Leadership
The 7 Qualities Fire Service Leaders Must Possess
Communications
(This is part four of a seven-part series on leadership.)
During this series we will be examining the seven qualities Doug Cline that are necessary for a leader to be successful in leading the organization and the team.You cannot be an effective team leader without being able to effectively communicate in every realm.This issue will focus on communications. For fire service leaders, a realistic appraisal of your team’s abilities enables you as a leader to strike a healthy ability to communicate. For today’s fire service it is important to understand that every form of communication is important and is required for the ability to communicate with the diversity of generations in today’s fire service. Understanding that no matter what generation, group or age you are communicating with, poor communications is an instant turn off to subordinate personnel and colleagues. Overestimating one’s predicated knowledge, skills and abilities might also lead to such problems as failing to
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communicate effectively and efficiently in every situation.
Effective Communications Effective communication in today’s fire service is about more than just exchanging information. With the diversity of generations of personnel, communities and experience levels, it’s about understanding the emotion and intentions behind the information and the delivery style. It is critical that today’s leaders have the ability to clearly convey a message. In order to accomplish this message delivery, you as a leader need to also listen in a way that gains the full meaning of what’s being said and makes the other person feel heard and understood. Active listening is a critical part of communications. What we see many times is people that listen to answer and not listen to understand. Effective communication is often something that, in the fire service especially, is assumed to be natural and instinctive. But all too often when we try to communicate with others something goes astray. We are attempting to communicate one thing, the other person hears something completely different.This is due to interpretation, perception
and misunderstandings which immediately create frustration and most times conflicts ensue. Ineffective communications is known to be one of the common problems in the fire service.The lack of effective communications can cause problems not only in emergency services operations but also in your work relationships, home, school and every day interactions. For many of us, communicating more clearly and effectively will require enhancing our communication skills or learning some important skills. Whether you’re trying to improve communication with your officer, subordinates or coworkers, learning and mastering these skills can deepen your connections to others, build greater trust and respect, improve teamwork, problem solving, operational effectiveness and efficiency as well as your overall social and emotional health.
Common Barriers To Effective Communications Stress and lack of emotional control. In emergency services it is common to have stress from the various types of situations and responses we encounter. As a result of our environment when we are stressed or emotionally overwhelmed, we will be more likely to misread or misinterpret communications.This action of misreading or misinterpretating communications with other people, sending confusing or off-putting nonverbal signals, and lapsing into unhealthy knee-jerk patterns of behavior creates stress and emotions which affect communications.To avoid conflict and misunderstandings, you must learn how to control emotions and reduce the stress of the situation to calm down before continuing a conversation. Lack of focus. You can’t communicate effectively when your focus is on something else or you are trying to multitask.This is so common in today’s society as we are constantly distracted with checking our phone, planning what we’re going to say next, or daydreaming that we are almost certain to not be actively listening or miss nonverbal cues in the conversation. To communicate effectively, you will need to avoid distractions and stay focused practicing active listening when communicating. There are many strategies for accomplishing being focused and actively listening in our communications. Some simple suggestions include: •P ut down your phone and focus in on the conversation actively listening to understand and not answer. • I f you have a radio or TV on turn it off or at minimum turn down the volume. •R emove other distractions such as computers, I-Pads or other devices. Setting your desk up as an office where you have to turn away from
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the computer screen will help you focus on the conversation and communication occurring. • vDo not take phone calls during conversations as you will lose focus and send a message that the conversation is not important. Inconsistent body language. Body language is a large and powerful portion of communications. Nonverbal communication should reinforce what is being said, not contradict it. If you say one thing, but your body language says something else, your listener will likely feel that you’re being dishonest. For example, you can’t say “yes” while shaking your head “no.” Negative body language. If you disagree with or dislike what’s being said, you might use negative body language to rebuff the other person’s message, such as crossing your arms, avoiding eye contact or tapping your feet. Again, body language is a large and powerful portion of communications that impacts the success of having a good conversation and the transfer of information or ideas.You don’t have to agree with, or even like what’s being said, but to communicate effectively and not put the other person on the defensive, it’s important to avoid sending negative signals. Negative signals say nonverbally that you are not listening or don’t want to hear what the other person is communicating. Become an engaged active listener. When communicating with others we often focus on how or what we should answer, thus the listening to answer concept. If we are focused on listening to answer we are missing more of the conversation than we realize. However, effective communication is less about talking and more about listening to understand. Listening to understand means not just hearing or understanding the words spoken or the information being communicated, but also understanding the emotions and the nonverbal message the speaker is trying to convey. There’s a significant difference between engaged listening and simply hearing. When you are truly in active listen mode, you will be engaged with what’s being spoken, you will hear and see the subtle intonations in someone’s voice and nonverbal actions that tell you how that person is feeling and the emotions they are trying to communicate. When you are an engaged active listener, not only will you better understand the other person, you’ll also make that person feel heard and understood.This will help you build a stronger, deeper connection with the individual(s) you are communicating with. By engaging in active listening and engaging in communicating in this way, you will also experience a process that usually lowers stress and helps enhance your communications. Lower stress levels support better enhanced communications as well as physical
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