chap 10: Leadership Styles: Transformational and Transactional

• Transformational Leadership creates a connection that raises motivation in both leader and follower. it considers emotions, value, ethics, and establishing standards.
• Transactional Leadership involves an expectation of reciprocation, especially in high-hazard situations.
• Transformational Leadership has 4 components:

Idealized Influence

• Values trust, respect, admiration, and organizational values

Inspirational Motivation

• Optimistically creates an appealing vision of the future
• Inspires high standards and emotional commitment to a mission

Intellectual Stimulation

• Involves critical examination of practices, reexamining assumptions, and considering different perspectives.

Individualized Consideration

• Focuses on listening to needs and praise for motivation
• Includes counseling or mentoring.
• Goals need to be clear, specific, and measurable, following the SMART criteria: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Timeline.
• To improve unacceptable performance or behavior, Fire Officers use feedback, coaching, and performance appraisals.
• Just Culture focuses on behavioral choices that lead to unacceptable behavior.
• Just Culture is measured against the organization's mission, values, and goals and usually introduced after a high-profile incident.

Human Intention

• Encompasses: Human error, At-Risk Behavior, Reckless Behavior, Knowingly Causing Harm, and Purposely Causing Harm.
• Human error is inadvertent and influenced by procedures, training, design, and environment.
• At-Risk Behavior involves not recognizing risk or believing it is justified.
• Correcting At-Risk Behavior is a a Fire Officer's most significant impact and requires understanding the thought process leading to the action.
• Reckless Behavior involves consciously disregarding unjustified risk.
• Fixing Reckless Behavior requires negative reinforcement such as; remedial training, formal discipline, or punitive action.
• Knowingly Causing Harm usually has a justification when introduced to the criminal justice system.
• Purposely Causing Harm requires immediate removal from the workplace so the command chief can evaluate the situation.
• Substandard evaluation require notification 10 weeks before annual evaluation.
• Work Improvement Plans are specific and time sensitive such as a 120 day period.
• Informal oral or written reprimands supervised by a fire officer expire after 1 year.
• Formal written reprimands are issued by a BC and expire after 1 year and are the lowest level of progressive discipline.
• Suspension is usually determined by a BC or higher and consulting with the Fire Chief or designee and typically lasts 1-30 days.
• Termination is overseen by the Fire Chief consulting with the personnel board, with the ability to be delegated by an official
• Annual Reviews have two additional milestones: Mid-year and 6 weeks before
• Evaluation errors to watch out for: Leniency/Severity, Personal Bias, Recency, Central Tendency, Frame of Reference, Halo and Horn, and Contrast Effect.

Leniency/Severity

• Common among new Fire Officers.

Personal Bias

• Personal perspective, common in hostile work environments.

Frame of Reference

• Fire Officers personal ideals.

Recency

• Based on the last few weeks.

Central Tendency

• Has little value.

Halo and Horn

• Focuses on one aspect, good or bad

Contrast Effect

• Compares to members who are not classified.
• Evaluations have key steps: 1) standardized form, 2) subordinate review and comment, 3) face-to-face, 4) est. goals.
• The four borders of HR include: Federal/ State Law, Labor Contract, Jurisdiction Regulations, and FD Policies.
• Sudden cardiac arrest is still the number one cause of Line of Duty Deaths (LODD).
• The US Navy's Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) includes: 1) Unsafe Acts, 2) Preconditions to Unsafe Acts, 3) Unsafe Supervision, 4) Organizational Influences.

Unsafe Acts (Active Failure)

• Encompasses errors or violations and failure to use crew resource management and personal readiness.

Preconditions to unsafe acts (latent failures/condition)

• Includes substandard conditions and factors contributing to mental states, psychological states, and physical limitations.

Unsafe Supervision (latent failures/condition)

• Consists of 4 categories:
  • Inadequate supervision (no guidance, no training, qualifications not tracked)
  • Allowing inappropriate ops (personnel not briefed, understaffed, unnecessary hazards allowed)
  • Failure to correct known problems (unidentified and unqualified, failure to provide training to unqualified personnel failure to correct inappropriate or unsafe behaviors)
  • Supervisory violations (authorization of unnecessary hazards, failure to enforce department rules, authorization of unqualified personnel to perform tasks)

Organizational Influences (latent failures/condition)

• Hardest to analyze, culture of FD
• Examines both resource management and organizational climate
• Looks at staffing, training, budget resources, equipment, facilities, chain of command, delegation of authority, risk management programs, and safety programs.
• Risk Management involves identifying and analyzing exposure to hazards, RM techniques to handle exposures, implementing techniques, and monitoring results.
• James Reason applied a systems approach to human error management using the Swiss Cheese model and HFACS.

Layers of Defense

• Controlling Contributing Factors, Adding Barriers, Adding Recovery , Adding Redundancy