How Good are Your Motivation Skills?
Discover Key Factors for Building a Motivated Firefighting Team
© Scott Simpson
Whether it's holding a stop sign, or being on first due to a working fire, I'm happy to be here.
Fire Chiefs want firefighting teams that are efficient and effective, focused on the fire department mission. Motivation is the key.
To deliver on the fire department mission (and promise) of saving lives, protect property and the environment from fire and other hazardous situations, motivation powers individuals to engage, participate and improve skills and capabilities.
While individual motivation is a factor, firefighters benefit from this if their company officers are motivating them to perform and enjoy their work.
This is why you need to be able to motivate firefighters if you want to create an effective and rewarding work environment. By combining good motivational practices with mission-focused work, the setting of performance goals, and use of a reward system, you can establish the kind of atmosphere and culture that leads to ongoing success.
The better you are able to link these factors together, the higher the motivation levels firefighters are likely to reach. That's a win-win for you, them, and the fire department.
What is a Reward?
A reward is not always money or a physical object. Rewards can anything from praise to an award. It can be a public mention or recognition of an achievement or even a desirable assignment (wow, rewarding work with more work!). Since most company officers do not control a firefighters wage, volunteer pay or other benefits, motivation is more about non-monetary things that you may not value as much as a particular firefighter might.
Motivation in volunteer fire departments is particularly important to help foster volunteer retention. The average service time for volunteers has been declining steadily for a number of reasons. People volunteer because the perceived rewards outweigh the personal cost. Initially the novelty and newness of the job, tasks, riding the rig and being seen and valued in the community are strong motivators. As time progresses this is balanced against the interruption of family life, sleepless nights, witnessing traumatic events, personal risk, training and physical demands can reverse. Without creative rewards that the long serving member values the balance can shift and the volunteer can withdraw and quit the service. Rewards and reward programs are critical to retaining volunteers. In volunteer departments, firefighter satisfaction is not optional.
What is a Discipline?
Often "discipline" is confused with punishment. While some egregious infractions could be referred to for formal discipline, this isn't the kind of discipline we are referring to. Discipline in this context is about timely corrective action using natural or imposed consequences. Natural or imposed consequences help firefighters learn and take responsibility for their behaviour. Discipline by its nature and design is about correcting undesired behaviour, and not about punishing it.
Tip:
Anger is a powerful emotion that is visible in most people's words, tone and body language. It is important not to decide or act on punishment or discipline when angry. Deciding to or applying discipline when angry will send messages that could confuse, upset and shutdown the receiver or provoke them to respond in anger themselves (welcome to an official "fight"). Displays of anger in whatever form are so powerful they can supplant the disciplinary message being communicated. Discipline needs to be appropriate and consistent when applied. Calmly communicating that you are upset by a behaviour is the better and more professional approach.
Punishment with no connection to the original behaviour is counterproductive to maintaining a respectful workplace and degrades the company officer's authority. It is also a missed learning opportunity. Punishment and its misapplication can result in resentment and withdrawal by the firefighter. This is undesirable and the exact opposite of motivation.
Example:
Firefighter Jones typically leaves a sink of dirty dishes in the kitchen whenever he makes a snack for himself. This is antagonizing his crew because they end up cleaning up for him. This issue is brought to his company officer, who calls Firefighter Jones in and asks him if the dirty dishes are his. Firefighter Jones admits they are. The company officer explains why it is important to clean up after himself and the fact that he is impacting his working relationship with his crewmates. He also explains that dirty dishes in a sink are not consistent to maintaining a clean and tidy response-ready station.
Punishment: Firefighter Jones is suspended for one day and a letter is put on file and he is sent home for the balance of the shift.
Discipline: Firefighter Jones is asked if he understands the problem and why his crew might be upset with him. He is asked to put down the XBox controller (it is his turn during break to use the gaming console) and go clean up the kitchen and make it ready for inspection by his crew. Once complete, he thanks Firefighter Jones for correcting the problem and establishes his expectation about his future performance.
Punishment has a poor connection to the undesired behaviour whereas discipline is designed to be corrective to the undesired behaviour. The company officer strategically chose to confront Firefighter Jones during his his XBox time. This is an example of imposed consequences. The company officer also confirms the dishes belong to Firefighter Jones in order to establish the whole story (seeking truth). Firefighter Jones' XBox time is interrupted by actions he caused and had to correct. He cannot blame anybody but himself for it, and he must answer to his crew for it, as they will be inspecting his work. Involving the crew ensures they see and participate in the corrective plan. This is also an example of natural consequences. The company officer in this case also re-enforces the connection between the dirty dishes in the sink and the fire department's mission objectives.
The 8 Principles of Discipline:
- Discipline is not punishment.
- Discipline is strategic with natural and imposed consequences.
- Discipline should be timely, fair and consistent to known rules.
- Discipline should have a behaviour change goal.
- Discipline should be connected to the undesired behaviour.
- Discipline should communicate expected future behaviour.
- Discipline requires full understanding of the truth.
- Discipline isn't delivered with anger.
It is important to understand that motivation also involves correction of negative behaviours and is not always about rewards for good behaviour. Reward and discipline are two sides of the same motivational coin.
Take the assessment and apply the things you learn from it. You could well see the performance of your team soar!
How Good Are Your Motivation Skills?
The interactive motivational skills assessment in this unit helps you identify the aspects of firefighter and team motivation that you can improve. From there you will be directed to specific tools that will help you improve your motivation skills. Take the assessment below, and click the "Score my Assessment" button at the foot of the test the assess your motivation skills.
Instructions
Note: This assessment tool is private and your score is not recorded or accessible by your instructor. It is for private personal reflection and to help you find areas where you are strong, and others where you can improve.
For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer them as you actually are, rather than how you think you should be, as this will give you the most accurate feedback. You can redo this assessment as many times as you want over time to reassess your progress. When you are finished, click the "Score my Assessment" button at the bottom.
Rate these Statements about Yourself |
Not at All | Rarely | Sometimes | Often | Very Often | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 When faced with a performance problem, I take care to establish whether it is caused by lack of resources, motivation, or skills. | ||||||
| 2 I communicate clear performance standards and expectations. | ||||||
| 3 When I reward or discipline, I apply clearly linked and defined performance and behavioral objectives. | ||||||
| 4 I structure work so that is interesting and challenging, and allows for autonomy where appropriate. | ||||||
| 5 When I give a reward I make sure it is one that the recipient values. | ||||||
| 6 I am consistent in the way that I discipline people for sub-standard performance. | ||||||
| 7 When I see good work, I praise it immediately. | ||||||
| 8 I make sure people have the tools, resources and training to achieve the results I expect. | ||||||
| 9 I try to understand what motivates each individual firefighter. | ||||||
| 10 I make a major effort to ensure that firefighters are fully compensated for their work, based on the fire departments' compensation system (record hours or pay wages). | ||||||
| 11 In order to be fair, I use the same rewards for everyone when recognizing good performance. | ||||||
| 12 I help people establish performance goals that are challenging and specific, and that are linked to the fire department mission. | ||||||
| 13 I make sure I know the whole truth before taking any remedial or disciplinary action. | ||||||
| 14 I encourage people to set their goals high, and make their achievement measurements challenge them fairly. | ||||||
| 15 I try to cycle or combine assignments so that people can learn and use a variety of skills. | ||||||
Score Interpretation
| Score Range | Advice about your Score |
|---|---|
| 15-34 | You have some work to do on your motivational skills. The good news is that you've got a great opportunity to improve the way you motivate others. However, to do this, you've got to fundamentally improve your motivation skills. Start below! |
| 35-52 | You're good at some aspects of motivating others, but there's room for improvement elsewhere. Focus on the serious issues below, and you'll most likely find that your firefighter's performance will increase. |
| 53-75 | You're probably motivating firefighters very effectively! Still, check the sections below to see if there's anything you can tweak to make this even better. |
As you answered the questions, you probably had some insight into areas where the motivational practices you use could use a pick-me-up. The following is a quick summary of the main areas of motivation that were explored in the assessment, and a guide to the specific tools you can use for each.
Providing Productive and Challenging Work
(Questions 1, 4, 15)
Your score is 0 out of 0The first step in building a highly motivated team is providing interesting work, which is well organized to meet the needs and desires of firefighters. No matter how self-motivated a person is, how challenging the goals he or she sets, or how wonderful the rewards, if the work is badly organized, it will be hard to motivate people and work will be less than ideal.
Effective motivators understand that work organization has a strong impact on performance. When a person finds a job inherently unsatisfying, there's not much you can do to motivate him or her. Job design and enrichment combine to match characteristics of firefighters' skills and interests: The more variety, challenge and autonomy there is to the job, the more intrinsically satisfying it will be.
Setting Effective Goals
(Questions 2, 3, 12, 14)
Your score is 0 out of 0When you are confident that the work you provide is well organized, the next thing to do is to ensure that firefighters have clear and attainable goals that they're working to achieve. Managing the goal setting process is essential for creating a highly motivating environment. The effectiveness of goal setting in motivation is a well-recognized fact, and by making goals challenging and specific, you can set goals that are powerfully motivating. As such, the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) acronym helps you define effective goals.
Specific goals are measurable, unambiguous and behavior-changing. They outline exactly what needs to be accomplished, and when it will be considered as "achieved." Having goals that are consistent with other personal goals as well as mission is also important. If goals are inconsistent, the resulting confusion and incompatibility would likely cause the person to disengage.
Check out this video on Locke's Goal Setting Theory (which details how to align personal goals with those of the organization).
Finally, challenge is important, due to the observation that we get what we expect, including the use of discipline to address behaviour not consistent with mission. Up to a point, the more you expect from someone, the harder they will generally work. This has been shown time and again, and is explained by the idea of Expectancy Theory: the idea here is that you need to link high effort with high performance, and high performance with a positive outcome. With those two linkages established, firefighters are motivated to work hard to achieve a positive outcome.
Tip:
Think carefully about the goals you set, and make sure you adapt them to circumstances in a reasonable way. If you're too rigid with your goals, you may motivate firefighters to "cut corners" in order to reach them.
Understanding Individual Differences in Motivation
(Questions 5, 9, 10, 11)
Your score is 0 out of 0Motivational techniques should bring out the best in people. That means they should build on an individual's strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.
There are certainly some common denominators in motivation, like fair wages, decent working conditions, a sense of camaraderie, and a good relationship with their company officer. Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg are two famous motivation theorists who established that even if these sorts of things are not necessarily motivating in themselves, they have to be present in order to even think about enhancing motivation.
However, the assumption in most modern workplaces is that these lower order, "hygiene" factors are being met, and that people are seeking the things that provide real motivation. These are things like challenging work, control, growth opportunities, and recognition for a dedication and excellence.
To decide which motivating factors to provide you need to look at the individual. Some will be motivated by more time off, while others may prefer to gain status and recognition in the fire department or community. Understanding these individual needs is mandatory for building a motivating fire station, and is why question 11 above is a "trick question": if you try to motivate everyone in exactly the same way, you're likely missing plenty of opportunities for motivating individual firefighters.
Providing Rewards and Recognition
(Questions 6, 7, 8, 13)
Your score is 0 out of 0When you know what you want to provide in terms of reward and recognition, it's important to establish an effective system. The primary focus of a reward system is fairness. Both reward and discipline have to be perceived as fairly distributed according to clear guidelines. This is why setting specific performance expectations is so important. ("Fairness" doesn't mean that everyone has the same reward package – it means that differences between firefighters' reward packages need to be clear and understandable.)
It is equally important to make sure you give firefighters the tools they need to be successful. If you're setting goals, then you need to make sure that they are attainable, and you do that by providing the necessary support, tools, resources, and training.
It's also important that you get to understand the challenges they face. This means you need the facts and you need to establish "the truth". The truth is malleable with time and memory. This is one reason why discipline has to be timely. Also confronting truth is critical in maintain motivation in general (see Big Think: Jim Collins and How to Crush and Employee's Enthusiasm).
Quote:
Another way to demotivate people is to not show tangible clicks on the flywheel... when you show people that it’s working, and they actually can feel the click on the flywheel, then another click on the flywheel and they can begin to be engaged and [ask] how do we get more clicks on the flywheel? . . . The tangible results become infectious in themselves.
-- Jim Collins
In these ways you can appreciate the small victories that lead to the major accomplishments. As Jim Collins says showing clicks on the flywheel is infectious.
When you are part of the team and not simply an "observer from above" you will have many opportunities to thank people and recognize good work right on the spot. This is a really important factor in successful recognition. You have to be in a position to show or tell people every day that you appreciate their contributions. Once or twice a year in formal review process is not enough!
Key Points
If you want to build a high performance firefighting team, then you absolutely have to learn how to motivate them. Side benefits of this include high levels of firefighter job satisfaction, and good retention (volunteer or otherwise).
You can stimulate high performance through providing interesting and challenging work, helping people set and achieve meaningful goals, and recognizing and rewarding high performance in ways that are valued by each individual.
Making a point of motivating people is a challenge in and of itself. Once you decide you are up to it, however, you too will reap the rewards and benefits. This creates a momentum that will help you and your fire department achieve great success.