A Continuum of Training: The Case for Effective Officer Training From The Ground Up

A Continuum of Training: The Case for Effective Officer Training From The Ground Up is a discussion on how the fire service needs to arm its officers with the tools to lead. Not halligans, axes, or hoselines, but the knowledge, skills and abilities to lead, supervise and manage effectively. By not creating cohesive, comprehensive, systematic and sustainable training programs aimed at every rank (including informal leaders), the fire service creates a system of “leadership by accident”. This means that the leaders who will be making in extremis decisions at oh-dark, with limited information and in a fast-moving environment, are being provided a minimal amount of training that is not proportional to their scope of responsibility.

Bad outcomes should not be a surprise, they should be expected. Using a relatively simple model followed by effective organizations in the civilian world as well as in the U.S. military, we will explore a template for creating a training program, a Continuum of Training, that was developed from the bottom-up, not the top-down. The goal is to provide solutions that are scaleable, with an eye towards pushing strategic leaders to not cut the budget pie into smaller wedges, but to making a bigger pie. Effective training leads to effective outcomes. This session will help change the view of how to train your officers in the fire service and whether its 3, 300 or 3000, to do better for the American fire service.