Jason Hoevelmann's Page

Since the end of 2014, I have been reading and listening to year end thoughts and data related to the fire service. There has been discussion on types of calls, near misses and, of course, line of duty deaths. Numbers are broken down and categorized for each type of injury or death that is fire service related and then scrutinized. In many cases these are supposed to be used as lessons and to determine the effectiveness of different messages from different mediums about the prevention of…

As I was going through a journal book that I just filled up and was looking through I ran across something that I wrote about being an officer and leader. I will expand more on this later, but I wanted to share it.

L-E-A-D-E-R-S-H-I-P

Listen and Learn

Expectations-set them

Accountability--be it

Desire--have it

Evaluate--fix it

Relationships--build…

A common question that is posed from current and prospective officers along with engaged firefighters is "how do you deal with superior officers or an organization that doesn't want to move forward?"  

First, it's not always the organization or the superior officers that are the sole problem. I've seen good, engaged, enthusiastic  firefighters circumvent the chain of command, rush into projects without regard to organizational needs and just plain and simple ignore the need to be…

In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to be involved in both sides of the promotional process: as a participant and as an interviewer.  Both are stressful and will challenge you.  You must be able to pull from your training, education, experience and coaching in both circumstances to arrive at a positive decision and hopefully with a successful outcome.

This post is going to focus on  being the participant in these processes.  In my classes on officer development I try to hammer…