How do you support and mentor your team of firefighters and other personnel?

Question

Robert Verhelst · Answer

Is it great question in, how do you support and Mentor your other firefighters and other personnel? And I think the biggest thing is that to be a team, a brother and a sister, who is the biggest thing for the fire service? Because when we go through calls, it's not, we are constantly adapting and changing our training, but yet at the same point, the existing things that we've learned from fires from medical calls from emergencies dealing with natural disasters. Us to God forbid. Anything that deals with like human tragedies as far as terrorism. I think we've learned that being able to support and Mentor your other firefighters in situations that not only deal with in the moment. But after the moment because those are one of the hardest situations to understand. Because a lot of the things that go on within the fire service and scenes and calls is something that we're not going to understand. And why they happened and making sure that there's a support network. Making sure that, you know, each individual, make sure to have a mentor or somebody that they can count on any time of the day. That is so critical for firefighters. Medics police, anybody?

Dave Robertson · Answer

How do I support and mentor my team of firefighters? This is gonna be a two minute answer because they're two very large subjects. So I'll start with support. I support my team, all of my staff, all my firefighters with all the little stuff. I try to be very responsive to their emails, very responsive to their to their requests. You know I'll get a call, hey chief I can't make such and such a training. Not a problem, let's figure out a way to do it another way or at another time. Just I think being very responsive. I think always listening to them. A lot of the conversations in the day-to-day life in a fire service are about hey you know these stupid new gloves that we got are just not working for me. Just having me be quiet and then try to work towards a solution either for them or more appropriately with them. I think is a great way to support people. And then making sure that they know that I'm always there, that I'm one of their life rafts. Especially for the bigger things that are gonna happen. Issues in their family life, the cool big decisions that they're maybe making. Like hey I want to no longer be a firefighter, I want to be a chief now or a captain. And I'll support them with that. Tell them that I'm there. Again be very responsive. Here's a whole bunch of books you should read. Here's some courses that you can you can take and go to. Let me support you that way. In terms of mentorship, well mentorship is a very big subject. Mentorship is about, it is about supporting and it is about listening and understanding who it is that you're mentoring, your protege. And then it is about navigating with them an end goal that you have discovered together. I want to be a better chief. Okay how do we do that? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How do we navigate towards that? I'm gonna use my story to help you and guide you. I'm going to give my support to you to mentor you towards that great end goal.

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"How do you support and mentor your team of firefighters and other personnel?"