Where firefighters come to talk training

Treating Toxic Teammates (3 of 5)

Issue:

3.Complacency- not being prepared physically and mentally and unwilling to do anything about it.

==========================================

Complacency sets in from lack of experience and discipline.

These are typically people who have had very few big calls. You know the ones. They are equipped to handle false alarms and general illnesses. They have not experienced a moment where not being prepared has hurt them.

Because of this lack of experience, they have no desire to be disciplined in their career. This starts to spiral into always expecting a false alarm and only being prepared for minor calls.

Great. You probably already know this. So how do we deal with this?

First you need to understand that habits of someone who is not complacent. Someone who prepares themselves physically and mentally for the job. This is someone who has been on busy companies throughout their career. They have been challenged routinely both physically and mentally.

Imagine if you caught a working fire every shift?

What would you eat that day? The day before?

What type of physical conditioning would you do?

How much would you study your craft to keep you safer?

Odds are you would take your job more seriously.

To fight complacency, you must create a desire to be disciplined.

How does admin get us to study SOPs, leadership material, or Medical protocols?

They use tests.

Either promotional tests. Tests tied to pay.

Tests are nothing more than DRILLS.

Training is what we do to help prepare us for DRILLS.

People don’t know what they don’t know,

until they know what they don’t know.

Odds are performing at their subpar level has gotten them by. So whats the incentive to perform at a higher level?

Well, you’re going to have to educate them. SELL them.

Perform realistic trainings that will reveal to them how their performance is doing.

Routinely review LODD reports and Close Calls. Quite a few can be linked back to complacency.

Then you can have a TEST/DRILL to show how they have improved.

The thing is, we all have had different experiences in our life and career. This is why our thought process and our level of discipline is where it is at.

STOP thinking everyone has experienced what you have.

START recreating trainings so they can experience it for themselves.

Give them that “aha” moment they are missing.

Theres also a big misconception to being SAFE on this job.

Here’s the truth:

The more you train, the better your skills are which make you SAFER.

The more you workout, the more physical and mental stress you can handle which makes you SAFER.

The more you study your craft, the more you can recognize building construction or fire behavior issues which make you SAFER.

The more SAFE you want to be, the more you need to GET INTO THE JOB.

Comment

You need to be a member of Fire Engineering Training Community to add comments!

Join Fire Engineering Training Community

Welcome to
Fire Engineering Training Community

Sign Up
or Sign In

Or sign in with:

Policy Page

PLEASE NOTE

The login above DOES NOT provide access to Fire Engineering magazine archives. Please go here for our archives.

CONTRIBUTORS NOTE

Our contributors' posts are not vetted by the Fire Engineering technical board, and reflect the views and opinions of the individual authors. Anyone is welcome to participate.

For vetted content, please go to www.fireengineering.com/issues.

We are excited to have you participate in our discussions and interactive forums. Before you begin posting, please take a moment to read our community policy page.

Be Alert for Spam
We actively monitor the community for spam, however some does slip through. Please use common sense and caution when clicking links. If you suspect you've been hit by spam, e-mail peter.prochilo@clarionevents.com.