Troy J. Bonfield's Blog (7)

In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he discusses 5 principles that are essential to success as a team. Patrick lists the five dysfunctions as Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results.  Let’s discuss how these principles can be applied by the fire service instructor to not only ensure success of the individual, but also how those same individuals can learn how to function in a team environment with…

I recently had a conversation with fellow firefighters about the importance of documenting their exposures after a fire.  Most of them said that they agree that it is an important part of post fire procedures and state they wish the process was more convenient. So, I created an online survey that they can access on…

As with most firefighters, it is in our DNA to aspire to have more impact. In the fire service that often translates into promoting within the ranks. Many are fortunate enough to promote and are successful as company officers. Others for whatever reason may choose not to or may never be successful in promoting and remain a firefighter for their entire…

One of the most over used words in the fire service is the word "Morale". The word morale is often used as an indicator of how well things are going within an organization. More often the word morale is only focused on when the perceived morale is low. Administrative leadership blames low firefighter morale on several things such as generational changes, the…

This can't be reiterated enough. If your crews don't trust you, the changes you will attempt to make will often get overlooked or even worse completely ignored. Be patient, trust takes time and effort to build and there are two essential steps to building that trust.

The first step is having open discussion about your expectations of your crews and what their expectations are of you. The second step is being consistent in everything you do. These two things, if done well will provide…

As leaders, how we respond to circumstances is determined by our attitude and is a direct reflection of our character. Put another way, attitude is the bridge between our circumstances and our character. That bridge can be well built with a good attitude or awaiting catastrophic failure with a bad one. 

We should make every attempt to avoid letting our circumstances dictate our attitude.This is easier…