyHeartYourHands.Org)

 “Grit is like living life like it’s a marathon not a sprint.” ~ Angela Lee Duckworth

In the TED Talks presentation “The Key to Success? Grit,” Angela Lee Duckworth shares her research on the concept of “grit” and how it affects performance in children. There are parallels to wildland firefighting.

Video Highlights:

• Students can learn if they work hard and long enough.
• Doing well in school and life depends on much more than our ability to learn quickly and easily.
• Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.
• Grit is usually unrelated or inversely related to measures of talent.
• Growth mindset: The belief that the ability to learn is not fixed—that it can change with your effort. (Dr. Carol Dweck, Stanford University)
• Failure should not be a permanent condition.

The Growth Mindset

For more Dr. Dweck's research on fixed versus growth mindsets, check out her YouTube interview with ParentMap.

Angela's Challenge:

"We need to take our best ideas or strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we have been successful, and we have to be willing to fail—to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned."